civet, castor, treating wood..

I gather from your post it has to be a natural substance and not synthetic? I would suggest Chinese cedar oil, which is smoky, Virginia cedar which is sort of pissy, angelica root oil is also a good choice, you would dilute it first. I am opposed personally as a perfumer to using natural musk or civet due to animal cruelty. If you could go with synthetics, I would suggest Symrise's Aldron and Galaxolide as well as the above. Also a synthetic ambergris that is excellent is called Ambroxan and is available in small quantities at www.thegoodscentscompany.com All these things would soak into wood nicely if you mixed them into alcohol. The alcohol will evaporate off quickly.

I have some real castoreum, and I also have the cepes from EB. While the cepes is beautiful, it's nothing like the castoreum, not really. I'll drop them both onto strips tomorrow and check again, but I don't see it.

Okay, I've got some castoreum on one strip and some cepes absolute on another, and i've been sniffing them throughout the day. You owe me!

I still don't see much parallel between the two. The cepes is tangy, salty, and it ages into something that could be charachterized as "pissy" in the same way that some forms of cedar can become a bit thus. The castoreum lacks the salt, the tang, and it has a warm, almost oily beginning that reminds me slightly of ambergris, then it dries down to be seriously dark, still sweet-ish, slightly tangy in a dissimilar way to the cepes (the cepes are closer to the tanginess of Marmite, whereas the castoreum is tangy in a way that reminds me of the dried citrus peel note in some labdanums) oh - and the overwhelmingly obvious difference is that, while the cepes could be seen as a bit pissy if looked at in just the right lighting and a tilt of the head and a squint, the castoreum is absolutely, most definitely quite fecal.

So, there you go. Based on the bottles on my shelf and the nose on my face, that's what I've got.

a tincture of truffels at 10% could give a nice animalic top. but only a top, cause it has absolutely no fixing qualities. many french perfumers made experiments with that tincture in the last century, but they all seem to have given up!

profumo.it is, to my knowledge nothing but a big lie what concerns their animalic materials e.g. their ambergris is nothing different than fixateur 505 firmenich or the like. but albert veille is one of great old houses dealing only with the industry, and therefore rather serious...

well, if you mistake the real ambergris tincture that I prepared myself with the lump of Ambergris whose photo is published at http://www.profumo.it/images/foto_gr..._ambregris.jpg with a synthetic pathetic imitation of Ambergris either you have a very poor nose or you never smelled our product.
In the same way you can see the photos of the raw castoreum glands and civet paste we sell (http://www.profumo.it/perfume/prodotti.asp?cat=22)
As for Albert Vieille he may have absolute of castoreum and Civet but certainly not the raw materials for sale and certainly not Ambergris, because if they have some they make much more money selling it in tincture just as I do.
The ambergris trade is a completely different circuit with very few people in.

To answer the demands of our friend Xoa, there is a strong affinity of smell between Castoreum and good cepe absolute, but reading the descriptions of all people who pretend to have smelled cepes absolute in perfumery forums I understand that they got their hands only on bad qualities, the ones I refuse from smaller providers, of which albert vieille is (will you compare them with let us say Robertet?)

Dear Xoa, I don't know what kind of strange use you intend to do with the animalic scents, magic rituals or aphrodisiac potions, but the solution to your problem is very simple, we talked about it in the NP group, we experimented it and as one of the few experts of muskdeer (we don't sell muskdeer but see report at: http://www.profumo.it/cashmir/englis...rt_moschus.htm) I assert that this is the nearest thing to the smell of Muskdeer, it is working very well as a fixative once purified in alcohol, it is the pheromones of rutting male goat. you get it washing the hairs of the legs with alcohol or cutting the hairs for tincturing. Lucky you it is very cheap.
In fact Anya's last perfume "Pan" contains Billy goat hair tincture.
The civet paste would also do the trick but it is very faecal and only few special people are able to overcome the head smell to encounter its beauty.
AbdesSalaam Attar
www.profumo.it