Wood Question for Luthiers

[rgregg48]

How could someone with a less than experianced
Eye, distinguish between
A German spruce top an an Englemann.
spruce top? Is It Reliable With the naked eye?
Thanks,
Rick

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by rgregg48

How could someone with a less than experianced
Eye, distinguish between
A German spruce top an an Englemann.
spruce top? Is It Reliable With the naked eye?
Thanks,
Rick

I think that if you mixed a good Engelmann top in with a couple German Spruce tops and had luthiers pick it out the results would be about the same if it were a blindfold test

The only general difference I find is the Engelmann often has better cross grain stiffness and the German tends to have better stiffness along the grain so a blindfold test might actually be helpful!

[Glenn23]

I have a set of German spruce that I got from John Slobod. He told me he hand-picked it from a huge warehouse in Germany. It has a wonderful consistent whiteness, a sonorous tap, and is very stiff. It has a bit pf runout which is also indicative of German spruce so I'm pretty sure it's true German. If I had to describe the difference between that top and Englemann I've used, I would say the German has a slighly more "velvety" feel, and Englemann just a hair more "waxy" feel. Very similar though.

[rgregg48]

How about guitars already built and finished?

[Kent Chasson]

Originally Posted by rgregg48

Is It Reliable With the naked eye?

Not with my naked eye and particularly not after the guitar is built. Not even with my strongest reading glasses on!

I've never seen German Spruce as white as the whitest Engelmann but in general, I've seen as much difference within the species as between them. Engelmann particularly is all over the map in terms of color and grain.

[AcornHouse]

I tend to think of Engleman as being more "white" white, and German creamy white.

[Bruce Sexauer]

I think I would do very well in a blindfold test picking out the Engelmann, IF all of the German was high quality. Virtually all Engelmann I've owned or handled is softer than virtually all European Spruce I have handled. Englemann usually weighs noticeably less as well. There is some overlap, but high end German will tend to be the harder stuff and beyond any Engelmann I've seen, though I hear fables around the campfire, sometimes.

Run out would be very unreliable as both types usually (but in neither case always) come from small trees, which makes some run out hard to avoid. Not that it can't usually be done as far as visuals are concerned, particularly if the wood cutter and the luthier are the same person and paying attention..

[Halcyon/Tinker]

I would say "Gutentag, mein fräulein!", and whichever one answered would be my date for Oktoberfest.

[Tim McKnight]

There was a story that circulated a decade or two ago that a dubious individual shipped a container of Engelmann Spruce to Germany and then it was sold back to us as German Spruce. Once its fashioned into an instrument it would be near impossible to tell which one was which without a shaving being sent to a USDA lab for microscopic cellular analysis. However, a few of us may be able to sort it out in raw form with a high percentage of certainty.

[Alan Carruth]

I'm told the German suppliers do import wood from the US, and sell it as 'tone wood'. Note that they don't claim it's 'German' Spruce.

I doubt anybody could tell with high reliability in the finished guitar. I've been told that most spruces are indistinguishable even with a microscope. Sitka is said to be distinguishable by it's color, but I've seen plenty of very white Sitka, and some old European spruce that was hard to distinguish from Sitka the same age.

Certainly there's no consistent difference in the properties of any spruce if you control for density and grain angle. Bruce says:" Virtually all Engelmann I've owned or handled is softer than virtually all European Spruce I have handled.", but, again, if you sorted them out by density the differences would go away. There are enough outliers in any species that it's fairly easy to find pieces that break the rules. Some of the densest and stiffest tops I've gotten were sold to me as 'Engelmann spruce'. I asked for light tops, and they sent along thin ones.... I've had Red spruce tops that were more in the range of the usual Western Red cedar for density and stiffness. And on it goes.

[stringjunky]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

I'm told the German suppliers do import wood from the US, and sell it as 'tone wood'. Note that they don't claim it's 'German' Spruce.

I doubt anybody could tell with high reliability in the finished guitar. I've been told that most spruces are indistinguishable even with a microscope. Sitka is said to be distinguishable by it's color, but I've seen plenty of very white Sitka, and some old European spruce that was hard to distinguish from Sitka the same age.

Certainly there's no consistent difference in the properties of any spruce if you control for density and grain angle. Bruce says:" Virtually all Engelmann I've owned or handled is softer than virtually all European Spruce I have handled.", but, again, if you sorted them out by density the differences would go away. There are enough outliers in any species that it's fairly easy to find pieces that break the rules. Some of the densest and stiffest tops I've gotten were sold to me as 'Engelmann spruce'. I asked for light tops, and they sent along thin ones.... I've had Red spruce tops that were more in the range of the usual Western Red cedar for density and stiffness. And on it goes.

Probably, the moral of this is to let the luthier pick the wood based on that piece's individual properties, rather than because it's xyz species.

[Herb Hunter]

From an article about the European spruce, Picea abies:

"...if you have ever spent time talking wood with instrument makers in Germany, they will chuckle and tell you they consider “German spruce" not just a misnomer but an unlikelihood. They generally get their spruce from farther south, in Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland or France. This has always been the source of the best lutherie spruce. As Horst Grünert, a bass and cello maker in Penzberg, Bavaria, once cheerfully told me, he'd go right out with his chainsaw and get the rare spruce in Germany if he could find it, but he said that for all intents and purposes, it had been extinct in Germany for several centuries (again, see below).” ...

... German spruce sold to the lutherie world is often spruce sold by German dealers, and whatever species of spruce it actually is tends to come from a variety of sources, including a certain amount historically imported from the US and Canada. Engelmann spruce, for example, is very popular among luthiers and for decades has been exported to Europe where it has been sold back to Americans (among others) as, you guessed it, German spruce. And because of the lutherie trade, spruce from anywhere in Europe is pretty much identified now as German spruce.

http://www.lutherie.net/eurospruce.html

[iim7V7IM7]

These are some average mechanical properties for some common and not so common top woods used to make guitars. For each of these, there is a fairly wide range of densities and stiffness within each species, so these are "averages" based upon differing sample sizes no doubt.

There is enormous overlap in these properties between Engelmann and Norway Spruce. For what it is worth, we likely spend far too much time around here discussing the inherent properties of a specific type of softwood or hardwood. In reality, within a complex system such as a guitar; other factors may matter more. Using cooking as an analogy, we talk about a particular "ingredient" vs. the "quality of the ingredient" and we ignore the skills of the "chef" or the impact of their "recipe".

Name---------------Avg. Dried Weight-----Janka Hardness----Elastic Modulus---

Engelmann Spruce-------385 kg/m3-----------------1740 N-----------------9.44 GPa------
Norway Spruce-----------405 kg/m3-----------------1680 N-----------------9.70 GPa------
Red Spruce---------------435 kg/m3-----------------2180 N-----------------10.76 GPa----
Sitka Spruce--------------425 kg/m3-----------------2270 N-----------------11.03 GPa----

Alaskan Yellow Cedar----495 kg/m3------------------2580 N-----------------9.79 GPa----
Catalpa--------------------460 kg/m3-----------------2450 N------------------8.35 GPa----
Claro Walnut---------------640 kg/m3-----------------5030 N-----------------11.59 GPa*--
Honduran Mahogany-----590 kg/m3-----------------4020 N------------------10.06 GPa---
Port Orford Cedar---------465 kg/m3-----------------2620 N------------------11.35 GPa---
Redwood------------------415 kg/m3-----------------2000 N------------------8.41 GPa----
Western Red Cedar-------370 kg/m3-----------------1560 N------------------7.66 GPa----

In short, while a curiosity, I would stop wondering what type of spruce it was and focus on whether you like how the guitar sounds...

[TomB'sox]

Originally Posted by Herb Hunter

From an article about the European spruce, Picea abies:

"...if you have ever spent time talking wood with instrument makers in Germany, they will chuckle and tell you they consider “German spruce" not just a misnomer but an unlikelihood. They generally get their spruce from farther south, in Italy, Slovenia, Switzerland or France. This has always been the source of the best lutherie spruce. As Horst Grünert, a bass and cello maker in Penzberg, Bavaria, once cheerfully told me, he'd go right out with his chainsaw and get the rare spruce in Germany if he could find it, but he said that for all intents and purposes, it had been extinct in Germany for several centuries (again, see below).” ...

... German spruce sold to the lutherie world is often spruce sold by German dealers, and whatever species of spruce it actually is tends to come from a variety of sources, including a certain amount historically imported from the US and Canada. Engelmann spruce, for example, is very popular among luthiers and for decades has been exported to Europe where it has been sold back to Americans (among others) as, you guessed it, German spruce. And because of the lutherie trade, spruce from anywhere in Europe is pretty much identified now as German spruce.

http://www.lutherie.net/eurospruce.html

Thank you so much for posting this for this is what I had read also albeit from another source...ie. there is no German Spruce left. Then I started to doubt myself as people and luthiers much more invested into this than I continued to discuss German Spruce, so I assumed my info was wrong. But, I don't feel it is, there has not been instrument quality spruce in Germany for a long time.

[ukejon]

Originally Posted by Halcyon/Tinker

I would say "Gutentag, mein fräulein!", and whichever one answered would be my date for Oktoberfest.

Wunderbar! Danke schoen.