Official Luthiers Forum!

I am new to building guitars, and in my reading I am seeing that for a steel stringed guitar the top choice is Sitka Spruce. I checked out High Mountain Tonewood and they have a Lutz Spruce. Is Lutz a good tonewood and if it is what is the difference between that and Sitka.

Thanks

Lutz is a hybrid species between Sitka and White spruce.
For what I know, it's a little bit stiffer than Sitka. Less deflection.
What does it change on the sound? Depends on how you work your top.

That's all I know!
Francis

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Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars

Sorry gosport, your information would seem to be inaccurate:

The Lutz is a figure skating jump, named after Alois Lutz,[1] an Austrian skater who performed it in 1913. It is a toepick-assisted jump with an entrance from a back outside edge and landing on the back outside edge of the opposite foot.[1]

You simply can not make a quality instrument soundboard from a figure skating maneuver.

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If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason. - Jack Handey

Many of us have used Lutz spruce for years and find it responsive and toneful. The best source in the world is High Mountain Tonewood and Shane is great to deal with...highly recommended.

One more thing...Shane at High Mountain Tonewood is the ONLY Lutz tonewood dealer who is a sponsor at the OLF. He's been a long time sponsor of our forum and deserves our support.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

That *sounds* pretty amazing!

I'll second JJ's recommendation for Shane of High Mountain Tonewoods. His spruce is very stiff and "ringy" and is quite reasonably priced. Shane is a great guy as well.

I will be stringing up the 1st guitar I used Lutz top and bracing from Shane on later this week, so far I love it.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Lutz is really nice. I'm working on a harp uke now that has a lutz top with 65 lines per inch. I would like to recommend Mario Dacosta at Spruce Tonewood, you can easily tell that wood is from him if the tree has a name.

Lutz is a god send to instrument makers who use Spruce.
With high Euro. prices ;
Heavy Sitka tops;
Runout prone Engelmann-plus high prices;
Lutz just shines both in tonal qualities & quality.
I get mine From Shane & High Mountain also.
Good man to deal with.
Plus he has other great deals on his site.

Mike

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Mike Collins

My last guitar was Mahogany and Lutz. The sound was phenomenally rich. It's my spruce of choice.

AFAIK, lutz spruce might be an hybrid of sitka and white spruce OR an hybrid of sitka and an hybrid of white and engelmann spruce. As for it´s tonal and woodworking properties, i´ve nothing to say. never used it or seen it myself. but maybe this might be useful info:

http://theunofficialmartinguitarforum.y ... 191?page=1
http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/rni/research/E ... note10.pdf
http://pubs.cif-ifc.org/doi/pdf/10.5558/tfc73357-3 (quite heavy reading if you´re just interested in making soundboards, but might be worth a quick cross-reading nevertheless)

cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Thanks To all who responded. I am thinking Lutz will be a good choice for a top.

Hello James

"Lutz Spruce" is the handle for Picea lutzii, or probably more correctly Picea x lutzii, denoting a hybrid. It is any Sitka hybrid of which there are only two that I know of naturally, they are Sitka/White Spruce and Sitka/White/Engelmann. Sitka is a low elevation coastal species, White is low to moderate elevation interior species and Engelmann is moderate to high elevation interior species. So Sitka is typically separated from the interior species by the coastal mountain range. But when there are large east/west valleys that carve through the coastal mountain range, such as the Skeena River Valley where I live, then hybridization occurs. The typical trees that are best for producing musical instrument wood are from moderate elevation, under about 2800 feet. So typical guitar top wood will be Sitka/White spruce hybrids as Engelmann does not enter the mix until about 3500 feet in elevation in our area. The trees at that elevation are typically smaller and gnarly, poor tonewood candidates. Anyway, I hope this summary saves you a bit of reading. I could go on at some length about the distribution and my theories about the properties of this wood but I will save that for a section in my new website which should be up in the next few weeks. You can see from the link above that John Greven has found favour with this wood and has been a good customer (and friend) for a few years now. He will be presenting a talk at GAL this summer on topwood selection and discussing why he likes this spruce on his current builds.

Thanks

Shane

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Canada

looking forward to that!

and thanks for the trimming of info.

Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I guess that I meant to say that in my reading that Sitka was my top choice. I am reading Jonathan Kinkead's book on building Guitars, and he said that sitka is well suited to steel string guitars. But now I think Lutz might be a good choice. I don't know, I am very new to building guitars, and my thoughts on what would be good can change from day to day.

First, a caveat - I've learned just about everything I know about topwoods from some of the experts here and elsewhere. I'm not an expert, nor do I play one on TV. But here's what I've learned:
There are some generalizations that are applied to each of the most popular species of topwoods for steel strings - and like most generalizations, there is a grain of truth in all of them. But there are also pretty significant variations between individual tops, certainly between species, but also among the same species, and even on the same tree.
One of the factors that is very important in a top is the stiffness to weight ratio (assuming a good top with limited or no runout, etc.) - this is why many of the more experienced luthiers do deflection testing - because the variation in density (and stiffness relative to weight) will mean that a given top at .125", will be stiffer or less stiff than another top at the same thickness. Deflection testing lets you dial in the thickness to accomodate the variations in density. This is why it's useful to feel and tap (and measure density) on individual tops. It's been suggested that there is a correlation between density (weight/volume) and stiffness to weight ratio. So, some experienced luthiers like to build with tops that are consistently in a range of density.
Ive taken to measuring my tops in terms of density. There are some trends in the samples that I have (Adirondack tends to be on the denser end, Sitka has quite a broad range, Englemann tends to be on the lower end of the range, and Western Cedar is the least dense of all the samples. The Lutz that I have (from Shane) is within the same range as the Sitka I have, but it's on the bottom end (less dense). I have no idea if this is typical of Lutz or not,So.... probably more info than you were looking for. Bottom line is, you won't be disappointed with Shane's Lutz Spruce. It makes wonderful guitars, and Shane is a great vendor and a friend of the forum.