~ Flaxwood Guitars (Finland) ~

Possibly the most significant guitar innovation in a generation. The uniformity and stability of graphite, yet with the warm resonance of an (environmentally friendly !) wood-based material.

The culmination of five years of hard product development, the Flaxwood guitar is made in Joensuu,Eastern Finland. The production method of the guitar is a meshing of old-school luthiery with the latest mold-injection technologies (i.e. the same technology that produced the shell of the cellular phone in your pocket). In the process, Flaxwood has created a patented, environmentally-friendly raw material (no rare hardwoods are used) that many thought was impossible: a resonant, warm-sounding raw material that can be created with modern mold-injection technologies, yet produces instruments with great playability, and gorgeous wood-based tone.

THE FLAXWOOD ”TONEWOOD” material:

The material is actually an environmentally-friendly cocktail of fine common spruce pulp and a polymer binding agent, a ”mold-injected spruce” you might say. Wood grain (the ”lines” in wood), which normally forces sound to travel in a biased direction according to the direction of the ”lines”, has been removed from this material, and thus the material resonates uniformly in ALL directions, giving it an even frequency response, and a warm resonant tone. It also contributes to a lack of ”dull spots” on the neck, and gives the guitar great sustain. The material is also hermetically sealed, i.e. humidity does not affect the guitar.

THE CONSTRUCTION:

The feel of the neck is what strikes most first-time users first: a soft, silky smoothness that is great to touch, and even greater for playing. The neck is glued to the body and has a regular truss rod. No separate fretboard is used, and thus no sonic energy is lost in between glued woods. The neck joint is tapered and wonderfully smooth, allowing fluid access to the higher frets.

One more note about the neck: on a Flaxwood guitar you set the neck only once. You can then travel from Arizona, to Rio, to Greenland, winter, spring, summer or fall, and never have to worry about setting the neck.

The architecture of the guitar body is semi-acoustic in type, but the behavior of the guitar is more like that of a solid-body, and feedback is not really a problem. The back of the guitar has a resonator, which makes acoustic playing possible, and also helps open up the sound of the guitar when playing electrically.

Finally, the overall quality of the lutherie is a testimony to master luthier Veijo Rautia’s skill and attention to detail. Veijo’s background is in old school lutherie; in addition to be being the main designer of the guitar, he brings the essential traditional craftsmanship element to the guitar.

THE HARDWARE:

The guitars all carry quality Seymour Duncan pick ups (except for the active pick ups, which are EMG). Machine heads and fixed bridges are Gotoh, and the tremolo is usually a Schaller LP. The compensated nut is Veijo’s design, and is made of a ”secret” NASA material. The tonally compensated nut (again designed by Veijo), works particularly well with the LP tremolo, and the guitar will stay in tune even with considerable ”dive-bombing”.

THE TONE AND PLAYABILITY: Must be tried. Smooth, even, easy to play. Clarity and warmth are the adjectives often used for the tone. Overall, this is a ”different” guitar and won’t win everybody over, but it is not overly ”weird” either. The high-end quality, playability and tone that the Flaxwoods offer seem to be the key elements that get guitarists aroused. Despite the uphill battle we face introducing an, as yet, rather unknown guitar as innovative as this one is into an ultra-conservative guitar world, we are happy to report a demand that, while still small, seems to increase steadily.