I feel compelled to do this because I think it's important information for musicians who travel, or are thinking of traveling internationally with a valuable instrument. First, let me publicly apologize to ieso for the glancing personal attack. It wasn't necessary, so, I'm sorry.
Ok then. My point in bringing up the issue in the first thread had almost nothing to do with Gibson being raided. It was the "fine print" of that story that pricked up my ears. When I read the article, I was relatively clueless about changes to the Lacey Act and totally clueless to the CITES treaty. My first reaction was a gut reaction, "WTH?!?" So I posted the original thread and then went off to do some research. When ieso posted his link I went to those and listened and read, but I had already come to the conclusion that no matter how remote the possibility of having one's instrument confiscated at an international border, having the knowledge that that possibility exists is a GOOD thing. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that. I've done a fair amount of international travel with a guitar in tow, but I've never crossed a border with my early 90s custom Lowden D-32 (which I bought used). The Lowden has a very fine wood binding around the fretboard and the body and I have no idea what the wood is. Odds are it's all cool, but I'm clueless about some of its appointments. Do I LOVE my Lowden? Well, I play the s**t out of it. I even put a tortoise pickguard on it because I was marring the top. But, I love it so much that last year I bought it a $1000 custom finished Calton Case. Why? Because it's my gigging acoustic, and national and international travel with it is in the stars.
So back to CITES. I found this article on GuitarAficionado.com which I think is worth a read--
Log Jam. The article is very straight foreward, but the money quote for me is this:
...on May 22, 2008, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the Lacey Act, a piece of legislation dating back to 1900 that was originally written to protect wildlife. The amendment expanded the act’s protection measures to include certain varieties of plants and plant products, namely wood. Gibson became the first major U.S. manufacturer to be investigated after the changes went into effect.
“The way that the law is written, it’s illegal to import, export, or engage in the trade of any wood if that activity violates the law of your country or any other country,” explains Bob Taylor, the co-founder and president of Taylor Guitars. “The good thing about the act is that it should help to curtail a lot of illegal logging. The bad thing is that the law is insufficiently written and insufficiently [taught] down to the enforcement level. When you have enforcers who really don’t know what they’re looking for, that can cause a lot of problems for everyone, from large guitar companies to musicians who travel internationally with their instruments.”
It's the "insufficiently written and insufficiently [taught] down to the enforcement level" part that is what I was trying to get across in the first thread. Bureaucratic hassles at international borders can be a real bummer. So what happens if you run into an unhappy border guard who's having a bad day and decides to question you about your instrument. Well, the law states that you have to provide grumpy pants with documentation about the instrument. Don't have the documentation and grumpy pants can confiscate your guitar--and then you descend into bureaucratic hell trying to get it back. This could happen.
So, my guitar slinging friends, being forewarned is being forearmed. Learn about and document your valuable instruments before you travel to plays for throngs in Bulgaria. Or, go carbon fiber and screw the pooch.
--GDub