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  #31  
Old 06-27-2016, 06:56 PM
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rick-slo rick-slo is offline
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And then there are double top guitars (name your wood combo), which if built properly can take maximum volume and resistance to being over driven to new heights.
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  #32  
Old 06-27-2016, 09:13 PM
j3ffr0 j3ffr0 is offline
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Cedar has a sweet sound too it. I really, really like it. However, it is not louder than spruce. The loudness has more to do with the bracing and the way the guitar is made than the wood species.
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  #33  
Old 06-27-2016, 09:16 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eugenius View Post
So far, I believe this to be true, anybody else have any thoughts on this?
Loud guitars are loud - be they cedar or spruce.
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  #34  
Old 06-27-2016, 09:22 PM
SongwriterFan SongwriterFan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SongwriterFan View Post
Cedar seems to be more RESPONSIVE than spruce is (at least to me).

That is, it's louder for any given amount of "input" from the fingers/pick.

I've never been able to "overdrive" a cedar top, but then I don't thrash/wail/etc on a guitar. I have a very light touch.

Those who really trash/wail/pound/etc (or however you want to describe it) on their guitars seem to have a concenus opinion that spruce is able to be driven to higher overall sound volumes than cedar.

So, I'd say that cedar is more responsive, but spruce has the "headroom" to go louder . . . IF your playing style is one that needs that.
I agree 100%. You're one smart dude, there, SWF.
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  #35  
Old 06-28-2016, 01:19 AM
Steel and wood Steel and wood is offline
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Generally no. (Cedar is softer than spruce and therefore would absorb more sound is my reasoning).
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  #36  
Old 06-28-2016, 08:25 AM
rokdog49 rokdog49 is offline
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Ok to throw a wrench in the mix, the European Cedar Jean Larrivee uses in some of his guitars is stiffer and denser than the Western U.S. Cedar.
It is a close cousin to Sitka in terms of response but of course, warmer.
As far as "loudness" Sitka and Adi are louder and punchier in the headroom area but I find Cedar louder and fuller when strummed lightly or fingerpicked.
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  #37  
Old 06-28-2016, 11:07 AM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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One fly in the ointment is that damping in wood is actually hard to nail down. My understanding is that many materials have one damping factor that is independent of frequency. You can measure it at a low frequency where it;s easy to do, and have some confidence that it will be the same at higher frequencies. This is not the case with wood; the damping varies with frequency.

When Haines did his measurements of wood properties he looked at the damping at different frequencies for each sample by vibrating them in higher order modes. By cutting measuring, say, three modes he got three damping factors for that sample and different pitches, Then he'd cut the sample down, so it would vibrate at a higher pitch, and do it all again. Lather, rinse, repeat. This gave him a lot of data for the samples he had.

One thing he found was that most softwoods started out with fairly low damping at low frequencies. The damping factor rose at a steady rate with pitch, up to about 2000 Hz, and then it started to go up faster. The one wood that seemed to work differently was Sitka spruce. It had higher damping than most at low frequency, which dropped off to a 'normal' value at around 2kHz, and then rose normally. He was unable to account for either the normal damping curve, or the difference in Sitka. The normal curve could, for example, all have been simply an artifact of the way he did his testing. I'm not sure how many actual sources he had for his Sitka spruce; it could all have been from one log, for all I know. He was mostly testing violin woods, and Sitka is not commonly used for high-end fiddles.

At any rate, the point is that there's reason to think that 'the' damping factor of wood is not some fixed number, but varies in some way with frequency. Normally we'd expect low damping to favor high frequencies, since it tends to cut the amplitude by a certain percentage per cycle, and there are more cycles per second at high frequencies.

Nor is it entirely clear how low damping would effect the tone. It could be that having more upper partials in the sound could produce a timbre that was perceived as 'fuller' rather than 'brighter', for example. The ear tends to assign the energy of harmonic partials to the fundamental, shoring up the perception of pitch at that frequency. String partials are not really harmonic, of course, and that could contribute to the sort of roughness that has been mentioned. As usual, relating the actual physical sound produced to out perception of it is more complicated than it 'ought' to be. Knowing what happens doesn't always tell you how it will sound, and there's a lot we don't know about what happens.
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  #38  
Old 06-28-2016, 01:43 PM
westman westman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eugenius View Post
So far, I believe this to be true, anybody else have any thoughts on this?
Can u list the guitars u'v based this on - (played) 'So far', particularly cedar topped.
Reason - in my experience - it's the guitar.
I have had a cedar topped guitar that was louder than most guitars I've ever played.
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Last edited by westman; 06-28-2016 at 01:44 PM. Reason: sp
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  #39  
Old 06-28-2016, 02:27 PM
robj144 robj144 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by westman View Post
Can u list the guitars u'v based this on - (played) 'So far', particularly cedar topped.
Reason - in my experience - it's the guitar.
I have had a cedar topped guitar that was louder than most guitars I've ever played.
This thread is 8 years old. I don't think he'll respond.

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  #40  
Old 06-28-2016, 04:30 PM
westman westman is offline
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hu
thanks rob, hope he's found out for himself - if he still plays.

mods, is there a 'time script' in vBulletin that can stop redundant threads from being resurrected ?
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  #41  
Old 06-29-2016, 10:06 AM
Frogstar Frogstar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by westman View Post
hu
thanks rob, hope he's found out for himself - if he still plays.

mods, is there a 'time script' in vBulletin that can stop redundant threads from being resurrected ?
I've seen options where there's a box you have to check on old threads that say "This thread is over [90 days or whatever] old, please consider whether this is a worthwhile reason to bump the thread" or something along those lines, before it will let you respond.
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  #42  
Old 06-29-2016, 10:13 AM
Napman41 Napman41 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eugenius View Post
So far, I believe this to be true, anybody else have any thoughts on this?
Yes I do and sometimes they are though other times they are not.
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  #43  
Old 06-29-2016, 10:18 AM
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Bruce Sexauer Bruce Sexauer is offline
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One of the tricks to getting performance in a guitar is getting the top thickness just right, neither too thick to be responsive nor too thin to be structurally adequate. Most spruce has a narrower window within which it works well than western red cedar does. This means that it is easier to make a responsive cedar guitar that to make a responsive spruce guitar. Thus the average cedar guitar, especially at the low end of the market, may seem to perform better than the average spruce guitar. Only my educated and experienced opinion, of course.

For those truly skilled in the fine art of the balance between performance and destruction, most choose high quality spruce for its combination of tone, sensitivity, and headroom as well.
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