Ebony or Rosewood? Guild D-40 or Guild D-50?

I've said over and over, that every aspect of our life is influenced by plants. Music is a great example of how plant anatomy influences our lives.

I've been the proud owner of a Guild D-50 acoustic guitar since 1983. Before I purchased this beauty, I spent days, together with my friend Mo, frequenting the music stores of mid-town Manhattan and trying every guitar possible. We kept coming back to two Guild models: the D-40 and the D-50.

The ebony fret-board on my guitar

One of the main differences between these two great guitars is the wood used to make the fret-board: The D-40 boasts a fret-board made from rosewood, while the D-50's is made from ebony. In the end we both opted for the latter.

Ebony cost roughly 10 times more than rosewood, so what characteristics does it have that made us forkout the extra funds for these guitars?

Ebony has a very has a fine grain and is much harder than rosewood. This difference in density is felt in the fingertips which feel as if they move faster between fingerings. Aside from the feel, ebony boards impart the guitar with a unique sound which the trained ear can pick up. It enables great sustain, and a crisp sound with percussive overtones. But I wouldn't recommend an ebony fret-board for a novice guitarist; rosewood is much more forgiving.

Rosewood boards also gives a richer, warm sound. This is partly because of the anatomy of the wood. Rosewood has larger pores than ebony, and these microscopic pores absorb overtones.

This is just one example of how wood, which basically old, dead and filled xylem tubes, the tubes that trees use to transport water, influences music.

Biggest thing alive

Sequoiadendron giganteum
(Giant sequoia)

The giant sequoia is the largest single organism in the world. While colonies of coral or stands of Aspen trees (that have a common root system) could be considered larger, no singular organism bests the might sequoia. The largest sequia on record was longer than a football field (almost 311 feet), and was over 56 feet in diameter. The bark surrounding a giant sequoia can be up to 3 feet thick.  For such a huge tree, its roots are surprisingly shallow, boring down only about 13 feet into the ground. But they do spread out wide: roots from on tree can fill an acre of land. These roots have to suck up huge amounts of water as sequoia trees transpire (a tree version of sweating) over 500 gallons of water a day.

The tree of God's House

Cedar in Barouk Lebanon. source

This tall and strong conifer is the the national emblem of Lebanon and found throughout the mountains of Lebanon and northern Israel. The`cedar is mentioned through out the bible, such as in Psalm 92:12 - The righteous ... shall grow mighty like the cedar of Lebanon. King Solomon was so impressed with the beauty and strength of cedar wood that he imported huge amounts of cedars from the Phoenicians in Tyre to build the First Temple.

The wood in a tree trunk is actually old water vessels called xylem. Each year a tree makes new xylem tubes on the perimeter of the trunk, while the old ones are plugged up and serve to support the tree.