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ALL spruces have the potential of being GREAT depending on whether:

- Someone skilled in the art of lutherie selected it for a specific project
- The goals of the player are understood by the builder
- The builder understands how to manipulate the top within their "system"

When these factors are not involved, greatness is absolutely possible but it becomes stochastic.

In general, there is way too much focus on inherent magic properties assigned on average to specific species or regional terroir of a specific species or even a specific log, when reality there is much overlap. There is also way too much fucus on top aesthetics instead of top acoustics. I have had the pleasure of selecting top for guitars with a number of builders. There are profound differences in weight, cross-grain stiffness and tap tone in sets even within a single species. In a number of cases, we chose aesthetically less perfect sets because mechanical and acoustic properties won the day.

I have sucessful guitars in Engelmann Spruce, a variety of Norwegian Spruces (Carpathian, German and Italian) and Red Spruce.