Official Luthiers Forum!

I was looking over this years limited run Martins and I noticed that several of the models have "Torrefied Spruce" tops. From my google research, I see that its a for of "cooking" the wood in order to speed the aging process. I've seen threads on OLF about cooking tops before bracing, but wondered if this was the same thing. Here's a link to my favorite http://www.martinguitar.com/new/item/34 ... 0s-14.html

Any additional info about Torrefied wood would be greatly appreciated. Lore vs Fact would be great. Thanks for the help.

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Chris Alvarado
www.ChrisAlvaradoLive.com
www.Driftwood-Guitars.com

I think Lore is about all you are going to get. It seems no one really knows.

On one hand they say it is said that it "ages" the wood and makes it sound better and on the other they say it does nothing other than makes money.

If you read the other threads about it I am sure you found that out.

Personally I have not drunk the Kool Aid.

Cheers,
Bob

I like butter on my popcorn...

http://www.pantheonguitars.com/
Some more info here. Look under Articles and Reviews.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

The September issue of Acoustic Guitar that arrived in the mail yesterday has an article about this. Sorry, no interweb links to the article that I could find.

I have a hard time seeing how heating top wood at 250 degrees for 20 hours followed by heating at 400 degrees replicates natural aging over 30+ years, but maybe.......

Extensive playing of an instrument is supposedly an important contributor to the aging process. If that's true and not just lore, it's also hard to see how torrefaction could replicate that.

A couple interesting practical points from the article:
It can make the wood more brittle and challenging to work with.
The altered structure of the wood means that dents can't be steamed out.

"Torrefaction can't make a bad piece of wood sound good."

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I'm a skeptic too. I'm sure baking wood changes its properties in some ways. But, no one has ever really explained how an aged top is different from a fresh piece of wood. Until we can identify the changes in the wood, chemical or structural, that give it that "played in" sound then we can't really try to speed it up. Personally, I think most of the change from new to old is in the glue joints.
On the other hand.....its certainly easy to try this. Any kitchen oven will work. Maybe take 10 tops from the same log, bake 5 sets and see if the completed guitars are different from the unbaked 5

The process is not quite that simple. It involves atmosphere control in a vacuum chamber with low oxygen and then followed by a high pressure steam treatment. Baking in an oven will change the properties of the wood but not to the degree as torrification.

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Lance Peck

More like terrified wood, as in it will terrify your bank account.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

How about torrefied Moon wood? There must be some magic in that combo!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I can't wait to have enough spare cash to buy some. Even if it doesn't truly sound vintage, if it offers yet another tonal palette, I'm in!

I plan to do a bit of a test. I want to do data collection on some wood I already have, send it to be torrefied, then retake the data and see what measurable differences can be found. The guitars I've tried with it have certainly sounded nice, but in general they've been built by people who make good sounding guitars so it's to be expected...

So is this like buying pre-ripped and faded jeans?

I'm skeptical about every thing under the sun but I can be convinced that baking might actually make a top more stable. But that's as far as I go at this point.

I'm inclined to trust Dana Bourgeois. He's a pretty great builder.