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Generally, how good are the color/grain matches on these sets?

But you know... This brings up a point that I struggle with. On the one hand I want everything as cheap as I can possibly get it. On the other, I realize the value that the tonewood providers bring to the table (essentially hunting down great lumber, sawing it up, sanding it, taking great pictures for us, and putting it on display so we can pick and choose like gamblers at a Vegas buffet.) As builders we have virtually no risk in this arrangement. The tonewood dealer eats all the risk. I think it behooves us all to make sure they are getting enough of our business to stay around and squeak out a living for themselves.

Personally EIR, and some mahogany are "anything goes" woods -- I would consider importing it if it made sense, but I try to buy the other stuff from known tonewood dealers -- I need to keep that Brazilian, Madagascar Rosewood, Amazon Rosewood, and Cuban Mahogany coming...

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Arnt: I found an interesting website recently for a US remailing service (http://www.myus.com/, I think it was) that looks like it would be very interesting if you saved up and shipped stuff in bulk - costs between 35 and 60 dollars per year for an account (ie, mailing address that you can register your billing address with), so you can have any US store ship whatever you want there, no 'we don't ship to international addresses' restrictions apply, they consolidate everything, and if you reach the 70 kg number (easy enough if you go on a wood buying spree, and get some neck stock/billets of rosewood, for example, shipping via air freight (5-7 days estimated) costs about $400 - which is very reasonable shipping cost for 155 lbs. But it does mean you need a fair amount of available pocket change up front and to spend it all within a relatively short amount of time.

Lucky you don't live in Australia Mattia, I just used their calculator on a 70kg package to AU





Cheers

Kim

Brock you will have to match the back and sides your self in general with most indian mills.
and if you buy small you run the risk of them sending you there "low grade stock" becouse they are not as concerned with with reorder.

i have found that they really expect you build up a long lasing relationship and the deals get better and quality goes up the more you buy.

overall though if you go to a good dealer the qaulity will be very good if you buy from the mid - high grades.

Also what you say about the tonewood dealers is very true.
its not as simple as buying a pallet of wood and resawing.
our overheads are huge and we really run the risk of getting stuck with bum stock.

if you ask tonewood dealer they will tell that they are usualy disipointed with most shipments that were not hand selected.
the wood business is full crooks and as soon as they tonewoods in your business name there prices for raw lumber double,s
I tend to try to buy my lumber under a diferent name from tonewood supplies to try to avoid this (i am a sister company of funky junk ltd any way so we buy stock through that name very often).

also you have the problem wood is very unpreictable so what may have seemed primo stock may not yeild what you were hoping even after the standard 25% you knock of the gross profit projections of each shipment.

then we work very hard to cut the wood, regrade it, take pics, manage our internet site, cope with sales, deal with shipping, etc etc.
the fixed costs fly up very quickly.

at the same time we realise that even the biggest luthiers and guitar maker have to keep there fixed costs down as well so have to pay as little as poss for there wood.

its very very dificult.

in normal circumstances i would never advise someone to go striegt to source for wood but in this case if a few of you got together for a bulk order and did your research you could quite easily find some very good stock that would last you a while.

however indian rosewood is a special case as the industry is quite well regulated over there.
and good luck trying to source mad rose etc yourself you just wont get it?

Joel.

Kim, look at the 'rates' link and fill out the country' that's a shipping quote for Express Delivery (courier), I'm talking about 'option 2', which is air freight and has a minimum charge of 429 dollars for Oz - for 70 kg worth of shipped goods.

Thanks for the heads up Mattia,

Dopey me, I just used the calculator on the main page as I did not see, or even look for the 'rates' link in the side panel. You would thing they would have the second option for standard air freight up front as part of the calculator on the main page, at $429 it is at least doable, $720 just makes you leave quickly to avoid wasting any more of your time.

Cheers

Kim

Thanks for the tip Mattia, I'll look into this.

BTW, whatever happened to 'surface shipping' that used to be offered by the US Postal Service? That used to be an inexpensive, albeit slow, option for shipping wood from the US. Anyone know why the no longer provide this service?

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Arnt,

I think the reason they stopped surface mail is because it would have become so attractive in comparison to the gouging and profiteering that takes place in the airfreight business that people would have actually learned to be more patient and started to use the service a lot more frequently, and this would never do.

I suspect that the advent of on-line buying or etrade, in particular the huge daily sales on Ebay, would have created an enormous spike in international freight demand. I imagine that this 'spike' would have been sharp enough to make those at the helm of freight transportation companies sit up with a jolt and take notice and when they did, the fact would have quickly dawned that much more money could be made by charging a premium for the speed of air service by partially filling 10,000 planes a day that you know will be back safely tomorrow for a refill, than could ever be made by filling a fleet of a dozen or so ships up to the hilt with half priced parcels that will then take 4 or 5 month to make a round trip. It would not have taken an Einstein to understand that if you remove that slower less profitable option from the equation altogether, you can really start to cash in as you ramp up profit margins in a now competitively diminished market.

A freight carrying service is just another commodity, and it's the same old, same old, supply and demand formula for success. You create more demand by restricting supply of the commodity, and you increase your profit margin. I am sure the freight industry would present lots of valid reasons that would argue against my assumption here, but I am just as sure it would all be BS.

So there Ken, that's what happened to your freakin rosewood Sorry about the hijack my friend

Cheers

Kim

Maybe its a US thing too .. I can still get ground frieght service here from Canada .. but the 4-5 months they quoted to New Zealand to deliver a guitar was a bit much, even if it was only 130 bucks.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Funny... the lady at the post office told me it is because they contract with 3rd party carriers and they don't have relationships in all places.

I can still get it between the US and the larger part of Western Europe. At least the last time I tried I could.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

well, since we got off on freight.....


I got an e-mail yesterday from my case manufacturer telling me that all future case shipments will carry a fuel surcharge added to the cost of the cases. My guess is that this is only the start of the fuel surcharge thingy.

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Reguards,

Ken H

I was shocked when they USPS told me they completely halted the surface option. It had always seemed like the air rates were so high the service was almost unusable(at least for wood). I will admit air is much safer, as I ran into a high percentage of surface shipment problems. Almost always late, which got to be painful because the person on the other end wanted to try to track, and USPS only tracked surface till it left the US. Then if it was late you could file a request to investigate, which often took so long the shipment had arrived by the time you got a responce from USPS. A lot of headaches, extra time and trips to the post office to figure it out. To be honest it is often uncomfortable for me, because I would know if the person on the recieving end was recieving the first package from me they don't know if I am giving them the run around. I always knew late shipments were common, and likely not a problem, but I still felt I needed to go through all the steps and continue to correspond as often as they needed(which to be honest really gets expensive in terms of time and fuel for trips to the post office). I can completely understand why many people refuse to even deal with the process. The shipping costs the person buying, and it also costs the seller more in terms of packing materials, time, and headaches. Air seems to be much better for reliability and speed, and packages are not subjected to as ruff an environment for as long as when it moves by ships. So I guess there are upsides and downsides.

Hopefully, a good reliable and more cost effective option will become available. In the mean time hopefully everyone will understand the costs, and be able to make edjucated choices on items purchased with high shipping. I know I have told people in the past it is just not going to be cost effective to buy some things from me(even if I sold it for less than the material cost me), because of shipping costs.

Rich

P.S. Ken, Fuel surcharges have been a reality for a while now, and yes, until things settle down and stabalize(which means rates go up accordingly) the surcharge will be there.

Anybody's watching oil/distillates markets? Contango for oil futures? Airline companies go bust?
Ever heard of Peak-oil?
Fuel surcharges are here to stay, air-shipping is bound to become more and more expensive, and possibly unreliable, as flying has become.
We are bound to become intensely local…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

You bet'cha... Hubbert's Peak.

And not to steer the conversation fully off point, but since the nationalization of many of the world's biggest remaining oil deposits it is getting harder and harder for Western companies to find reasonable places to conduct exploration.

Exxon Mobile is buying back vast reserves of stock with their excess cash becuse they can't find good places to look for oil. They are shut out of the most promising fields.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

There are about 15 main reasons why oil/distillates are on a roller-coaster now.
Nationalizations as you point out, the fact that oil exporting countries consume more and more for their internal markets and thus have less and less for export, bottlenecks due to aging infrastructure, rapidly aging fields due to increased pumping technology etc.
But the most important point is that we have (or shortly will) hit the all-high of global oil production, 2005 remains the highest point. Russia officially announced it is in decline (the US peaked in 1971).
So…
Personally I wish there was an effort to (re)devellop rail in the US, goods and passenger…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/