Grading Top-Wood for Musical Instruments
There is no substitution for experience. Once you have handled many peices of tonewood and experienced how they evolve into instruments, you begin to develop a ‘feel’ for how they will ‘sound’. We know of no scientific methods that have a predictable outcome. Measurements will (at least) help the selection of pieces that meet the physical and structural requirements for a musical instrument. The following focuses on the top – the single largest contributer to the final sound.
Visual Inspection
The most commonly seen grading scale for tonewoods is A, AA, AAA, and AAAA (or master grade).
The scale is subjective but useful for the retail of tonewoods. Ironically, when a set of top pieces are uniform, tight grained and beautiful, these are also the atributes of a good sounding top. Like everything else in life, there are many exceptions…
Grade A No knots, swirls or holes and fairly straight grained. There may have uneven color, streaks and uneven grain lines (also called compression). It will probably not be perfectly quartersawn or the piece will be well quartered only for part of its width. Runout is likely. There will be little or no medulary rays – cross-grain figure.
Grade AA is somewhere between A and AAA grade – see below.
Grade AAA has an even overall color with uniform and tight grain lines, evenly quartersawn along the full width of the board and with little or no runout. Grain lines should be tighter than 12 lines per inch. There may be good cross-grain figure, also known as silking or bearclaw.
Grade AAAA (Mastergrade) has uniform color and pronounced cross-grain figuring in addition to being evenly quartersawn with no visible runout and very uniform grain.
Grade AAAAA – Used by some builders to indicate that their wood is better than anyone elses.
https://acousticmusic.org/research/g...ion/tone-wood/
If Grade AAAAA is experienced as stated, what of the previous 4?