Blog Posts: Building a Sustainable Guitar

Our podcast team sat down with Chip Barber and Austin Clowes of the Forest Legality Initiative to learn how to build a sustainable guitar.

The best guitar necks are made of mahogany, and the most sustainable guitar companies are finding innovative ways to source the wood without destroying its stock.

Guitar fretboards are often made of ebony. With the prized tree now endangered, consumers must demand more sustainable sourcing.

Rosewood is prized for use in guitar fretboards, but widespread trafficking demands stricter attention to protection.

Many guitar makers use "figured" wood, desired for its wavy or rippled appearance. Bigleaf maple from the U.S. Pacific Northwest can act as a sustainable and beautiful source of figured wood.

Building an acoustic guitar traditionally requires several different woods, but in select cases, the guitar body can be made from just one wood. Hawaiian koa trees produce wood with the versatility to make single-wood guitars. They also have the potential to be harvested sustainably.

Many guitar makers source wood from pristine forests in exotic locales. But instruments don’t have to come at the expense of ecosystems. A six-part blog series explores how to build a guitar sustainably, piece-by-piece. This first installment looks at Sitka spruce from Alaska's Tongass National Forest.