The source of Ibanez tone woods during the golden era

[Shane P]

 Jeff;
I was hoping you could shed some light on something I have never got a definitive answer on.
Where did Ibanez source there tone woods from during the seventies and early eighties.I have seen some absolutley killer flame maple tops from this era and the quality of the woods used seems very high.I have heard mention that the phillipines was used as a source for some of the mahogany but have never had this confirmed.

Also I was wondering if you could tell me what wood was used on the bodies of the silver series Fender replicas
of the late seventies, and if they used different pickups to the more common type reps.
Thanx in advance.

[Jeff Hasselberger (Jhasse]

 Shane-
Like most businesses, the wood business is pretty much an open market. Ibanez (or Gibson, or Martin  for that matter) doesn't own forests of maple and ash and spruce. Guitar makers buy from big suppliers, small suppliers and specialists in certain varieties.  

Without getting into a macroeconomic discussion of harvested resources, there's every chance that the flame top on an Ibanez came from the same region as the flame top on a Gibson. Or maybe not. The issues are price and current availability.

Maple is a pretty common hardwood. Any kind of figured maple is less common, but not rare. So between the sawmill and the wholesaler and wood dealer, some human sorts the wood into types and grades and then the buyer from the factory browses the offerings and makes a deal. This often includes bargaining for a bunch of the figured stuff at a discount when buying enough of the run-of-the-mill stuff. It's kind of like squeezing melons at the grocery store (but not the cashier's).

Being made in Japan, Ibanez has had access to a lot of Asian woods at pretty good prices. I recall that we could source a lot of nice looking ash (that the japanese called Sen). It was a favorite of ours for middle and upper priced guitars with natural finishes.

We probably used Phillipine mahogany, as well as mahogany from other parts of Asia. I think our standard was the quality of the wood rather than the source.

Regarding the Silver Series, I'd have to have my memory jogged with a photo to make a call on the wood. As for the pickups, we were in an ongoing pickup improvement program for as long as I was at Ibanez. We made a lot of single coil changes and it's my opinion that the later models were almost always better than what they replaced. The differences were subtle, but detectable.

I don't know if this sheds light or another shadow, but there you go.

Jeff

[Mark Munchenberg (Munch)]

 Guys,

I have read a 1981 Guitar Player magazine feature on the Japanese industry. It stated that up to 90% of  available stocks of certain timbers held in the USA were bought up by Japanese manufacturers.
The article sounded a bit sour grapes about it.

Cheers,

Mark

[Doc (Doc)]

 My '78 Silver Series branded Challenger strat (we finally figured this is what it is, maybe Jeff knows something about the process that produced this anomaly) is blonde ash, I think it's mountain or "white" ash (to us Aussies) and has a rock maple skunk stripe neck.

It's the equal of any Fender and better than a lot of others I've come across, wood wise.

(and playability, tone, sound as well B)