The tree before the guitar. Quarter-sawing, seasoning, spruce and cedar. Why cypress makes a blanca and rosewood a negra. What a hundred years of playing does to an instrument, and why we do not restore.
Slow growth and the stiffness a soundboard needs. Quarter-sawing and why it matters. Seasoning and the years before the bench. Spruce and cedar, two different promises.
Why cypress makes a blanca and rosewood a negra. Neck, fingerboard and bridge, and the Spanish heel that changes what a repair can be. The wood the law now guards.
What a century of playing does. Cracks, checks and the truth they tell. Why we conserve and do not restore. The instrument as the record of a craft that wrote almost nothing down.