Official Luthiers Forum!

I have an upcoming commission for a guitar with a german spruce top. I see that LMI sells them, but the price seems a bit steep. Anybody have a good different source for german spruce?

_________________
ELEVATE || Next Level Lutherie
http://elevatelutherie.com
&
http://ensorguitars.com

Rudolf from http://www.germanspruce.com/ is a really good bloke to deal with. I recomend him.

_________________
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

Hello,

I can not really give advice here. I can though tell you I have been researching where to get some woods here locally and have seen the link previously posted. He's about 3 hours from me and I plan on taking a trip out there to check out his workshop. I can let you know when I do if you would like to get my opinion about it. Also, there is a place about 20 min from my front door which I am going to soon called Kölbl tone wood

http://www.tonewood-koelbl.com/index.php

That's all I can tell you. Sorry bub

_________________
久保
美智え

What exactly do you mean by "German Spruce" ? Are you looking for wood harvested from a particular place in Germany ? The German Spruce link posted by Joe sells European spruce (Picea abies) harvested from a number of countries - this is from his website:

"German Spruce (Picea excelsa, Picea abies) is probably the wood mostly rich in tradition concerning lutherie. The logs I use are obtained from selected regions in the Bavarian Alps, Austrian Alps, Italian Alps and the Bavarian Forest where they have grown in north-eastern slopes (1200m – 1500m altitude). There, in the southern area of its range, the German Spruce is a mountain tree, a fact revealing itself positively in its structure (ratio of late wood) and quality (e.g. constant growth)."

So his "German Spruce" could be German, Italian or Austrian. Basically there are two species of spruce endemic in Europe - European spruce (Picea abies) and Caucasian spruce (Picea orientalis). Within these species you will get differences governed by their growing conditions which will vary between and within countries.

I'm always curious when I see North American builders seeking spruce with specific names like German, Italian, Carpathian etc as to what they are seeking - the nearest I can get is that they are after similar wood they have bought before from a supplier under a certain marketing name.

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I quess Dave is right, trees, like mountain people, can't always be defined by national borders.
I am certainly no expert but the 2 AAA boards I bought from Rudolf were beautiful and it was a pleasure dealing with him.
Not sure what you think of the price, I think I payed 60 euros each, but things in Europe of not as cheap as in the USA.

_________________
We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

Joe - that's a pretty good price and I'm sure that Rudolf's wood is excellent. I have my found own supplier here in England who hand picks his stock from various European suppliers and based on experience of the wood he supplies I trust him implicitly - a good tonewood supplier is worth their weight in gold and that's why for for Lutz spruce/Western Red Cedar I use Shane Neifer, for White spruce Grant Golz and for Caucasian spruce Oktapus (via Colin). Grading systems are arbitrary so it would be hard to compare without buying some wood from Rudolf.

I used to buy my European spruce tops from another supplier here in the UK and their invoice always showed them as "Swiss spruce tops". This puzzled me until they explained that traditionally in European musical instrument making this was the trade name used to describe European spruce and was not necessarily the country of origin.

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

A +1 for rudi. I bought several nice tops from him and iirc they came from Austria, but near the German border. A pleasure dealing with him.
You could also try Martin at best eurospruce.

Cheers,
Miguel.

_________________
member of the guild of professional dilettantes

I know the German / European spruce thing has already been explained (again), but since this is such a pet peeve for me too, I can't keep myself from commenting (again...)

Here's a fairly typical Norwegian scenery (this happens to be from Nordmarka, just outside Oslo, our capital). Up here, its almost nothing but spruce! Sweden, Finnland, not to mention our neighbour Russia has even more. Lots more! Germany and the Alp region appear depleted by comparison.





Here's a map of the growing range. Its HUGE!





I live in a spruce house, read a newspaper made from spruce pulp, I burn it to keep warm during winter, the list goes on... This was taken earlier this fall, when we were chopping and splitting firewood, spruce of course.





As has been mentioned, spruce doesn't care about nationalities. Given the right growing conditions, and enough time, I believe any area can yield fine soundboard material. You have to find it, of course, and then know how to process it, and to sell it as tonewood, you'd need to market it as such. Up here, not many people do, I suppose in part because of lot's of buyer's preconceived notion that the material needs to be cut somewhere else. Besides its no real money in it compared to lumber and pulp, so who cares. But its there, and lots of it. Why wouldn't it be?

Here's one of my all-Norwegian-woods instruments, the Norwegian wood mandola. Its a fine sounding instrument, and to me, the top material is visually indistinguishable from the best examples of the same stuff I have from Italy.

_________________
Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Isn't it good, Norwegian wood?





I couldnt help myself. Nice looking mandola Arnt.

_________________
http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Dave said it all before I could, good P. abies is good P. abies, growing conditions being more important than national boundaries.

To confuse matters even more, under European Union law, products (including wood) can take the national identity of the last country of processing. So, a tree grown and harvested in say Romania can be transported to Germany for processing into top sets, which can then be legally sold as 'German Spruce'. So even if a supplier can show you their import documentation from a German mill, that says 'German Spruce', that is absolutely no guarantee that the wood grew in Germany, it could be from anywhere in the EU.

Oh and that 'Italian Spruce' that everyone seems to covet, well if it could talk it may well have a Polish or Hungarian accent. But never mind, it said 'Italian' on the invoice.

I buy almost all of my European spruce from the same guy as Dave here in England, his wood is always top notch, and just sold as 'European Spruce'

Colin

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

The Picea orientalis that I have used, from three separate sources, is more tan in color whereas the Picea Abies is much more white in color. The orientalis is denser and more akin to Sitka both in color and physical properties than abies. Both will make a fine guitar but I definitely prefer abies if given a choice. JME...

_________________
tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

That's interesting Tim, not my experience with Caucasian (P. orientalis) in recent years. I think nine of the last twelve guitars I've made have had orientalis tops, most of them Torres type classicals. Yes, they were not as white as my abies tops, but certainly no more dense and not at all like the sitka I have handled, which I wouldn't dream of letting near a classical ( or steel string come to that).

They have had exceptional cross grain stiffness allowing me to build very light.

I get most of mine direct from the mill in Turkey.

Colin

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Makes me want to chop one these bad boys down in the backyard. Lol.

_________________
久保
美智え

Curious, Colin - what do you have against Sitka?

What species do you guys think is sold by Colonial Tonewoods, under the name Carpathian Spruce? Martin uses this name also, I believe.

Picea abies. The usual common name in English throughout the species range is Norway spruce. Tonewood dealers advertising Carpathian are implying P. abies from the Carpathian Mountains.

Tim - I'd be interested in your sources as Caucasian spruce (P. orientalis) isn't that easy to find, I've only seen it offered by Martin Guhl and a Turkish supplier. Did you mean "Carpathian spruce" that I know you have used and commented on in a similar way before? This wood was heavily marketed in North America some years back and as Tim says above is likely a P. abies variant. Martin Guhl says this about it on his website:

"Don´t mix up our Caucasian spruce with Carpathian spruce, last surfaced recently at LMI and at other suppliers. Carpathian spruce is nothing else than our species picea abies coming from another place in Europe (here: Easteurope; the Carpathian mountains are located between Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Romania). Carpathian spruce is usually not as fine grained as the same species coming from Germany/ the Alps (including Italy, Swiss etc.) - and is by far wider grained than our fine Caucasian spruce!"

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Carpathian is really the same as German Swiss blabla, and not wider grained as a varietal feature. Sure if you cut second growth you'll get wide grains but that's all. I recently scored a few tops from a 300 years old tree and they average 30 gpi.

_________________
Build log