What % of tops are Sitka?

[Bruce Sexauer]

Of course I meant I would turn to Sitka to get the sound! People do tend to ask me to do the think I do most, but I hope am an perceived as more than a one trick pony. As my career has advanced, it seems to me that it matters less and less which materials are specifies, and it may be time to try Sitka again if just to see what happens. That Sitka/EIR dread I mentioned earlier did have the kind of sound I was describing, but it is also true that it was bought on merit from a guitar store at full price by none other than Joe Satriani, so it must have had something going for it.

[M Sarad]

A few percentages have been thrown out. Santa Cruz, Collings, Huss and Dalton, Gibson and Martin clearly use a lot.

[stringjunky]

Originally Posted by Bruce Sexauer

Of course I meant I would turn to Sitka to get the sound! People do tend to ask me to do the think I do most, but I hope am an perceived as more than a one trick pony. As my career has advanced, it seems to me that it matters less and less which materials are specifies, and it may be time to try Sitka again if just to see what happens. That Sitka/EIR dread I mentioned earlier did have the kind of sound I was describing, but it is also true that it was bought on merit from a guitar store at full price by none other than Joe Satriani, so it must have had something going for it.

I can imagine a well-sustaining, velvety-textured sound might appeal to electric guitarists like Satriani.

[Richard Mott]

I'm a kitchen player who tends to avoid Sitka completely, as I have associated it with a kind of buzzy sound that lacks the headroom and punch of Adirondack, or the complexity of good Engelmann, or the clarity and transparency of Italian. But these are admittedly just prejudices and as someone pointed out the abundance of Sitka means there's also a ton of variation. To this point, last spring I played a guitar at TAMCO by Mike Baranik with a Sitka top and it just blew me away. Unbelievable clarity and transparent sound. Maybe it was just an exceptional piece of wood, or maybe the builder found a way to pull sound out of it. But in a blind listening test, I would have bet the rent against it being Sitka. I hope that experience taught me a lesson.

[iim7V7IM7]

1) Builder
2) Top Wood
3) Back & Side Wood

In that order of influence...

[Tim McKnight]

Originally Posted by M Sarad

Laurent Brondel's latest Brazilian A1 sports a Sitka top. I was wondering the percentage of Sitka used by custom luthiers here?

New Sitka = Less than 5%
1959 Sitka = I have [built with] nearly all of my stash of 50+ tops ;(

[Halcyon/Tinker]

Sold or used...?

[dekutree64]

Originally Posted by Tim McKnight

New Sitka = Less than 5%
1959 Sitka = I have sold nearly all of my stash of 50+ tops ;(

Hmm, that's an interesting point. I haven't built that many guitars yet, but so far I've universally preferred redwood over spruce. But I wonder if it's because most redwood available these days was actually cut a long time ago, so it's had quite a lot of drying time, whereas most spruce available is fresh cut. I also own a sitka/EIR Goodall that was built in the 90's, which I really like.

Maybe I ought to stock up on sitka while it's still cheap, for use in 15-20 years...

It's always surprising to me that such things even matter, given that the wood itself is hundreds, or even thousands of years old But I guess my skeleton would change quite a bit too after 10-20 years of drying

[Tim McKnight]

Originally Posted by Halcyon/Tinker

Sold or used...?

Used... Its awesome. There is just something tonally special about building with old and seasoned wood. This Sitka has such a pop and immediacy that is quite different than new wood. It was in an attic for 45+ years, just baking and drying out. Its super stiff and very light, both of which are very desirable characteristics for any tone wood.

[Steve Kinnaird]

Let me fess up to steering this away from numbers, and down the hole of personal preferences. Not my intention.
So let's hear some numbers for Matt's question...
39% here.

Steve

[CoolerKing]

Originally Posted by Tim McKnight

Used... Its awesome. There is just something tonally special about old and seasoned wood. This Sitka has sucha pop and immediacy that is quite different than new wood. It was in an attic for 45+ years, just baking and drying out. Its super stiff and very light, both of which are very desirable characteristics for any tone wood.

It almost sounds like that aging process did naturally what the current torrefaction thing is trying to do artificially. I'd love to hear a clip of the '59 sitka perhaps I'll YT search tonight when I'm home.

[Tim McKnight]

Originally Posted by matthewpartrick

It almost sounds like that aging process did naturally what the current torrefaction thing is trying to do artificially. I'd love to hear a clip of the '59 sitka perhaps I'll YT search tonight when I'm home.

Matthew,

Scroll down this page to "Sarah's Peace", Your Smiling Face" and "It Is Well With My Soul". All these are 59 Sitka tops.

I can't compare it to torrefied wood because I don't have any experience using it. The first two songs are played by Fitness1 on his HighLander OM while the last song was played by Marty Stuart on his OO - Deacon McKnight guitar. IMO it has a huge sound for a small box.

[cpabolting]

My personal thoughts.... There are lots of great guitars with Sitka tops... For the average player and even many great players, that perhaps are not aficionados of the nuances of Sitka vs some other spruce, they love it.

The consensus for spruce, there are better choices than Sitka....but it is far too much of a generalization for anyone to suggest that a guitar with a Sitka top cannot be great. They can and are lots of examples

[M Sarad]

In my collection of guitars, Sitka accounts for 25%. The other three are Adirondack, German, and Carpathian spruce.

75% are Brazilian back and sides with the other Wenge.

I discovered that four guitars are still too many.

[kirkham13]

A well regarded builder who's name rhymes with Kumogyi, has Sitka over Brazilian Rosewood as his go-to spec. There were a number of Martin D21s built in these woods... All of them? that seem to be successful. I have an old piece of my parents bed frame from the seventies, who knows when it was originally milled, (the stories it could tell I don't want to know) now drying in a wood shop. Super light and stiff and dense, the annual grains are like steel. Anyway, it's in the form of a 2x10 so it's hard to know until a future re saw happens... Another hopeful luthier in the family wants to carve it into an archtop so well see who gets to it first.