The Model RS4 – Woods


Many luthiers – Both large and small - throw around phrases like “We use only the best woods”, and unfortunately this phrase has become meaningless. We say this because the vast majority of builders are actually pretty far removed from the actual selection of individual pieces of wood. Today, wood is often brokered over the phone like a commodity sight un-seen: “Send me 5,000 sets in the next shipment.”


The Larrivee family has always had a different view, and it’s really, really, simple:


Go look at the wood.


Go see it. Feel it. Smell it. Share a room with the guy that cuts it if necessary. We do everything in our power to go right to the source and inspect every single piece. Whether this means walking log booms in the Queen Charlotte islands in British Columbia in search of the perfect spruce, being soaked by the monsoons in Cochin India to inspect the next batch of fretboards, or flipping through 200lb boards of South American Mahogany in Belize, you can be guaranteed that we use only the “Best Quality Woods”.

 

 

 

 

 

Mahogany

The Core Body and Neck of each Model RS4 are crafted from “Genuine Mahogany” (also known as Sweitania Macrophylia, or South American Mahogany). Both the body and neck


are cut from Flat-Cut boards. We use the lightest weight mahogany available for the RS4; we use larger quantities of mahogany for our acoustics where weight is not as an important an issue so we remove the wood weighing the least from those shipments and save it for the electrics. While we are not part of the official Chain of Custody, we do our best to purchase FSC (Forest Stewardship Council ) certified wood whenever possible. 

 

 

 


Rosewood

When designing this instrument we were faces with four choices of wood for the fretboard: Brazlian Rosewood, Madagascar Rosewood, Indian Ebony, or Indian Rosewood. Each wood has many benefits, and disadvantages. Tonally Brazllian Rosewood is the best, but is almost impossible to transport due to CITIES restrictions. Madagascar Rosewood is the most beautiful option but is unfortunately prone to cracking and glue adhesion problems. Ebony is ideal from a production stand point because it is

what we use for Acoustics, however it is viewed as tonally inferior to rosewood. Indian Rosewood turned out to be the best option for us: It’s a plentiful wood, available in very high quality, there are plenty of cut offs available from the production of Acoustic Guitar Back & Sides (Less waste, which is obviously better for the environment), it has an excellent tonal reputation and relatively easy to work with. The rosewood we use on our fretboards was hand selected by Mr. Larrivee on one of his trips to India. He will literally go through 4000 fretboards to find 60-70 that are perfect for our guitars.

 


 

 

 

Flamed (Figured) Maple

A standard dual humbucker guitar has a flamed maple cap that ranges from 1/4” or 0.25” up to 5/8” or 0.625”. The thicker maple is use to produce a “carve top” while the thinner materials drop tops are used for flat top instruments. Manufacturers want to use the least amount of maple possible because high quality figured maple is very expensive (Go ahead and check, you’ll see they sell for 2-400 a piece). We feel that maple is one of the core areas of the guitar where the *prime* tone is produced and in designing the

guitar we also wanted to use a more pronounced surface on the top than other were doing; ergo we opted for the industries thickest maple top which at it’s peak reaches 3/4” or 0.75”. Because of this size we have to custom cut the maple ourselves in Chilliwack British Columbia, then have it sent to us in California for drying and production. These tops allow us to push the tonal boundaries of this guitar to the edge, and obtain the industries most elegant carve top with graceful flowing curves.

 

 

 

 

 

  
 

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