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I have seen the usual woods for guitar tops, spruce, cedar, mahogany, koa etc but recently I have seen white pine & Douglass fir being sold for tops. I have never seen these before. I was wondering if anyone has used them & how they compare to everything else.

Who's selling white pine for tops?

I've been testing pieces of various sorts of wood for several years now, and am coming to the conclusion that just about any softwood could be used for a top. I would tend to avoid ones that are really dense or that have a very 'dead' tap tone, but otherwise it all comes down to the piece, not the species. Basically, all the softwoods are put together the same way, and seem to share their essential characteristics.

Alan is spot on as usual !
It's the piece -not the species !
Mc

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Mike Collins

Since getting into the hobby of lutherie, I have been knocking and tapping on all the wood in my shop, and last week I tapped a nice VG doug fir board that has been kicking around for years, and wow, what a tone. I set it next to a nice slab of walnut, some day they will become a guitar together.
Rob

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I just enjoyed listening to my friend and lutherie mentor James Condino pick a few tunes on his recycled-materials, Doug Fir mandolin "Cricket". Here it is on his site:

http://condino.com/cricket.html

Probably the loudest mandolin I've ever heard. Great tone, and now has two large, asymmetrical soundholes in the top, in addition to three small ports on the top rim. Plugging different holes creates varying amounts of "chunk" and varies the overtones greatly. Very interesting.

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

I built an archtop last month (my first) and used some wood from a driftwood log I got some billets from a few years ago.
I couldn't figure out what species of wood it was, but it was old and straight-grained and reasonably light, so I used it. (This was for a $100 project at 'another forum'.)
When I was pretty well finished, Shane Neifer identified the wood as Douglas Fir.
The guitar looks good and sounds good; I'm happy.
So, use what you've got, if it feels like a 'good stick'.

Cheers
John

When I was at the last Healdsburg guitar festival, I played one guitar that was far above the rest in my opinion. It sounded absolutely angelic. A.J. Lucas was the luthier. When I asked him what the top was he said Doug fir. It was a very surprising blind taste test for me. Why this wood isn't used or sold more often than it is, is a mystery to me now.

John -what great looking guitar!
The design is fresh!
Mike

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Mike Collins

I recently picked up some nice tight qtr. sawn dug fir and am resawing it into soundboards....

The basic reason why Doug is not used more often is that it tends to be denser than most other softwoods. This makes the top end up heavier than it otherwise might have been, and tends to cut down on the power of the guitar. Again, note that I say 'tends'. Heavier tops do seem to have more 'headrom', and maybe a greater dynamic range, but that's hard to demonstrate.

Doug also can be pretty brittle, so be careful with your binding routs!

Thanks, Mike, but the compliment is undeserved.
It's a blatant imitation of some of the details of Ken Parker's incredible archtops.
http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/
"If you're gonna copy, copy from the best" was my mantra on this one!
Cheers
John

Thanks Alan

That's been my experience in the past. This log was unusual- perhaps floating around in salt water and lying on the beach improved it a bit?? It was very pale - not the usual orange-y look I associate with Douglas fir. It also doesn't have the 'splintery' quality I associate with fir. I actually thought it was hemlock or tamarack, not fir.

Cheers
John