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[/quote]Yes, this combo works very well. I just strung up this steel string redwood/koa, and it is a great sounding guitar. Looks good too!

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Wow, that's the combination I'm after. Beautifull and if the sounds are as the looks

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Wow, that's the combination I'm after. Beautiful ,
of course a different model !

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Don't worry be happy.

I did a OM spalted, curly Mango with cedar top and OOO mahogany with sitka top and they both sound great. I'm in the middle of a OM curly maple and will either have cedar or sinker top....probably cedar..as my cedar tops on hand are a bit stiffer than my sinkers and I look for a bit more top stiffness/strength for my SS. However... a the sinker might be more interesting to hear.
Kents novice input

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I've been busy lately, so I'm just getting into this one.

I'll start with my usual opening; that each piece of wood offers possibilites and sets limits. There is a lot of overlap between different species, so saying that 'Brazilian rosewood is better than Indian' might not mean much in a given case. On the average it's true, but you may not be looking at the 'average 'piece of either wood. I've seen a lot of BRW, particularly in the past ten years, that really should have been made into coffee tables, IMO. Some of that was going for big money because it was so fancy.

Aside from the range of properties you'll see in a given species, there is a fact that a good maker can get quite a range of sound out of almost any set of wood. Even the best maker would have trouble making a mahogany B&S set sound like good BRW, but with enough leeway in top choice they might come closer than you'd believe. As a beginner, you probably won't know all the tricks, so it would be best to start out using the wood combo that has worked for other folks to get the sound you like. In practice, if you've seen a Koa OM that really blew you away, then maybe you should use the same sort of top wood they used. You have to start someplace, and assuming that you saw 'average' wood of whatever type is not too wildly off base.

I've always felt that the 000/OM was 'God's size' for the steel string flat top: neither too big nor too small. As such, it is about the most forgiving design; it's hard to really mess it up no matter what wood you use, so long as you build carefully.

I try to start all of my students on East Indian rosewood and some sort of spruce. As has been said, it's a hard combo to beat for sound, relatively easy to work compared with some woods, and easy to get in good quality at a good price. European spruce is about as good as any, as well.

The big drawback with EIR is it's lack of 'bling' for the most part. My feeling has always been that you can build that in if you want it, and to me that's more legitimate in some way. Anybody can go out and buy fancy wood: that's just a matter of spending money. Taking a plain set of material and making something really elegant and eye-catching from it takes vision, talent and hard work; things that can't be bought.

Hi Alan, thanx for responding
That are wise words; a good luthier can build a good sounding guitar of average wood, a "bad" luthier can
mess up the most valuable wood.
I do have a reasonable skill in woodworking but have no experience in acoustic guitar building.
The sound part (bracing, choice of wood etc. ) fascinates me.

At this moment I am building the neccesary jig's and for such a "simple" instrument there's a lot
of work to do before starting the real thing.
Building a solidbody guitar is a lot easier.

frans

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