Not all guitars are created equal
Imagine arguably the World's finest tone wood Brazilian Mahogany (Swietenia Macrophylla) floated down the Belize River up to 150 years ago. But only 50% of this actually reached the port - the rest sank into the silt at the bottom of the river. Why did it sink? - well because it was heavier ( closer grained) and more dense than the lighter, lesser quality wood. S
o now JJL Guitars, to date, is the only organization to import this material directly into the UK. We have been sanctioned by the by CITIES, the World Organization for Endangered Species and granted a licence to do this. Because we convinced their scientific board at Kew Gardens that by using this existing wood, we wished to make our guitars without cutting down any trees! They agreed, supported our sentiment and granted the licence. But it gets much better than that. Luthiers are forever trying to find ways of "ageing" their wood. It is claimed a Stradivarius violin sounds the way it does, not just because of it's exquisite craftsmanship, but also because the wood , has aged and mellowed with use and time. There's another way to achieve this though - allow the wood to season for up to 150 years in a depleted oxygen environment until there is absolutely no resin left in it at all. Furthermore - how about if the wood you started with is "Old Growth Mahogany" growing at a time hundreds of years before the Conquistadors were present in South America? Then we take this wood, specially milled and dried at the riverside mill in Belize and do something more extraordinary. We make an entire guitar our of it - as one piece. That's one piece of wood with no neck joint at all. No bolted on neck, no glued on neck, just one continuous piece of this amazing wood. Into this we carefully bond a special Beta C titanium alloy chassis which extends from the headstock to the strap button, the whole length of the guitar and all our custom titanium hardware is connected directly into both the chassis - and the wood. The result? Astonishing resonance with sustain and tone that simply cannot be achieved from the conventional guitar designs of the past..
