Official Luthiers Forum!

Ebay and some of the non main wood suppliers have been cracking me up lately. Whats up with exhibition grade, 5A 6A a bazillion grade? It seems as if to sell ones product these days one must come up with a monkey that pushes the limits of the previous last action or set sold haha

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How about 'Mystic' rosewood ?

It's human nature. Why isn't aaa considered good enough anymore?

Maybe cause what passes for aaa these days is what used to be a generous aa even a few short years ago...

This speaks to the arbitrariness of wood grading, as it always was and always will be. In my opinion, triple A was never an objective grade, nor was any other classification. We'll always have to rely on our wits and intuition in selecting wood.

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Under Compensated Nut!

It would be nice to have a standardization. At least with people like LMI,Allied, Notable woods,Hibdon, RC and a few other reputable dealers you get what your asking for.

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"It would be nice to have a standardization"

Even where there is some rhyme or reason to a grading system it is based on cosmetics rather than the sonic properties of the wood.And a lot of "high dollar" wood is sold on a back story rather than any real quality to the timber.

Aaron Hix is an ebay seller, and sponsor of the forum, who has sold exhibition grade woods.
Maybe he could answer your question as to what constitutes Exhibition Grade in his eyes.
He is reputable, and liked on this forum as far as I can tell.

A while back I bid (and won) on and Exhibition set of Yellow Cedar.
I have not used it yet, but visually it is impeccable and just a treat to look at. : )

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

The problem is that actual wood doesn't grow into neatly organized categories. There is a whole continuous spectrum from "firewood" all the way to "Holy Grail"......

So say you split this into 5 categories... Below A, A, AA, AAA, and Master.... There is a ton of wood that doesn't make the cut to AAA - but just barely. And so now that stuff is AA - but it's better than a lot of AA that is in the stack.

And wood suppliers recognize this..... Often as not - when you talk with them - not only are there the "normal" grades - but there are slots between the grades as well.... It's just the nature of wood....

Several years ago - Shane ran a special for us and got rid of a giant stack of "A" grade wood that fell out because of knots... If not for the knots - it would be AAA or Master it's just that beautiful. And it's WAY WAY better than Ordinary A grade wood I have normally received. But that's wood..... Trees don't always plan ahead 400 years as we might like them to.

A couple of years ago I made an experimental guitar. The Euro spruce soundboard cost me all of . . . . $6. Wide grain, around 9 or 10 GPI. It had some mild colour streaks but in terms of runout it was pretty good. It was also sold as an undersized soundboard but it just fit within my pattern. Sounded just as good as soundboards that I've paid $100 for. Fancy swirly figured walnut might have a wow factor but it really isn't going to sound any better than plain boring straight up and down quartered stuff. In fact the plain stuff is probably more stable.