New Cities regulations

taabru45

Enlightened Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2008
Messages
9,944
Reaction score
0
Location
Surrey, B.C.
Has anyone bought or sold a guitar cross border Canada/USA since the new cities regulations came in? It seems pretty draconian.
 

taabru45

Enlightened Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2008
Messages
9,944
Reaction score
0
Location
Surrey, B.C.
I feel I like a kid with his hands on the candy store window...but it's closed. Not fun to see some great deals and....not even be able to consider it...and then when I'm ready to sell my 80 F512....well ....sorry guys...just nuts.
 

txbumper57

Enlightened Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2014
Messages
7,577
Reaction score
58
Location
Texas
I inquired with a Canadian Guitar Shop about purchasing a GSR X500 that they still have new in the store and shipping it to Texas. They told me that it would take 30-60 days with no guarantee on the time period to get the proper permits to ship it to the states and would go through the process if need be but they would rather sell just to Canada so they don't have to mess with it. I would have to pay in full for them to start the permit process. Unfortunately I didn't want to have that kind of money tied up for that long just in case something went wrong and the permit process wound up taking 6 months.

TX
 

GAD

Reverential Morlock
Über-Morlock
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
22,582
Reaction score
17,798
Location
NJ (The nice part)
Guild Total
112
Yeah, I've had similar experience to what TX describes, though for the most part I just get "won't ship to US".
 

Neal

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2013
Messages
4,856
Reaction score
1,627
Location
Charlottesville, VA
Well, here in the US, the pickings are plentiful.

I just had an acre of rosewood (2005 F-50R) shipped all the way across CONUS, with no hassles, no restrictions, no paperwork, nada.

But if I lived in Niagara Falls, USA, and wanted to ship a guitar with rosewood bridge pins to Montreal, I'd have to jump trough all kinds of Fish and Wildlife hoops.

Whatever happened to NAFTA? Why does it not apply to this situation?

I get the fact that there are some shady dealers in tonewoods, and that forests are being harvested at unsustainable rates. But why not concentrate on the front end of the process (the forests), and not the back end (used guitar shipping)?
 

Quantum Strummer

Senior Member
Joined
May 26, 2015
Messages
2,382
Reaction score
118
Location
Michigan
I think the overall intent is simply to discourage the use (and thus reduce the illegal harvesting) of rosewood. Guitars are kind of an accidental victim of this, but the rosewood situation is bad enough that subtlety in the rules is gone.

On the other side of the coin, maple is plentiful. Lotsa stuff made from rosewood can instead be made from roasted maple. And there are other rosewood-like woods that can sub for it in many if not most applications. If we're smart enough about doing this the current rules could ease up sooner rather than later. Take cod fish: near bans on cod fishing in the '80s and '90s that were seen as draconian at the time have paid off, in some regions at least, in recovered fish stocks and smarter harvesting.

-Dave-
 

JohnW63

Enlightened Member
Joined
Dec 11, 2012
Messages
6,293
Reaction score
2,216
Location
Southern California
Guild Total
4
To be honest, I never got into the Brazilian rosewood church of tone. I suspect, I don't have the skill to pull the angels singing sound out of one rosewood vs another. Heck, I play Ovations and like what I can do with them, and that's about as far from rosewood as you can get !

However, if someone wanted me to ship my Ovations out of country, that would be annoying. Ebony fretboard on one and Rosewood on the other.

I am really interested in just how good alternative woods can sound. I wanted to try some of the Pono guitars, since they use lots of off the beaten path stuff. I would like to play one of the Taylor Maple back and sides guitars too. If it sounds awesome, I really don't care what it is made of.
 

GAD

Reverential Morlock
Über-Morlock
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
22,582
Reaction score
17,798
Location
NJ (The nice part)
Guild Total
112
I like braz because it's pretty. I wouldn't pay the prices some are asking for it, but damn is it ever pretty.
 

adorshki

Reverential Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2009
Messages
34,176
Reaction score
6,790
Location
Sillycon Valley CA
Whatever happened to NAFTA? Why does it not apply to this situation?
Because it's a trade agreement to facilitate movement of products between a specific group of countries by reducing customs restrictions.
It has nothing to do with protecting endangered species.
CITES sole purpose is to protect endangered species and has nothing to do with facilitating trade.
I get the fact that there are some shady dealers in tonewoods, and that forests are being harvested at unsustainable rates. But why not concentrate on the front end of the process (the forests), and not the back end (used guitar shipping)?

They are addressing the "front end" but it's a lot harder to wipe out illegal harvesting especially in places where corruption is rampant (Paying off government officials to look the other way) and plain old smuggling in places where that's not so easily done.
Most countries are set up to watch stuff coming in, not going out, so the easiest place to remove the commercial profit motive driving the illegal trade in the first place is in the customs inspection offices of the member nations.
CITES is an international treaty between about 90% plus of the world's nations and they agree to mutually enforce each other's individual restrictions as well as any universal CITES rules.
Since most stuff has to stop at a port of entry to be inspected, that creates a lot more reliable control checkpoint than trying to wage a control war over vast expanses of undeveloped forest.
As an aside a member who wanted to come to the US to buy a guitar and take it back to Europe recently told me he was advised that he could travel with up to 20lbs of rosewood for private non-commercial purposes without penalty or restriction.
Seems directly targeted at that need to allow individuals to move freely with personal instruments or other chattel property.
I had no reason to doubt his input, in fact it seemed very sensible and a way to prevent overload in airport customs inspection areas.
The reason the paperwork is needed in international shipping sales must be that there is definitely a commercial aspect to the transaction and that the sellers are normally engaged in multiple sales over the course of a year.
There's a license available for that specific purpose for those who want to make the investment.
Furniture is actually a bigger percentage of trade than instruments are, and it's been re-iterated many times here that individual instruments aren't a target but need to be addressed to prevent unscrupulous types from trying to use 'em as a loophole.
Example:
"This container contains 200 guitars containing rosewood" when in fact it contains 400 lbs of raw rosewood which otherwise wouldn't clear customs.
 

adorshki

Reverential Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2009
Messages
34,176
Reaction score
6,790
Location
Sillycon Valley CA
I think the overall intent is simply to discourage the use (and thus reduce the illegal harvesting) of rosewood. Guitars are kind of an accidental victim of this, but the rosewood situation is bad enough that subtlety in the rules is gone.
The problem was that choking off supply of one type just created more demand on others.
The concensus at treaty update time was that it just didnt make sense to keep adding one or species at a time adn always be ebhind the curve anyway.
So they just blanket listed all species of rosewood and added a few new ones as well in the Mahogany and Ebony families.

On the other side of the coin, maple is plentiful. Lotsa stuff made from rosewood can instead be made from roasted maple. And there are other rosewood-like woods that can sub for it in many if not most applications. If we're smart enough about doing this the current rules could ease up sooner rather than later.
I doubt that'll happen in our lifetimes.

Take cod fish: near bans on cod fishing in the '80s and '90s that were seen as draconian at the time have paid off, in some regions at least, in recovered fish stocks and smarter harvesting.
I get the analogy but it was based on different "rules" that could be much more easily lifted or imposed., in an environment where the harvesting itself was more easily regulated.
 
Top