Official Luthiers Forum!

Can anyone tell me what the expected tone would be for red spruce vs. sitka vs. englemann? Which of the three would supposedly give your guitar the richest tone or is there another top wood for that? Thanks everyone.

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Thanks To All:
Lee
Sikeston,Mo.

For an all around great sound you can't go wrong with red spruce. It's durable and stiff, but there is always a lot of variation within a species and it can be pricey.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com

From Colonial Tonewoods Site

Most luthiers agree that Red spruce has strong volume, pronounced individual note clarity, and recreates the "vintage sound." Red spruce is responsive whether played softly or loudly and is well suited for fingerstyle, flatpicking, or rhythm playing. Red Spruce exhibits more grain width and color variation than either German, Sitka or Engelmann spruce.

Sitka spruce is the preferred species of soundboard due to its strength to weight ratio; its inherent stiffness makes it an ideal choice for steel string acoustic guitars. Sitka has a warm, balanced tone with a clear midrange. Tonally, Sitka spruce is extremely vibrant providing an ideal "diaphragm" for the transmission of sound on any size and style of stringed instrument.

Carpathian spruce a rich complex sound with strong individual note clarity. Carpathian is ideal for both small and full bodied instruments; it has a wide dynamic range and can stand up to being driven hard.

German spruce tops are exceptionally stiff and sonically dynamic; they produce a warm, woody sound with a noticeable high end response. Visually German spruce tops are creamy white with fine, even grain spacing and noticeable cross silk. It is a preferred top for classical and steel string guitar makers and lends itself well to a variety of playing styles from classical to flatpicking.

Western Red cedar produces a warm and rich tone with bright trebles and excellent note clarity.

Engelmann Spruce has a pure clear tone & a high velocity of sound, but lends itself to being overdriven more readily.
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From the 'Zootman's Site

Lutz Spruce - Great tap tone!
Italian Spruce - Fantastic tap tone! I think he might be biased here though...lol

RB

It's really difficult to generalise, there's a lot of variation within species. It's hard to find a good looking Red spruce top under $200, sitka sometimes sounds amazing, some Englemann is stiffer and harder than what we're used to etc.
Seems a lot of people copy and paste, changing very little, what Dana wrote long ago about tonewoods:
http://www.pantheonguitars.com/tonewoods.htm
This is what's on my website:
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/Site/Tonewood.html

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

This is from Elderly Instruments and possibly Martin.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Todd, you had better get your trademark application in quick! Once Mario sees this, it will be a footrace to see who gets to own fizzy-full-moon-lemming-leap-spruce. Catchy! Kinda rolls off the tongue.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Has anybody tried Labrador White Spruce.... I have a set that I will be using on a Gibson J200.. These trees grow to large diameters on the mountain sides here.....I also have a question on guitar tops......We have large areas of what we call burned over woods...Lots of large white spruce trees that have been standing there since a fire killed them.....These trees have lost the bark off them years ago and they are still solid and white colored.....I,m guessing these trees should be good for tops and bracing....Has anyone used woods like this and if so how long do they have to be stored before I can use them?.....How do I check the moisture content?.....Thanks Larry

If rot hasn't set in, and there's enough wood to use in the 'good' area (outside the heart etc), then spruce dries 'real fast' once you saw it up into tops and sticker it (like a few weeks is quite safe). That said, I'd leave it sit around for a couple months just to see what happens, just in case.

And there's the usual stuff about twist in the tree etc, etc, etc. I think Mario's mentioned that you can use white spruce with good results, but that's totally based on my (often fuzzy) recollections of phone conversations.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Thanks Bob.....Gonna give it a try...Oh,and by the way,..I should finish up my guitars in the next week...I will give you an E-mail on the Labrador Guitar head stocks....Larry

Ask Grant Goltz, a member here, and on the Luthierforum, his handle is "whitespruce."

Grant harvests some White Spruce in Minnesota and has made a number of really nice instruments from it. He sold a few tops at the last OLF Swap Meet, so there should be some other opinions coming up here real soon. To my ears and eyes, White Spruce appears to be great wood, very stiff and resonant. I would be surprised if the dead standing trees have white colored wood in them - I'll bet there will be black or blue stain. However, you might consider it "character" (like sinker Redwood), or you may want to stain or sunburst it, or it might be perfect for your next black-topped Tiger Myrtle guitar, a la Hesh.

Grant told me that the bark should be removed as soon as possible after harvest, to preserve the whiter color, so maybe the fire did you a favor. You just gotta cut a section of trunk, then split off some bolts, and then resaw and sticker some sets. Take photos!

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Descriptions that make most choices sound ideal for every instrument are not very helpful.

Insofar as verbal descriptions are helpful, I don't think I have seen better than Dana's.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Thanks to all who responded. The info I get from you guy's shed a little more light each time I visit and ask probably the same old questions that get asked probably at least 10 times a day! But I really appreciate the help you guys give us new one's.

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Thanks To All:
Lee
Sikeston,Mo.