Originally Posted by
jimmuller
...... I do know a bit about the dreadnaughts. The pre-war guitars used Adirondack spruce for the top. It was essentially a local wood source for Martin. In 1945 (I think it was) NY state declared the Adirondack region a park with the designation "Forever wild". That made harvesting timber illegal. With little fanfare Martin looked around for some other wood and settled on Sitka spruce from Alaska. It makes a good guitar but it doesn't ring like Adirondack spruce. Another difference is that Brazillian rosewood is an endangered species. Indian rosewood is good but it sounds different. Limited stocks of both Brazilian and Adirondack wood can be found occasionally, for example from blown-down trees due to storms or hidden away in some storage house. However there is no large supply of either. So the sound of those old guitars is hard to re-create in great numbers.
All true Jim, but I would venture that some of the guitars being made today are the equivalent of any Pre-war issue. (Your Collings is one such example).
Since the late 80's, there has been a second Golden age of Lutherie - with a number of individuals and small shops producing some truly great product: Dana Bourgeois, Bill Collings, James Goodall, and Richard Hoover being among the most well known, but many others (including our own David Newton) are building guitars in the same tradition - and sometimes even with the same methods, as the pre-war greats. This has raised the bar for the big companies too - so Martin, Gibson et al, are turning out terrific new instruments too, which (if we are all around 60 or 70 years from now) we may find will surpass the tonal quality of their 1930's efforts.