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Comment by DudeOpotomus | Hacker News Reader

This is also the case with guitars and other musical instruments (pianos, violins etc.).

Old growth not only sounds better, it lasts longer and looks better.

Salvaged redwood is one particular place that this really stands out. There is no VG Heart available these days. If you want good straight, heartwood, you have to salvage old lumber or scavenge the forest floor for old felled logs.

When I see old houses in CA built from old growth redwood torn down and tossed into the landfill, it breaks me.

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There’s a YouTube video from the 50s or so showing them cutting down old growth redwoods. I tried watching it but couldn’t make it. Made me too emotional.

With you on this one. It's impossible for me to fathom the thought of cutting down a tree that took 2000 years to grow. Let alone is so majestic!

We humans are incredibly shortsighted. Today, we only have 2-5% of old growth trees left... and that's only because of people like you and me ( who care) fought to purchase them. Otherwise, someone would cut them down and sell them for a few bucks.

Guitars made with soaked logs that have been in the great lakes for the last 100 years sound especially well because the cells get hollowed out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6EnWSwfQ7w

Yeah, Sunken wood. Mostly used on electrics. Personally I cannot hear any difference in these guitars. But people seem to like them. Probably for the look...

https://youtu.be/n02tImce3AE?si=YWEWhrFWbQFAQOS4

Tone wood is bogus, don’t let anyone fool you. It is very beautiful on the other hand :)

Tonewood for electrics is mostly a myth anyway. Extremes might play a role but 99% of the time its almost entirely down to the pickups and picking hand.

Acoustic guitars are a totally different ball game of course.

They're used in electrics? I've only heard about them in acoustics, ie. 'sinker' mahogany.

Yeah I had a Martin Guitar made from "Sinker Mahogany" harvested from a river in Belize. Amazing to think that these were so plentiful that the British just let the ones that didn't make it sink to the bottom of the water. Literally hundreds if not thousands of them. It's absolutely beautiful wood for a guitar though, especially if paired with red pine for the top.

Redwood is amazing. My dad has a picnic table with redwood boards he bought in the 1980s which is in basically perfect condition today despite living outside in Wisconsin the entire time.

Have a set of outside porch furniture as well - that my wife had at her parent's house even before she was born - so the set is at least 58 years old, and besides having weathered a bit in color - are as good as new.

<3 yamaha nippon gakki red label from the 60s/70s

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