Skip to main content
Music Radar MusicRadar The No.1 website for musicians
Sign in
  • View Profile
  • Sign out
  • Artist news
  • Guitar Amps
  • Guitar Pedals
  • Synths
  • Guitars
  • Drums
  • Keyboards & Pianos
  • Controllers
  • Software & Apps
  • More
    • Recording
    • DJ Gear
    • Acoustic Guitars
    • Bass Guitars
    • Tech
    • Tutorials
    • Reviews
    • Buying Guides
    • About Us
More
  • "Worst rap album in history"
  • Superbooth 2025
  • Eilish vs Radiohead
  • 95k+ free music samples

Recommended reading

Powers Electric Guitars
Guitars “We were forcing some of these ideas into the wrong context”: Andy Powers on how the difficulties of designing a new Taylor electric led to the launch of Powers Electric
Fender's executive vice president of product Justin Norvell
Guitars “If this guitar had come out of one of our other facilities saying Fender no one would be having this conversation”: Fender’s Justin Norvell on the $599 Standard Series, how it was made, and why it is not a Squier with a different decal on the headstock
Jackson Pro Series Lee Malia LM-87: The Bring Me The Horizon guitarist's new signature model is inspired by the Surfcaster and debuts a hunbucker/P-90 combo.
Artists “I feel like that song had everything we needed to come back with”: Bring Me The Horizon’s Lee Malia on Shadow Moses, its riff and the secrets behind its tone, and why it was the right anthem at the right time
Michael Thompson
Guitarists “All Strats aren't equal… Then it’s how you smack it, or zing it or strum it… A lot of it is that too”: Session guitar legend Michael Thompson reveals how he created the famous clean tone that’s on countless '80s and '90s hits
Margo Price with her signature Gibson J-45, which refinishes the classic workhorse dreadnought with a double pickguard, and has a slightly shallower body depth.
Guitars “It embodies the spirit, vision, and talent that has driven Margo to stardom and continues the nature-themed model tradition of Gibson”: Country star Margo Price and the Gibson Custom Shop team up for stunning double-guard J-45 acoustic
Jackson Pro Series Lee Malia LM-87: The Bring Me The Horizon guitarist's new signature model is inspired by the Surfcaster and debuts a hunbucker/P-90 combo.
Artists “I like guitars that don’t just appeal to metal players”: Jackson and Bring Me The Horizon’s Lee Malia team up for the Pro Series LM-87, a shreddable Surfcaster-style electric with a humbucker/P-90 pairing
Gibson Special Acoustics [l-r]: the J-45, L-00 and Hummingbird get the Special treatment, with satin finishes and a stripped-down but pro-quality instrument that's ready for the stage.
Guitars “A package that’s simply perfect for songwriting and rehearsing”: Gibson gives three of its most-iconic acoustic guitars a Special makeover
  1. Guitars

Meet your maker: Taylor's search for the ultimate maple guitar

News
By Jamie Dickson ( Guitarist ) published 28 May 2015

We head to the mountains with Taylor's top brass

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Introduction

Introduction

With its new 600 Series, Taylor wants to persuade you that maple can sound as warm, well-balanced and sweet as any rosewood or mahogany guitar. But why? The answer concerns the future of guitar-making itself. We travel to America’s Cascade Mountains to find out more...

"Not many maple trees contain figured wood because, strictly speaking, it’s a growth defect"

Do you have straight or curly hair? Whichever it is, the reason your hair looks a certain way lies in your genes. If your parents both have curly hair - guess what, you probably have it, too.

But what has that got to do with guitars? Well, the figured maple that adorns many beautiful instruments is, like curly hair, a product of genetics. Split open the right kind of maple log lengthwise, and figuring is visible as an undulating ripple in the grain.

But not many maple trees contain figured wood because, strictly speaking, it’s a growth defect - albeit a harmless one that looks attractive when you make it into a guitar, where it manifests itself in subtle visual patterns, including the famous ‘flames’ seen on the maple tops of old sunburst Les Pauls.

Page 1 of 9
Page 1 of 9
The problem with figured maple

The problem with figured maple

Herein lies a problem - in fact, a series of problems - that Taylor would like to solve. The reason the Californian company is taking a fresh look at maple is because the supply of tonewoods traditionally used to make acoustic guitars is growing harder to obtain.

Mahogany, rosewood and ebony trees take many decades to mature and, when they are allowed to grow to full size, they become enormously valuable.

"Taylor thinks it might also be possible to make beautiful-sounding acoustic guitars from trees that aren’t under any logging pressure at all"

The sad reality is that in many of the tropical regions where such trees flourish, illegal logging, corruption and conflict all hamper the chances of harvesting old-growth trees in a responsible way.

Where there are no controls on logging, ancient forests tumble with frightening rapidity. The scarcer such trees become, the higher their value rises - making them ever-more tempting targets for illegal logging, keeping the whole vicious circle spinning like a sawblade.

Certainly, there are verifiable ways to obtain tropical hardwoods from sustainable sources, and increasing numbers of makers, such as Martin, Walden and Taylor, are making good use of them.

So it’s not the case that all such woods are ‘bad’, but Taylor thinks it might also be possible to make beautiful-sounding acoustic guitars from trees that aren’t under any logging pressure at all.

Page 2 of 9
Page 2 of 9
Make it with maple

Make it with maple

Take maple, for example. In the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, maple suitable for making guitars grows "like a weed" to quote Steve McMinn, founder of Pacific Rim Tonewoods, a forward-thinking company that provides sustainable timber to many top guitar makers, including Taylor.

It’s plentiful, not in much demand and grows all the way from California to Alaska, right on the back door of many revered guitar firms. The only trouble is, nobody quite believes you can make a good, all-round acoustic guitar from it. Taylor’s innovative master luthier, Andy Powers, explains the problem:

"In this case, I’ve treated maple more like I would if it were being used in a violin or an archtop guitar" - Andy Powers

"Maple has been, in a way, a ‘side dish’ kind of wood in the guitar world," he says. "In the past, you might see a maple jumbo: a big, boomy guitar that could work with a real bright, stiff-sounding wood. Well, that can be a fun maple guitar but it’s the only one that’s really ‘stuck’ and become accepted among players.

"I feel that’s because we’ve traditionally done the same things to maple that we would do with a rosewood or a mahogany guitar - and that’s not fair. Maple has its own personality. I’m not going to cook a steak the same way I cook a piece of salmon - they’re two different ingredients and you have to treat them in ways that suit their personalities."

It was the perception that acoustics with maple backs and sides must always sound stiff and bright that Andy most wanted to challenge with Taylor’s new 600 Series guitars, so he altered their internal design to allow maple to exhibit warmer, more balanced tones.

"In this case, I’ve treated maple more like I would if it were being used in a violin or an archtop guitar," he says. "One of the most notable details in this design is that if you look on the inside, the back braces don’t extend all the way to the rim of the instrument.

"That’s a critical point in these guitars. By doing this, I can help control the back of a maple guitar and allow it to move more like an archtop guitar. Out of these instruments, you’re not going to hear the same bright, almost nasal quality that a lot of us associate with maple flatop guitars."

Page 3 of 9
Page 3 of 9
Going dark

Going dark

Nonetheless, if you look at a typical maple acoustic guitar, with its shimmering blonde sides, it’s difficult not to think ‘bright’. It even looks trebly. So, even if you do succeed in designing acoustic guitars made of maple that sound well-balanced, open and warm, how do you convince people to give them a try?

"Less well-known is that not all ebony trees yield timber that is pure black. Many contain beautifully patterned wood with swirling amber and coffee-cream tints"

"Make them brown. Make them not so bright-sounding and make more of them," is Bob Taylor’s blunt assessment. Bob and co-founder Kurt Listug established Taylor Guitars in 1974. Now, 40 years on, he’s convinced that if guitar makers don’t become less dependent on a narrow selection of tropical hardwoods, the future won’t be very bright for conservation or guitar-making.

Half the battle, he argues, is in challenging players’ preconceptions. He cites the example of ebony: a scarce, slow-growing tropical hardwood that became a byword for the colour black itself in the 20th century due to its use on piano keys, among other things.

Less well-known is that not all ebony trees yield timber that is pure black. Many contain beautifully patterned wood with swirling amber and coffee-cream tints.

But because we all grew up expecting ebony to be a pure, deep black, that’s what most instrument makers have continued to use.

The only trouble is, you can’t tell which shade of ebony you’re going to get until you chop a tree down - often with the result that centuries-old trees were being felled, only for timber to be left to rot on the forest floor because it turned out not to be sufficiently black in hue, though otherwise perfectly suitable as tonewood.

Page 4 of 9
Page 4 of 9
Sustainable ebony

Sustainable ebony

So, instead of rejecting the lighter ebony, Taylor started making guitars with it, setting up its own sustainable ebony operation in Cameroon.

"We found that all we had to do is tell people that ebony doesn’t come pure black; that we didn’t want to throw away brown ebony and that we’re going to start using it," Bob Taylor explains.

"Having worked on players’ perceptions of ebony, Bob Taylor would like to do the same for maple"

"And customers would say ‘Nobody told us this before. But we’re happy to use that ebony’. And, in fact, we’ve seen a huge swing - it’s amazing the number of people who ask us for that now."

Having worked on players’ perceptions of ebony, Bob Taylor would like to do the same for maple - though in this case giving the maple backs and sides on the new 600 Series guitars a translucent auburn ‘Brown Sugar’ stain is the solution.

It seems that ‘dark wood’ equates to ‘darker tone’ for many of us, regardless of what our ears are hearing. So the new maple Taylor guitars not only sound well-balanced but look that way, too. Appearance, as it’s often said, counts for a lot.

Page 5 of 9
Page 5 of 9
Popular figure

Popular figure

Which leads us to the second of Taylor’s problems. When maple is used on a guitar, most players like it to have attractive figuring. Steve McMinn, of Pacific Rim, explains the quandary:

"You can make a good guitar without figure; you can make it from just plain maple. But guess what? We all like to be charmed. All the same, it’s hard to find the maple tree that has figure in it. We are in the midst of a great forest where there’s a lot of it. But it is often found as by-catch [timber located while logging for other species of tree].

"It’s still a real challenge to get figured maple - but we have a couple of different strategies for that" - Steve McMinn

"So, usually, we’re able to find some in an area where alder and other hardwoods are growing. It’s still a real challenge to get it, though - but we have a couple of different strategies for that.

"One of them is, we’ll go to a big mill and look through their piles. And that works. We get some there and we pay them three times what they paid for it. But the problem with that is it’s often baked in the sun. This is fish country, so we know fish, and there’s one salmon called a pink, or a ‘humpy’, that starts to deteriorate almost in front of your eyes after you’ve caught it. And maple’s kind of that way, too. The sugars will turn colour and it will change."

Steve is working closely with Taylor on the new 600 Series guitars, and agrees that Western Big Leaf maple has good potential as a sustainable tonewood. But finding figured timber in tip-top condition remains challenging. Like ebony trees, it’s extremely difficult to find out if a maple tree will yield figured wood without cutting it down.

"We buy really nice alder logs and sell them to veneer slicers in the Midwest. But in the course of that, we go into the woods, and we see what’s being cut and get hold of [chance finds of figured maple] early.

"And then the third strategy is, it just comes to us. When you start paying enough for it, people will bring it in on a boat trailer or the back of a pickup or something. So we get a little bit that way as well."

Page 6 of 9
Page 6 of 9
Clone theory

Clone theory

But although these methods will suffice for building maple guitars in relatively modest numbers, Taylor has big ambitions for using maple as a sustainable tonewood for acoustic guitars in the future, as Bob Taylor explains:

"At Taylor now, we design everything for the future. If there’s not a sustainable component or a sustainable reason for the choices that we’re making, then we feel like we’ve missed the mark. Not all the guitars are maple, but more need to be maple. And it’s a long, long game we’re talking about."

"Finding attractively figured maple is, currently, a needle-in-a-haystack job - yet building maple acoustic guitars in really large numbers will require lots of it"

The bottleneck is obvious. Finding attractively figured maple is, currently, a needle-in-a-haystack job - yet building maple acoustic guitars in really large numbers will require lots of it.

So Steve McMinn of Pacific Rim Tonewoods approached Professor Jim Mattsson at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who is a specialist in tree genetics. Their goal was to find a way to grow trees that will reliably yield figured maple.

The answer they’ve turned to is cloning. Although it sounds like the stuff of sinister science-fiction, plants have been cloned by farmers for the past 10,000 years - all the bananas we eat, for example, are clones, because they have been cultured over generations to contain lots of edible fruit but no seeds.

But, without seeds, how do you get more bananas? At the most basic level, all you need to do is take a cutting from a healthy plant, relocate it to a fertile environment where it can develop roots of its own, and then nurture it to maturity.

Genetically identical to the plant it was taken from, it will likely have the same characteristics as the donor plant, including - in the case of certain maple trees - a predisposition towards figuring.

Page 7 of 9
Page 7 of 9
A growing trade

A growing trade

Just to be clear, this is not the same as genetically modifying plants, which involves directly altering the DNA of an organism in the laboratory. Instead, it’s more like taking a chip off the old block, as Professor Mattsson explains.

"It’s very similar to what your grandmother might do with an African Violet. You cut off the leaves, stick them in moist soil, you wait for a while and it will make roots. It’s a little bit more tricky in maple, though."

"There’s a tremendous amount known about Western Maple - but only how to kill it or get rid of it, because it’s regarded as a weed [by loggers]" - Steve McMinn

Professor Mattsson’s team take cuttings from maple trees known to possess good figuring, and these are carefully grown on under sterile lab conditions. At a certain height, further cuttings are taken from these young plants, from which yet more cloned plants can be grown.

Finally, the cloned saplings are introduced to soil, where they will mature into fully grown trees over a number of years. As they grow, the university team will examine tissue samples from their twigs to determine if the clones are developing figuring like the original donor tree. Along the way, they’ll be gathering scientific insights into why maple has figuring at all.

"We think it is due to defective transport of a plant hormone that is very important for keeping things straight," says Professor Mattsson. "When the cells divide, they should elongate and they should be straight. Here, we have cells that elongate - but they wiggle on the way."

"This is an interesting project, because there’s a tremendous amount known about Western Maple - but only how to kill it or get rid of it, because it’s regarded as a weed [by loggers] who are after alder or douglas fir," adds McMinn, "But we don’t yet know much about how to grow it."

Page 8 of 9
Page 8 of 9
Pioneering project

Pioneering project

But isn’t it a worry that figured maple that’s been cloned will all look the same? Professor Mattsson argues that, due to environmental factors, each cloned tree will each grow in a different way and produce quite different types of figuring - or even none at all.

"It’s not a given that if Steve finds a tree and we bring it to the lab, we clone it, put it in a nice field, that it will produce the same phenotype [figuring]," he says. Bob Taylor continues:

"The end goal is your kids, or maybe your grandkids, will be living in a world where more people play maple guitars" - Bob Taylor

"What we’re trying to do is get more trees that have figure. But there’s going to be variation because one of them is going to be blown in the wind and one of them is going to be behind the one that’s blowing in the wind, one of them is going to get more sun while another will be in the shade, and so on. Also, we might end up with 20 different ‘mother’ trees, so you would have a lot of variation."

Although the project is in its infancy, everyone involved hopes it will one day provide a lifeline of sustainable, figured tonewood that will relieve pressure on tropical forests decimated by uncontrolled logging.

To get even this far has required a fresh look at guitar design, pioneering science, extensive teamwork between companies and acceptance that achieving a sea-change in players’ use of maple guitars might take decades, with no absolute guarantee of success. All the same, Bob Taylor thinks it’s worth shooting for.

"The end goal is your kids, or maybe your grandkids, will be living in a world where more people play maple guitars.

"They like them, they’re used to them, they like the sound of them - and the whole industry has developed, from the laboratory to the sawmill, to the musician, to the factory, to the marketing - the whole thing - to where the world doesn’t even think twice about it. Because they just buy a maple guitar."

Page 9 of 9
Page 9 of 9
Jamie Dickson
Jamie Dickson
Social Links Navigation

Jamie Dickson is Editor-in-Chief of Guitarist magazine, Britain's best-selling and longest-running monthly for guitar players. He started his career at the Daily Telegraph in London, where his first assignment was interviewing blue-eyed soul legend Robert Palmer, going on to become a full-time author on music, writing for benchmark references such as 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and Dorling Kindersley's How To Play Guitar Step By Step. He joined Guitarist in 2011 and since then it has been his privilege to interview everyone from B.B. King to St. Vincent for Guitarist's readers, while sharing insights into scores of historic guitars, from Rory Gallagher's '61 Strat to the first Martin D-28 ever made.

The magazine for serious players image
The magazine for serious players
Subscribe and save today!
More Info
Read more
Powers Electric Guitars
“We were forcing some of these ideas into the wrong context”: Andy Powers on how the difficulties of designing a new Taylor electric led to the launch of Powers Electric
Fender's executive vice president of product Justin Norvell
“If this guitar had come out of one of our other facilities saying Fender no one would be having this conversation”: Fender’s Justin Norvell on the $599 Standard Series, how it was made, and why it is not a Squier with a different decal on the headstock
Jackson Pro Series Lee Malia LM-87: The Bring Me The Horizon guitarist's new signature model is inspired by the Surfcaster and debuts a hunbucker/P-90 combo.
“I feel like that song had everything we needed to come back with”: Bring Me The Horizon’s Lee Malia on Shadow Moses, its riff and the secrets behind its tone, and why it was the right anthem at the right time
Michael Thompson
“All Strats aren't equal… Then it’s how you smack it, or zing it or strum it… A lot of it is that too”: Session guitar legend Michael Thompson reveals how he created the famous clean tone that’s on countless '80s and '90s hits
Margo Price with her signature Gibson J-45, which refinishes the classic workhorse dreadnought with a double pickguard, and has a slightly shallower body depth.
“It embodies the spirit, vision, and talent that has driven Margo to stardom and continues the nature-themed model tradition of Gibson”: Country star Margo Price and the Gibson Custom Shop team up for stunning double-guard J-45 acoustic
Jackson Pro Series Lee Malia LM-87: The Bring Me The Horizon guitarist's new signature model is inspired by the Surfcaster and debuts a hunbucker/P-90 combo.
“I like guitars that don’t just appeal to metal players”: Jackson and Bring Me The Horizon’s Lee Malia team up for the Pro Series LM-87, a shreddable Surfcaster-style electric with a humbucker/P-90 pairing
Latest in Guitars
Scott Ian of Anthrax introduces his new X Series signature King V in black with gold hardware, and the original Jackson logo on the headstock.
“The old-school Jackson logo, that’s pretty much the pièce de résistance! And it plays even better than it looks”: Jackson gives its metal thrashing X Series Scott Ian King V a super-classy makeover
Epiphone DG-335
The Epiphone Dave Grohl DG-335 has just seen its biggest ever discount - this is a call to save a whopping £380 at Andertons
Brad Paisley wears a white cowboy hat, burgundy jacket black jeans and cowboy boots as he sits with his new Fender Lost Telecaster from the Custom Shop.
“I like the real thing that happens when you dig in a little bit and the amp starts to cry for mercy”: Is the compressor pedal a country guitar essential? Brad Paisley doesn’t think so – and here’s why
Status Quo Performing in Hyde Park, 2001
“We used to work with Fleetwood Mac a lot on the uni circuit. You could sit down beside the stage and they’d start playing - der-der, der-der - for an hour and a half. We wanted to do that”: Francis Rossi on how Status Quo developed their 12 bar boogie
Lee Ranaldo plays his Thinline Telecaster Deluxe as Sonic Youth perform at the Forum, London, in 1996. Steve Shelley, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore are is pictured in the background.
“This is another item that people kill for. This is the sound of Diamond Sea… This is such a preposterously cool item”: Sonic Youth are selling some super rare gear on Reverb – including Lee Ranaldo’s first electric guitar and a holy grail Ludwig Phase II
Tommy Emmanuel
“It’s really weird: 400 students asking questions, and I’m the only person there - and I’m the instructor - who can’t read music”: Acoustic guitar hero Tommy Emmanuel plays The Beatles and Oasis as he discusses the glaring gap in his musical knowledge
Latest in News
Peter Gabriel and Ray Hammond
“It’s cheating, if you like, for somebody who can’t play an instrument to press a button and then the instrument plays”: Watch Peter Gabriel and futurist Ray Hammond debate the impact of the synthesizer back in 1983
Irvine Welsh
“In uncertain times, dominated by the ascendancy of soul-dead oligarchs, their corrosive technology and looting economics, the great positive constant for humanity remains our infinite capacity for love.”: Irvine Welsh is releasing a disco album
SoundCloud fan-powered royalties
“It looks like the allure of a trove of training data is just too great to be turned down in the age of generative AI": SoundCloud denies that it uses your music to train AI
Scott Ian of Anthrax introduces his new X Series signature King V in black with gold hardware, and the original Jackson logo on the headstock.
“The old-school Jackson logo, that’s pretty much the pièce de résistance! And it plays even better than it looks”: Jackson gives its metal thrashing X Series Scott Ian King V a super-classy makeover
Deadmau5 and James Hype
“Next time don’t bring a wet sponge to a tech fight”: deadmau5 just beat down DJ James Hype by beating Elden Ring with a Pioneer CDJ-3000
Neil Young at Farm Aid 2024
."We're fighting for our lives": Neil Young and John Mellencamp confirmed for Farm Aid 2025

MusicRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait...