A pair of Custom made Red L-00s that a player brought over for a morning session:
 
   
 
Our guest had never worked with SONAR before. He seemed to like the experience and so we are going to do a short session once a week to see what happens.
 
 
 
 

Sweet! And they sounded?

They sound like guitars made with light weight wood and extra light bracing.
 
:-)

Nice! The back of the first one is quilted maple though. It's harder to find than curly maple and double the cost.

From what I have read about the guitars of the late 1950's the figured wood was, at that time, considered less desirable, and so, many nice flame tops were painted black to hide the figure. The "bursts" were often times applied over less figured, harder maple wood, and that is one of the many reasons why the most famous burst over flames guitars are so rare. The taste for figured wood in guitars may have evolved from an appreciation of those old fancy guitars.
 
I know I like figured wood. :-)

Me too. :) I kindof assumed that the notion of using figured woods for guitars was derived from the use of curly maple in violins and the sunburst was an exaggeration of the aging on some old violins and furniture.

My L-oo is the bomb. They're just a fun size to play, and project like artillery. A good friend is a Gibson acoustic guy and there are so many stories about L-oo guitars from the old days. Mine was one of the first, made in 1932. It just had major surgery to fix a collapsing top and should serve for another 80 years. Tone for days.
 
Mike's right about the figured wood. You can sometimes find it on old Gibson acoustic, budget models. I read some of Leo Fender's accounts, and he avoided figured wood because it was unpredictable in performance and availability.