Official Luthiers Forum!

Todd;
I find weight is more important than stiffness!!
Really .
If you made matching guitars with different weight tops -which of course means the braces and all!
You'd probably like the guitar with the low weight top.

It will respond to input quicker-be louder (usually) .
You can add stiffness-with braces -not heavy ones but stiff stock
that's left taller and made thinner.
An as someone early stated -graduate your top thickness .
I have to do that especialy on nylon strung guitars!
Good luck sir !

Mike

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Mike Collins

Ahhhh! The $160,000 question! Here is my take: It has been a year since I have had some really high quality logs in the yard. And the few higher quality sets I produce right now are spoken for from a waiting list. More and more mid level manufacturers (by volume not quality)are getting a hold of me and are waiting now as well, like McPherson and Olsen et al. So that makes availabilty limited at my production levels. Also, in this area all of the larger saw-mills have closed down. Their primary market for YEARS was the US housing market so the softwood tariff scheme and now the economic difficulties have resulted in the loss of these processors of large volumes of logs, they have closed down and one of the mills has been dismantled and auctioned off . Our forests are typically old growth hemlock stands that are classified as "over mature" which means that about 50% of the standing old growth hemlock have rotten cores. So when world pulp prices are high then you can recover costs on pulp logs and make money on the lumber logs. Our area is quite rugged and it is expensive to build roads and haul out of these areas. Anyway, spruce is really a by-product of these more industrial operations so one needs to always be looking to see who has what to find the good spruce logs. I have invested a lot of time and energy in building relationships to access these logs and as a result over the next year I am hoping to see decent quality logs made available. Believe me, I will buy every decent stick I am offered these days just to catch up on the back orders! So, my goal is to continue to grow my business and it's growth is based on spruce, Lutz Spruce exclusively. I recently purchased that wood-mizer mill to help in the gross processing and for odd requests. I am making these investments for the long term. Next year I plan on starting the new shop facility so I can catch up with uncle Bob. That will make the whole operation much more efficient and more professional but will also eat up a lot of my time next year, so I am hoping that in about 18 months from now I will be starting to get into greater volumes of high quality tops. My suppliers indicate that they are in better areas this winter through next year and I will be set up better to process logs, store billets and cut tops. The wood is still indeed around here, it is not super easy to find but if it were everybody could do this gig!

Hope that helps Todd!

Shane

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Canada

Thanks for adding your observations, Alexandru.

Mike, thanks for your additional thoughts on weight and stiffness.

Shane, thanks for filling us in on where you're at and what you foresee in the domain of lutz soundboard production. I shoulda bought more from you at the 2006 GAL convention when you had many stacks of fabulous tops! Ah, well, what I have will last a while, and it sounds like it will come back around. Keep us posted! And good luck!

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/