Myrtle Wood

Good one, Jmslaw.

I was a little surprised by the myrtle wood thing too, but I give Cardas the benefit of the doubt because I assume it is being sourced from "scavenged" trees, i.e, dead or blowdowns or whatever. Don't automatically assume he's out in the woods with a chainsaw late at night; at least ask him before concluding that.

Jmslaw, only if they were inhumanely clubbed to death, and use dried blood as the dielectric.

As I mentioned above, I am a guitar maker, and deal with rare and endangered woods all the time. These woods that are on the CITES list are all regulated. Any of this wood imported must be certified "pre-ban" or certified as harvested from trees that have fallen naturally. There is very tight regulation on this matter, and use of these woods is no longer contributing to the deforestation and extinction process. The regulation is about as tight as elephant ivory, so it is pretty tight. The prices have increased commensurately with the reduced availability. It is not unusual to pay as much as $5000 for enough premium Brazilian Rosewood to make the back and sides of an acoustic guitar. That is just the raw material cost. I also sometimes use elephant ivory for bridges and nuts, and these all come with a sealed certification of its legal pre-ban origin, and the papers must accompany the new guitar when sold, and even during the future owners' possession. No more elephants are being slaughtered for this ivory that is certified. However, there are still poachers and black marketeers that are unscrupulous criminals who engage in this illegal trade. They are strongly punished when caught engaging in this activity, whether it is Brazilian Rosewood or Elephant Ivory. Any manufacturer who is using these products, and is following the regulations, is not contributing to the demise of these species. In fact, they pay high prices to ensure compliance with these regulations, and to ensure that they are not doing harm to the environment.

Twl,
According to your discussion, it seems that the use of such a hard wood would be transmitting vibrations to the preamp (in my case a Krell KRC-HR), and in most cases that seems foolish.

I haven't yet heard the SONIC result of the use of this wood, as originally asked.

Richard

Yes, or it could be helping to transmit vibrations away from it. It all depends upon the integrity and design of the load path for the vibrations to follow. The materials need to be selected properly to work with whatever design you are implementing. Just putting a piece of wood under a product, with no goals in mind, is simply haphazard.

I suggest a total thought process of what type of vibration control system you intend to create, and select materials that would be appropriate for that design.

There are 2 predominant schools of thought on that issue. Coupling or isolation. I use the coupling methods in all parts of my system. When you couple, you provide a load path for the unwanted vibration to drain away toward mechanical ground. When you isolate, you prevent airborne vibration from exiting to mechanical ground, because you interrupt the load path in an attempt to stop vibrations from coming up from the floor. In a well-designed isolation system, all vibrations are damped in the materials. If there is any overload of vibration that cannot be dissipated, or if the design is poor, they are reflected back into the equipment, and reflected, and reflected because they cannot exit. Absorbing all vibration from the floor and the sonic sound waves in a room full of high SPL audio is a tall order for any material.

The usual result of a highly damped isolation system is a dead sound. A well designed coupling system has alot more life in the music. I suppose it depends on individual taste, as to what is desired.

Regarding your question about how Myrtle will sound under your preamp, nobody can tell you that. It is entirely dependent upon the resonant characteristics of your preamp, and anything that is involved in the rack/stand you are using, and how they interact with the chunk of myrtle wood that you put there. It's simply try and see.