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Filipino Guitar 0708

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 11 months ago

Philippine Guitars

By Benjamin Chanco

Description and Rationale
Biology
Potential Solutions
Bibliography

Description and Rationale

Philippine Guitars – The most economic way to make guitars.

Cebu and Pampanga are world renown for making amazing hand crafted guitars. Since the 1950s the Lumanog guitars from Pampanga have been making guitars. How ever people who buy guitars are unwilling to pay a high price for a quality guitar so though they do make some descent guitars, few people buy them. In their guitar construction plywood is used because it is cheap and people who don’t know any better will think it sounds fine however they have a very grungy sound.

Is there a cheep plentiful supply of wood that local guitar makers can use that will sound good? Tangili is one of the Philippines most common type of wood, it is a form of mahogany. Mahogany wood, when used in construction of guitars give off a soft mellow and warm tone. The popular Gibson Less Paul is made out of mahogany. This would also reduce the use of glue on the guitars because they wouldn’t be using ply wood. And ply wood is multiple sheets of wood glued together. But by using strait wood they cut down the use of other resources such as glue, gas, and heavy machinery.

The purpose of this project is to discover if there is a more economic way of making guitars and making them sound better. I will do most of my research by talking to various guitar venders who are dealing with Pampanga made guitars, and possibly going up to Pampanga to talk with bigger guitar dealers.

It is hoped that tangili will be a cheaper, better sounding, longer lasting and a more economic way to produce quality guitars. This could quite possibly provide a better economic solution.

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Biology

Common Names and Synonyms

Tangile is also known as Shorea polysperma. Tangile is from the Philippines so tangile is its common name. Americans know this wood as Philippine Mahogany. The Germans know it as rotes lauan.

Classification

Kingdom: Plantae

Phylum: Tracheophyta - higher plants

Class: Magnoliopsida - flowering plants

Order: Clusiales – none found

Family: Dipterocarpaceae – two winged plant

Genus: Shorea - Named after Sir John Shore

Spices: Polysperma

There are over 100 different species of Dipterocarpaceae, mostly found in Asian countries. Even though tangile is in the Dipterocarpaceae family it really isn’t a true mahogany. Also one cannot refer to tangile as mahogany because it is not a mahogany, but one may refer to it as Philippine Mahogany. One cannot just call it just mahogany, one must tag Philippine on to it to make it politically correct.

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Morphology and Physical Description

Tangile is a hardwood that resembles mahogany; however, it is not a real mahogany. Like most plants in the Philippines it was just stuck in a random place in classification. Much like the local santan plant witch is placed under the category of Cinchonoidea a sub-family of coffee based on its morphology. Santan is facing extinction because of this, which is a bad thing because resent studies have shown that santan could be the cure to cancer and other horrible viruses.

Tangile unlike mahogany it is more prone to warp, and it is grainier. Tangile is more like cedar. The wood itself is a red color. This dicot grows in the Philippines massive rain forests. It grows to be about 50m tall. The tangile trees roots don’t go incredibly deep in to the earth due to the fact that in a rain forest only the thin layer of topsoil is filled with nurturance.

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Getting Food

Like most plant/trees, the Tangile gets its energy through photosynthesis, thus making it an autotrough, this means it can make its own food. This prose is called photosynthesis; photosynthesis is the act of converting light energy into energy.

Reproduction

Tangile has flowers on it; it does not have any fruits. It is just a flower; it depends on butterflies and other such pests to pollinate it. Then when the flowers are fully pollinated they turn into little seeds

Environmental Factors

Tangile is one of many species of trees that live in the Philippine rain forests. It grows on ground as lows as sea level to 500m. As most trees it is susceptible to anay (termites) and other such carnivorous pests. It has to compete with other jungle trees such as, luna and nara. It is home to many local animals, including the endangered the golden-capped fruit bat, and monkeys. These animals depend on these trees to survive. Unfortunately the over logging of the Philippines is quickly destroying the animals already endangered homes.

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Origin and Distribution

Philippine mahogany, as its name implies it is native to the Philippines. This tree can only be found in the Philippine archipelago. So the origins of this tree cannot be traced. Once it had a small population of trees, now it is one of the most common types of wood in the Philippines. It has a few distant cousins in other South East Asian countries.

Importance to People

When carpenters and wood workers hear the name Tangile, or Philippine mahogany, they automatically think plywood because that is how the tree is most imported. It is also a basic wood export of the Philippines. One can order this styled of plywood of the Internet.

In addition to plywood, it is also used as a hardwood for light construction. It is most commonly used in doors, furniture, and other woodcrafts. It is also used in boat building.

Native Filipinos made Tangile into canoes. In the 1700s it was thought a rare wood and furniture made from Tangile was incredibly expensive. In World War I they used Tangile for propellers because it was very strong.

Survivability and Endangered Status

Since 1960’s tropical rain forest in the Philippines has declined from 21 percent to around 2 percent. Because of the mindless logging, Tangile has become a rare wood; however, it is still the most common. In response to the clear cutting and its effects on the community President Arroyo banned logging in the Philippines in 2004. However this has not stopped people from illegally cutting down trees. She also tried to have the logging companies reforest whatever they cut down but few logging companies complied. The Government has also tried to plant new groves of trees, but they cannot match the numbers that have already been cut down.

Also local farmers slash and burn which is a way of farming. The farmers burn the forest then use the scorched earth to farm, because the rain forest had rich top soil, it produces good crops. But when it rains, the water washes away the loose rich topsoil; this is because there are no roots to hold the topsoil in place. Then the farmers are left with hard clay like ground. So they again go into the forest and slash and burn again.

There are several projects that missionaries and other government agencies are trying to impose on the local farmers. This includes the S.A.L.T. method. S.A.L.T. stands for sloping agriculture land technology. This is the act of planting hedge roes of peanut grass and other such plants to hold in the rich topsoil.

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Potential Solutions

Is tangile a better wood to make guitars out of? I really do not know, because so far I have not found a guitar that has been made out of tangile that was not plywood. How ever I have established the fact that hard wood makes better sounding guitars then plywood. Below are two possibilities of what I can do, and there pros and cons.

Possibility 1 - Making A Guitar

Since most guitars found in the stores are not made of tangile, it is almost impossible to test its sound quality. However one option is to make a guitar out of tangile.

Advantages:

1. It would give a clear example of how a tangile hand made guitar would sound.

2. This would show what type tools would be needed to make a guitar.

3. This would show if the tangile wood is truly a more economic way of making guitar.

Disadvantages:

1. This would take a lot of time to make a hand made guitar, time that isn’t available at this current point.

2. The ability to acquire tools to construct a guitar would be a problem.

3. The very skill needed to make a guitar is also absent.

4. There is also the problem of locating all the electronics and metal pieces needed to finish a guitar.

5. The availability of wood is also a problem because all logging in the Philippines has been banned.

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Possibility 2 - Talking To Guitar Store Owners

A much simpler approach would be to go out and talk to a Filipino guitar store worker/owner. I would in form them of my findings and that if they spend more money to stock better guitars, they would make a better profit. I would also discuss the advantages of exporting Philippine made guitars to other countries.

Advantages:

1. This would meet the time specifications.

2. It would inform the Filipinos on the usage of plywood in guitar making.

3. This would give me face to face conversation with the people this project is trying to benefit.

Disadvantages:

1. It would not prove that a guitar made out of tangile would sound better

2. It would also not prove that the guitars made out of hard wood would be better.

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Possible Future Advantages

I went and talked to a man named G.B. who worked at tri-world piano store. Tri-world is one of the only guitar stores that one can find in metro manila that sells Philippine guitars. As it turns out all Philippine guitars do not have truss rods making over seas sails impossible. This is because the neck is prone to warp when shipped over seas and with out a truss rod there is no way to fix this.

I also learned that lanka and spruce were also used to make the guitars. What came as a shock to me was that a majority of the guitars are actually made out of Philippine mahogany. Thus stating that the Filipinos are already utilizing there natural recourses to there advantage.

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