More Info Leaks Out About the "Cooked Wood" Guitars

We recently announced our latest project with Charvel - a run of guitars that are being built using wood that, using a proprietary kiln-drying process, has 6% moisture content. To fuel the fire (no pun intended), here are some more details about this amazing "cooked wood":

The wood is cooked in a kiln in its own smoke with steam introduced throughout the process. The resulting moisture content is locked at 6% and should not change over time. This means that the guitars, especially the necks, should be much more resistant to atmospheric and climatic changes; in other words, fewer neck adjustments. We are planning to do cooked maple necks to start with, then branch out into using cooked wood necks with regular wood fingerboards and other such combinations.

How light is the wood? Very light. We don't have a fully built guitar weight yet, but when we were at the factory our "arm scales" told us that the treated body and neck together was comparable in weight to a single untreated maple neck. That's really light, y'all. And the wood is very resonant; tapping the bodies revealed a loud, higher-pitched resonance than what you would get from an untreated body blank. To maximize the resonance of the body, our first guitars will have an oil/wax finish and direct mounted pickups.

There is one other nice attribute the raw cooked wood has that will unfortunately most likely not exist on a finished guitar: it smells like delicious mesquite bar-b-q. Mmmmmm, bar-b-q.

Can you smell what The Music Zoo is cooking?

Hold on to your hats folks, because The Music Zoo has some big announcements to make in 2009. We aren't going to drop all the specifics yet, but one of the things we can't wait to show you are the guitars we are building with Charvel using very special wood that has been "cooked" using a proprietary technique that reduces the moisture content to below 6%. The resulting wood is incredibly light, and extremely resonant; two qualities that when applied to guitars are, you know, really good. We went to Charvel's Custom Shop and oversaw the whole process. Pictured above is the Charvel's legendary "Red" Dave proudly holding one of the first pine bodies and maple necks that we will soon have fully dressed and in our hands. Stay tuned for the tone report...