From the forest to the shop, Acoustic Remedy is committed to being a socially and environmentally responsible company
When Ryan Sauter and Adam Jacobson founded Acoustic Remedy in 2008, the idea of sustainability was just starting to gain traction in the guitar industry. In the beginning, sourcing wood simply meant driving to the local lumber yard. With backgrounds in environmental science, both Ryan and Adam have had a keen sense of how to operate with sustainability in mind.
Over the years, Acoustic Remedy has grown from our humble beginnings in Ryan's garage to a full fledged operation producing hundreds of humidors and other accessory products annually. The world’s population continues to grow and our forests have been lost or severely degraded. With far too much plastic filling our oceans and our air suffering from the impacts of humans, we have committed to several sustainability initiatives to reduce our footprint.
All lumber we utilize, whether it's domestic or exotic species, is harvested in an ethical manner with preservation of the delicate ecosystem as the number one priority. We utilize outstanding resources to determine the legality and environmental footprint of the species we utilize to create our products. One such resource is the American Hardwood Guide which publishes information about the health of the forests, growth and removal rates, and other data which assists us in making decisions.
In terms of the exotic wood species, even greater scrutiny must be paid to how and where this lumber is sourced from. To that end, we use only reputable supplier networks who do a majority of the heavy lifting prior to imparting the wood into the United States. If you receive a product from Acoustic Remedy, rest assured that
The Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an agreement among governments put in place to ensure that the international trade of animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species. Although CITES is a legally binding treaty, it does not take the place of national laws. Rather, it provides a framework respected by participating governments.
All Acoustic Remedy products are made in a Amish shops in western Wisconsin. The Amish have interesting ways of harnessing power without being tied to the electrical grid. A common misconception about the Amish is that they do not use any powered machinery and create everything by hand.
Although there is a considerable amount of hand sanding, chiseling, and planing done by hand, the majority of the equipment is powered off of a large diesel engine. This engine sits outside the shop and spins a central shaft at roughly 2,000 rpm. From the main shaft, ratios are determined for a series of countershafts and pulleys are utilized to ultimately turn the machine spindle.
Typical machinery such as table saws, planers, jointers, drill presses, sanders, and similar are found in the shop. Everything is finished the old fashioned way by meticulously hand sanding every surface prior to finishing. The process takes a bit longer than mass production, but this is also critical to our motto of quality over quantity.
We participate in a wonderful program set up and maintained by One Tree Planted. This organization has an army of people who are actively planting trees across the globe and one of their guiding principles is "to make it simple for anyone to help the environment by planting trees." They accomplish this part of the vision by interfacing directly with our website and allowing for our customers to plant a tree for $1. In addition, Acoustic Remedy has pledged to plant a tree for every single order, with each estimated to reduce an average of 22 pounds of CO2 annually.
The impact of One Tree Planted is impressive - they have planted over 40 million trees in more than 47 countries across the globe since 2014. In 2021, they more than doubled the impact from 2020 - with 23.5 million trees! One Tree Planted has planting projects in six global regions: North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and The Pacific. Planting trees in each of these regions comes with its own diverse benefits, challenges, and rewards. And every reforestation project has its own unique impact on forests, communities, animals, and the planet overall.
All business can select which regions they want to reforest and we've decided to keep it within North America and Africa; however, we will explore new regions to support reforestation in the coming years.
We hope that you can join us in this amazing sustainability journey. Together we can restore forests, create habitat for biodiversity, and make a positive social impact around the world.
A majority of our products are 95+% wood, with the rest being small amounts of metal, glass, plastic, and various natural fibers. With that being said, the greatest impact on Acoustic Remedy's footprint happens to be the lumber and we have great local suppliers to source a majority of what we use. As previously mentioned, we place a big emphasis on the ethical and sustainable harvesting practices of our suppliers and rigorously monitor trends in the industry.
The remainder of the products are sourced from a mixture of local, national, and international suppliers. Many of the critical accessory items are produced within 150 miles of ARC headquarters. Of course, we are part of the supply chain as well, delivering our humidors and other music accessories from the Amish shops where they are made to our customers world wide. We have a lean operation and all shipping is provided by either FedEx or one of our carriers in the freight network, both of which have strong environmental policies that are leading their respective industries.
We are a proud Midwest company and have the honor of implementing fellow Midwest companies' products into ours. We rely on them to make our products the best they can be and the shipping experience the safest as possible.
Our freight provider is also an active partner with One Tree Planted. Every shipment we book has 100% of the CO2 emissions offset by the planting of trees. This amounts to many trees per freight shipment and the effects really add up.
Every freight shipment has verified CO2 offset, tracked on their website, and to date they have planted over 45,000 trees!
Our end caps that provide critical protection during shipment. We are proud to introduce a method to reduce your footprint by participating in our End Cap Reuse Program. We provide a box and a return shipping label. The process is very simple and straightforward, only taking a few minutes of your time.
The cushioning of the end caps is the most important aspect of why we carefully chose this material. A close second was that it allows for reuse many times over and thereby reduces the amount of material entering the world's landfills.
Our photography booth utilizes high quality lighting to capture the various images you see on our website. In order to utilize such lighting, at an Amish shop which has zero electricity, we were forced to get creative. Thankfully the technology for portable battery power has made amazing strides in the last few years. We've found an exceptional brand - EcoFlow - to satisfy our portable battery needs.
These battery blocks are also rechargeable via solar panels. On a bright sunny day with the panel positioned at the correct angle, the panels can generate approximately 140 - 150 watts.
Cut off pieces are not wasted. We have created special processes to reuse this material and create new products. An example being the 4'x4' blank we create to cut the backs for single instrument humidors. For the triangle shaped ClimaCases and ClimaStands, we cut the back from this blank and save the cutoffs to create certain portions of our pedal boards.
In addition, we will save smaller pieces to create portions of our DualStands and smaller single instrument humidors.
We stack the cut-offs on a several shelves and periodically make products from them. The pieces which cannot be used (and the large volumes of shavings, sawdust, and wood chips) are burned in the wood stoves for comfort heating during the winter months and humidity control in the summer months.
We use FedEx to ship every product except our ClimaCabs and various small products which ship via USPS. FedEx is working their way toward delivering a more sustainable future, including a goal of carbon neutral operations by 2040. We can also track our emissions and carbon footprint by running reports with FedEx® Sustainability Insights.
All waste generated at both our headquarters and the Amish shop is used to create power instead of filling up a landfill. Our local Waste-to-Energy facility is a process that has saved the need to build nearly five medium-sized landfills that receives on average about 73,000 tons to the facility annually.
The waste is mixed with wood waste, burned to make steam, which turns a turbine and produces electricity.
In an effort to continue our sustainability journey, Acoustic Remedy has reduced the paper work shipped with our products. With every Acoustic Remedy product you will receive a 5" x 7" card with a QR code. We will also email you a link to this page as part of our automatic emailing system, which is activated when the shipping labels are generated. This will give you an opportunity to look over the applicable documents in preparation for receiving your product.
We've segmented this page to include a section for Assembly, Installation, and Use and General Documents. Often times we will link to other documents within the specific pdf files. Therefore, we recommend accessing these pdfs via a device (computer, tablet, or phone). All documents provided on this page can be saved to your device and or you can bookmark this page to revisit as needed.
To access the documents for the product, simply click on the text hovering over the image and you will be brought to a new page with the documents listed below the image. As updates or additional documents are required, we will add them to this page in a timely fashion.
Although acoustics are more effected by fluctuating humidity, electrics still need a stable environment to sound their best. In addition, they look great on display and will be played more often when they're close by.
"Acoustic Remedy is the FIRST place I head to whenever I buy a new guitar. Their humidors do a fantastic job of keeping them healthy."
John G - Mount Vernon, New York
"The Cabinet is beautiful! The finish is pristine! Smooth like butter we are beyond Happy with it. Thank you!
Mary Jane P. - Ottawa, Canada
Great construction! Made well!
Highly recommend if you like to play and (or) if you’re a collector alike
Andrew M. - Tuscon, Arizona
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