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Wild Maple post pics

The back of my neck on my cheapo Aria seems to be wild. It has a bit of quilt high up and some random birdseyes (maybe just alot of knots) along with some really wicked almost spalt like grain. It's not a great neck in terms of stability but it actually has the best feeling neck of all my basses.
 
Here's my Warmoth tele (OK, so it's a guitar, but you get the idea). It's somewhere between quilt and flame, with a really interesting pattern.
 

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Call me cynical but I think "wild" maple is a term some marketing man thought up to describe some maple that wasn't totally flame or birdseye or quilt but a mixture. I think Pete the fish was accurate when he described it as figured maple.

That said I like the look of the tops posted but I think the term "wild" is just to make it more sexy and therefore more sellable and more valuable to the luthier. If it does not have a name or catagory then the luthier would not be able to shift it so easily but with a new catagory it has added value and people will more readily be prepared to buy it.

Hope this does not start a flame war [sorry bad pun but I couldn't resist it] :D

Regards

Matthew
 
Heaven forbid that people would have the nerve to try to make the product they're selling more attractive... :D

I think it's as good a term as any; if you just call it "figured", you'll get people asking "what kind of figuring? Quilted? Flamed?", and then you have to say, "well, it's kind of, um..."

I think "wild" does quite a good job of explaining the nature of the figuring. One less sylable than "random" and a whole lot less than "kind of, um". Personally, I wouldn't buy a body with a "wild" figured top without seeing what it actually looked like - I bought my tele because I liked the look of the top, not because it was "wild".

Then again, I'm sure the same discussion has taken place about "spalted" tops. I mean, it's just rotten wood, right...?
*hides*
 

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