Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello all. I have only been building for about 8 months so I don't have much history. Is this a bad time of the year for sourcing master grade german spruce tops? I am trying to locate same for my next build, a flamenco blanca. Or is it just getting harder to find same. Most of the sources I have checked are out of master grade and have long wait listed. Thanks
John Nowicki

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John Nowicki

Contact Martin Guhl:
http://www.best-eurospruce.com/

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

Finding real "Master" grade wood is always difficult. Although it's nice to have "flawless" wood, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using lower grade tops. Usually, (depending on the grading standard of your supplier) AAA is much less expensive & structurally will be as good as master grade. There may be some small cosmetic imperfections, but they will not stop you from building an excellent instrument.
It's easy to obsess about perfect grain spacing & even colour, but in the final analysis it makes little difference to the finished instrument.
As long as the top is well quartered & has little runout, the important stuff is looked after.
Also... It lowers your stress level, if the top you just might mangle didn't cost over $100.00
Just my two cents worth.

Throw my 2 cents on the pile with Dan's, please.

'Lower grade' tops can sound great and look more interesting, to boot, IMO.
(Pretty much any top from a reputable supplier could be made into an excellent-sounding instrument, by a skilled builder, I think.)

I've only built a dozen or so guitars and I leave the Master grade wood for the folks with the skills to deserve them- builders with a few hundred under their belt. But that's just 'me'.

Generally I'm astounded by the (high) quality of the AAA and AA wood I see/use.

Cheers
John

"Master Grade" really only describes the cosmetic appearance of the wood. What you really want is nice light, hard and stiff across the grain wood which may not bear any resemblance at all to that descriptor.
I'd ask a dealer to select for those qualities as opposed to the traditional commercial gradings.

As Laurent mentioned -- go directly to the source in Europe...

Those "True Master Grade" tops are quite scarce -- they are the absolutely most perfect, white, uniform, tops in the AAA grade pile. Many vendors don't even list them because they may only have 1 or 2 tops that would make the cut. You gotta call them up to ask if they have any.

Thanks

John

www.germanspruce.com
Got some great great soundboards !!

Martin at Best-euro spruce it very easy to deal with and has great wood.