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The Future of Ash


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2 hours ago, Dutchman said:

Thanks for that!! The article explained more to me about the Ash Bore than I had been able to find before. 

Ash isn't quite into Brazilian Rosewood territory...yet.  There's some new model Fender USA guitars that are available in Ash as well as Alder, with about an $100 upcharge for Ash, from what I've seen of the latest Fender offerings. 

There's some good info on the links I posted here a few months ago:

Ash is also popular for making Baseball bats (Louisville Sluggers, f'r instance) and tool handles...when I was a kid, all my families' gardening/digging tools had Ash handles.  Why Ash?  Because Ash is very durable and impact resistant, which is a good choice for both tool handles and Baseball bats...and Keef's Teles :rolleyes: :lol:.  If you've ever seen a Hard Maple Baseball Bat shatter and send sharp Maple splinters flying like shrapnel, it makes me want to go for an Ash bat over Hard Maple any day of the week.

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I'm pretty psyched that I was able to snag a few killer Ash bodies recently...all I'll need (actually MORE than I'll need) until ash becomes extinct!

 

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This is one ASH guitar that has never sounded bad.   

 

B05E8267-C4BB-41F8-9575-523AD37A1F9F.jpeg

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41 minutes ago, Studio Custom said:

We had 20+ ash trees removed from our back yard, wish I knew they might be worth something.  

Recently? JCP&L has been taking down any and all ash trees within 20 ft of the power lines in most areas.

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There are a lot of Ash tree’s being cut down here in South Dakota. Most of it is going into wood stoves as ash is a great wood for heat. I have 15 mature huge ash tree’s on my acreage. I had 2 cut out with the bugs killing them. It about brings me to tears to know they’ll all have to go because they surround my house and are great shade tree’s. One of the tree’s I had removed was 4ft in diameter and the trunk was 20’ long before it forked out. That entire tree and the others are heating homes at this moment. 

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There are different varieties of ash with some better for guitars.  At one of the HFC events, or possibly in a video, Jol Dantzig explained that there is a lot of figured maple available, but certain species of flamed maple are better for making guitars. 

Here is an interesting video on buying wood for guitars. 

 

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  • 3 months later...

So now I am even more happy to own 2 ash guitars:

- Stratocaster (2004 Fender CS 50th anniversary Two-tone sunburst)

- Telecaster (2005 Fender CS '59 Esquire Vintage blonde).

 

Gabe 😀

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I figured this was coming, eventually.  It's definitely not a good thing, though.

You'd think there'd be a better supply of ash now, what with the Major League Baseball 2020 schedule being kinda iffy due to the Pandemic, and not nearly as many ash baseball bats being needed.  <_<

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  • 2 weeks later...

Back in the '80s when I was working for Peavey I learned that sometimes the wood used in their "ash" bodied guitars and basses was actually hackberry- southern hackberry (celtic laevigata) to be exact. Another wood that can sometimes pass for ash is common hackberry (celtis occidentalis). It seems appropriate for my skill level that many of my guitars may consist of COMMON HACK wood.

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There are so many ash bodied guitars out there that they will not be rare.  It will be the idea that you have to go with a Fender Custom Shop order to get ash that will make some people start questioning if they can hear a difference, and once they pay their money they will claim they really can hear a difference. 

I love my StingRay bass with its ash body, but I have played a lot of basses with different woods.  Some you just love without knowing what is under the opaque finish. 

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Northern ash tends to be dense, hard and heavy. I think that's what's generally used for oars, bats and tool handles. And heavy guitars.

Southern swamp ash tends to be lighter and softer and generally more desirable for guitars.

I don't think the ash borer discriminates between the two.

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On 5/4/2020 at 8:56 PM, Steve Haynie said:

It will be the idea that you have to go with a Fender Custom Shop order to get ash that will make some people start questioning if they can hear a difference, and once they pay their money they will claim they really can hear a difference. 

I can hear the difference.  My 2 strats are basically identical except the white is ash and daphne is alder.  The daphne neck is slightly bigger but otherwise they are both MB WW10,  Tood Krause both built in 2010. For gain/bridge pickup work, the ash strat usually sounds the best. Anything needing a deep, ambient clean tone is almost always the alder strat.  It's got tons of bass. I hate to use this analogy but it sometimes sounds like a piano.  For bridge/gain, the alder strat never seems to work for me.  There could be something wrong with the bridge pickup IDK. 

EmdNebR.jpg

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  • 3 months later...
50 minutes ago, Steve Haynie said:

Shamel ash, Bob Taylor's new discovery, is something found on city streets. 

Here is an article to read about it. 

I looked up "Shamel ash" and "Urban ash" on the Wood Database website, and Black ash popped up as their answer.  Nothing popped up for "Evergreen ash":

https://www.wood-database.com/black-ash/

According to the entry on Black ash, it's softer (Janka hardness of 850) than White ash (Janka hardness of 1320).  BTW, the Emerald Ash Borer bug supposedly prefers Black and Green ash over White and Blue ash (of course, it'll chew on and destroy any ash tree it finds to it's liking), again according to the Wood Database.

I'm reading in the AG article that harvesting Shamel ash is being done on the West Coast of the US, and there's no mention of it being done on the East Coast, where the Wood Database entries mention most North American ash wood as coming from.  I wish that the AG article was more specific on which exact ash species they're talking about, and sounding less like a Taylor Guitars advertisement.  Also, maybe they could get the Wood Database website and other wood-centric websites to update their listings while they're at it.  <_<

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If guitars are going to be made of trees that lined streets for years... and some people have made guitars using oak... 

Someone ought to go get that oak tree that Gary Rossington ran into that is mentioned in That Smell and make a limited run of guitars out of it.  It is still standing, and there is a video of the tree on youtube. 

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