I picked through a pallet of reject tops and came away with roughly 30 tops with 'visually interesting' grain patterns and color. They are well quartered and ring nicely. I expect them to sound good. Mind you I feel almost any piece of wood can give a good showing for itself if the builder gives it what it needs.
I had some walnut that I was practicing resawing and I set it aside as it was flat sawn and of little use other than as purfling or using for double sides. At the time we had a discussion on what an all walnut guitar would sound like and I thought why not build with this stuff and see? It turned out to be a wonderful sounding guitar that changed what people at work thought I could do (we have a large contingent of guitar players in our division).
