Engelmann and Euro

[JamesO]

I'm about to do a very dangerous thing. I'm going to ask you to generalize about tonewoods. I know, I know. I can already hear the responses. "Trust your builder." "It's all in the builder's hands." "A great luthier can make a great guitar out of German salami, let alone German spruce!"

But as making guitars is one of my outlets for refreshing my soul, I'm the builder, and I don't have much experience with either, sadly. 15 years ago I used to love playing the 900 series Taylors with Engelmann tops when they'd come into the guitar shop, but it's been a long time to draw back on that reference.

Generally speaking, what are some differences you can expect between a typical piece of Engelmann and a typical piece of Euro? What would you get more and less of from Engelmann than Euro, and visa versa? What traits might be similar between the two?

[jessupe]

In general terms Engelmann is less dense, lighter heft, higher radiation{speed of sound transfer} which has pros and cons and most likely less stiff cross grain, where the Euro is more dense, stiffer, can have very high radiation, but tends to be less based on density. Generally stronger cross grain stiffness.

Engelmann can have an all most cedar like quality to it whereas the Euro is more "woody", but not as woody as Sitka

These are generalizations as are ALL base descriptions, all species of wood, be it hard or soft wood can have dramatic variation within the same species.

In general one may opt to thin the Euro spruce more as it is stiffer, plate comparisons would often note that the same range of motion would be seen with two tops of differing thickness, one thicker, one thinner.

And in general Eneglmann is cheaper. My 2 Lira

[jim1960]

From the Tonewood Data Source:

Engelmann is also known as white, European or German spruce, although they are technically different species....Englemann Spruce (USA) Is prized for being similar in color to European (German) White spruce. Extremely light in weight, it seems to produce a slightly louder and "open" sound than Sitka spruce. It is thought to have the greatest overtones of any top wood....When Engelmann spruce was first being discovered by luthiers, it was touted as an inexpensive replacement for German spruce and in fact, it has many of the same fine qualities- a robust sound rich in harmonics with good projection....European or Silver Spruce, the spruce of choice for makers of classical guitars, shares a number of characteristics with Engelmann spruce, including color, lightness of weight, harmonic complexity, and fullness at the lower end of the dynamic range. Next to Englemann, European has been said to have the greatest overtone of any top wood. Because of its visual similarity and significantly higher cost, its name has been affixed more than once to a piece of Engelmann spruce by unscrupulous (or uninformed) wood dealers and luthiers. European spruce differs from Engelmann in its potentially quicker response and greater headroom. The availability of anything better than mediocre European spruce (which is easily exceeded in quality by the better grades of Engelmann - a commodity that is still readily obtainable) is sharply limited, unless the boards are selected at the source in Europe.

Hope that helps a bit.

[Alan Carruth]

As has been said, Engelmann is, on the average a bit less dense than European spruce. Since many of the properties, and in particular the Young's modulus along the grain, tend to track the density pretty well, Engelmann is, on average, not as stiff for a given thickness, but if left a little thicker to get the stiffness up, it tends to make a somewhat lighter weight top. This, in my experience, correlates with being more 'responsive' and having less 'headroom'.

Since wood is a natural material there's a LOT of variation within any species. I've gotten Engelmann tops that were among the lowest in density of all the tops I've used, and some that were right up there with the densest Sitka and Red spruce. Much the same can be said of any other species. At this point, I tend to feel that once you control for density, spruce is pretty much all spruce.

Although you can get an idea of some of the properties of a piece of wood from the way it looks, generally that's not as useful an indicator as you'd like. It's better to use some sort of measurement to determine how a particular top will work best, rather than relying on the name or grade on the label. Most practiced makers do some sort of test, ranging from tapping and flexing by hand to more technical measurements of stiffness and density. Since any measurement involves some inaccuracy it's probably best to use several different ones as checks on each other.

[JamesO]

Thanks, guys

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

It's better to use some sort of measurement to determine how a particular top will work best, rather than relying on the name or grade on the label. Most practiced makers do some sort of test, ranging from tapping and flexing by hand to more technical measurements of stiffness and density. Since any measurement involves some inaccuracy it's probably best to use several different ones as checks on each other.

I use deflection testing along with the method from Trevor Gore's books. One of the very popular luthiers on this board gave me some great advice back in Nov, and it led me to doing a work up with six sitka tops (he recommended sitka because of its consistency). Brent from Alaskan Specialty woods sent me three tops that were sequentially cut from the same billet along with three from separate billets. Comparing their deflection data to the results from Trevor's system was interesting indeed. There was a pretty significant correlation between the two with one outlier. Using an f of X tended to reflect a deflection in the range of of X across the tops. So if I used and f of 65, I tended to see a deflection of __ across most of the tops. When I thinned those tops to reflect an f of 60, same thing. Those tops tended to deflect within a certain range again.

[Alan Carruth]

In my experience, the best predictor of cross grain stiffness is ring angle. Well quartered wood has the highest cross grain stiffness available from that tree, and it drops off fast as the ring angle departs from 90 degrees. Flat cut has a somewhat lower cross grain stiffness, owing, I suppose, to the loss of the contribution from the medullary rays. 45 degree skew cut will have the lowest cross grain stiffness.

To put that in perspective: I cut two tops from a plank of WRC some time back, being careful to get them as much alike as I could. The long grain E values are within .3% of each other, but the cross grain values vary by 20%. The less stiff one is barely off perfectly quartered; certainly less than 3 degrees.

I do see a strong correlation, as I've said, between long grain E values and density, which holds well for all softwoods I've tested. There are, of course, outliers. Wood with significant 'compression grain' or 'reaction wood' will usually be dense, and less stiff than it's density would predict. Wood with relatively thin latewood lines will often be stiffer than expected. Run out reduces long grain stiffness as well.

[YOUNG LIN]

I fortunately have played both one is Breedlove (engelmann ) one is Lakewood ( euro) the engelmann spruce is very very similar to euro , they share the most characteristics, while engelmann is slightly brighter than euro and softer than euro , it somehow creates a very hollow sound, more accurately , I would call it reverberation. Since engelmann is softer , if you hit the strings too hard , the sound will explode. Euro is siffer and more dense than engelmann , is like somewhere between Sitka and adirondack, but because of the cold climate , it still remains the softness , let's say it this way , euro =80% engelmann and 20 adrindack, it's louder , more responsive than engelmann . You do realize that some wood seller just s label engelmann as "German spruce " and shipp it all the way back to USA . Visually , en is almost white , and German is little bit dark with some orange hue .

[Alan Carruth]

Many years ago Mike Gurian gave a talk at a luthier's meeting about re-sawing tops. He said that the longer the tree sits between being cut down and being re-sawed the darker the wood tends to be. He used to get fresh logs and cut tops while they were still practically dripping wet, and then hang them on a clothes line to dry as fast as possible, so they'd be nice and white.

I've been at this a long time, and seen a lot of wood of various ages and origins. I've seen enough old European spruce that's as dark as Sitka that I'm very hesitant to make a guess in most cases. There are those who aver that it's possible to reliably distinguish Sitka from the other spruces under a microscope, although I don't know what they're looking at. Otherwise I've spoken with experts who say that if you don't have samples of the bark and needles, you're more or less guessing when it comes to telling spruces apart. It would be interesting to set up some blind tests to see how reliable folks actually are at identifying the different species.

[Portland Bill]

I've heard the Germans buy Engelmann off you and sell it back at a hefty mark up as German, don't know if it's true or not.

[Alan Carruth]

As I heard it years ago, the German wood suppliers would buy up American spruce (whether Engelmann, White, or Red), cut it up for tops, and list it as 'tone wood'. They don't seem to have ever claimed it was German spruce, but left folks to assume what they chose. OTOH, I have no proof of this; it's just something I was told.

[lizzard]

This worth all u paid but... To me Engelmann is the closest spruce to cedar. Yet it has all the traits of spruce. It is (imo) largely underrated and might be my favorite top.

Chris