This agreement is most likely one of those legal shams that was run through and an agreement reached so that they didn't have to fight it out in court and waste millions of dollars on both sides. The government gets to walk away without admitting any errors. Here's a 30 minute video by the company over a year ago. This has been ongoing for some political agenda and to me doesn't appear to have a thing to do with environment as usual. Gibson Guitar Corp. Responds to Federal Raid Department of Justice of the United States government are bluntly informing Gibson Guitar that they’d be better off shipping their manufacturing labor overseas to Madagascar Ironically, Gibson's first encounter with federal agents back in 2009 specifically involved rare wood imported from Madagascar, none of which was actually confirmed illegal. A ruling was also never made in that case, and Gibson was never convicted of committing any crime. And now officials are instructing the company to move its workforce to the very same country that is an unexplained problem for the US government. There have been so many interesting takes on this. Ultimately the government looks more and more like an idiot in this case. http://landmarkreport.com/andrew/2011/08/ceo-of-gibson-guitar-a-republican-donor/ On another note, other compertitors do the same. Martin Guitars & Choosing Wood http://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/choosing/woods.php?b=a Unbelievable. What side can you believe anymore ? Watching the News from over here about the politicing going on back and forth for this latest election makes me glad I'm far removed from it and not participating. YAWN!!! --
Agree!!! Why persue trivia when things like Schooling, Jobs, Medical availability, Housing, etc. are far more important areas to spend money on. barb
I find it all annoying because there's no real need to use exotic woods to make a guitar other than to give it cache. My . acoustic is made of basswood! And it sounds superb! In fact you dont even need to use wood at all! A company called RainSong uses carbon fiber in all their acoustics and got rave reviews.
