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Wednesday September 24th, 2003

Gibson USA leads musical instrument industry in use of SmartWood, nears goal of 100% certified wood use

Daniel Katz, Co-Founder of the Rainforest Alliance, Tensie Whelan, executive director, and Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson chairman and CEO

Gibson USA, the first division of Gibson Guitar Corp. to offer a guitar with 100 percent certified wood, is now more than halfway to its goal of using certified, eco-friendly wood in all of its guitars. Within the next two months, 80-90 percent of Gibson's regular production electric guitars will contain mostly SmartWood-certified wood. SmartWood is one of the certifiers endorsed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Rainforest Alliance.

Currently, all of the plain maple, ash and poplar wood used by Gibson is certified. Maple is used for the top cap of the Les Paul Standard - Gibson's most famous model. The Les Paul SmartWood Studio, represents a continuing commitment to environmental protection. The guitar is a full-size Les Paul with a carved muiracatiara (muir) top, mahogany back and a fingerboard made of the species preciosa (prec). The woods used in the creation of the SmartWood Studio are harvested from well-managed, renewable forests.

"Some instrument manufacturers have certified instruments such as guitars and mandolins but they don't tell people, because people will think it sounds different; they don't sound different, because it's the same quality of wood and craftsmanship," said Tensie Whelan, executive director of the Rainforest Alliance, on a tour of Gibson's Nashville plants on Sept. 12. "It's great to have Gibson leading the way."

"Our SmartWood Les Paul made a big splash with a beautiful guitar of exotic wood, and it raised awareness of our environmental responsibilities," says Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson chairman and CEO. "The challenge now is to let guitar players know that certified wood is the right choice for all guitars - that it's not just exotic substitutes for traditional guitar woods. It's mahogany and maple and all the woods that guitar buyers expect to see in a fine guitar."

Gibson first introduced an environmentally-friendly guitar back in 1996 - the Les Paul SmartWood Standard - making it the first guitar company to craft a production model made of certified wood. It had a carved maple top, mahogany back and chechen fingerboard. In 1998 the Les Paul Exotics were introduced, modeled on a thinner-bodied Les Paul from the late 1970s (called The Paul). Created from tropical woods harvested from Paraguay, the carved tops were offered in six beautiful and distinctive woods: curupay, taperyva, cancharana, peroba, banara and ambay guasa.

The backs were certified mahogany, while the fingerboards were crafted of curupay. The guitars had a UV-cured matte finish which augmented the natural beauty of the wood.

To maintain their certified status, companies like Gibson are audited on an annual basis by an FSC certifier (in this case SmartWood) to ensure that certified wood with the FSC stamp is kept separate from non-certified wood and procedures are being followed, so that the consumer can be completely confident that the product they're purchasing has been built with certified wood.