For those interested in "special" woods for their custom instruments, the father of my son's current girlfriend owns a company called AncientWood Limited in Ashland Wisconsin (http://www.ancientwood.com/). They deal exclusively with salvaged Kauri that has been buried in bogs in New Zealand for up 50,000 years. While the majority of the work they do focuses on building $100,000 tables, they also sell tonewood and laminates for a variety of instruments including acoustic and electric guitars/basses (http://www.ancientwood.com/tonewood/).