Something on guitar making

A few years back, my good friend, Richard attended Jeffrey Yong's guitar making class to make his own electric guitar. Being a sawmiller then, as well as a timber grader, he chose his own wood for the guitar. Soon after, luthier Jeffrey Yong was featured in On Track (TV3) and he actually showed Richard's guitar as an example and even quoted that it is probably worth USD5,000!

It is quite surprising to read about David Chin's problem in trying to buy a suitable Sabah wood for making fellow Sabahan, Roger Wang's acoustic guitar! It was a setback for an original idea of a Sabahan luthier using Sabah wood to make a guitar for a Sabahan guitarist. Surely, certain of our relevant ministries are unaware of this problem. They could have capitalized on it!

Excerpts:

“I met Roger Wang in April 2010,” said David. I was in KK and I wanted to meet him because he’s our Sabahan guitarist. So I came to RAM to buy some of his cds, and he happened to have a luthier there as well, his friend Yap. We all talked shop and I really enjoyed that first meeting.
“Just as I left, I said, ‘Roger, you should play a guitar made with Sabah woods, made by a Sabahan luthier. That has a lot of meaning!’ After I left the meeting I went and started looking for woods.”
David’s imagination was fired up! “Of course, it was a sentimental idea! We supply woods to the world, why can’t we make guitars out of Sabah woods? We have Ebony — here it is called Kayu Malam – they use it for furniture. One piece could make so many guitars!
“A guitar made of Sabah woods would have a different sound for sure. It would be unique!” David pointed to one of Roger’s guitars. “That Maton over there has a Bunya top, it’s Australian wood. The sound is very nice, different from something that comes out of America. It’s an Australian sound. I think we could have a Sabah sound! Nangka [Jackfruit] tree wood is used around Asia as a sound board wood. We could use that. Red Suriah sounds like mahogany, it’s very resonant. There’s a lot of potential to do things with Sabah woods!”
Sadly, the wood suppliers were not interested in David’s project. “My first problem was I couldn’t get the wood for making the guitar.” David said the suppliers in KK were not interested in selling him the small quantities he needed. “They wanted large volume exports. One big timber merchant had Ebony, but the sales girl said it was not for sale, even though I only needed a little bit and for such a worthy project.”

Hand over of a labour of love:

More where this came from:

http://sabahsongs.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/roger-wangs-custom-made-crossover-nylon-guitar-made-by-sabahan-luthier-david-chin/

Roger Wang testing his new guitar on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0d60gOKLyo


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