[Wade Hampton]

Ozarkpicker wrote:

Originally Posted by Ozarkpicker

Please don’t be offended...but could it be that the promotion of “bear claw” or “silking” as more desirable simply a way to make use of pieces of wood that would normally not be used by a guitar company or luthier/builder because in their eyes it was flawed & unattractive?

Charles explained it in his post, so I'll just add that the only time the cross grain medullary rays known as "silk" are visible is when the wood of the top is well quartered. So the presence of silk is a reliable indicator of that, at least.

I've had my best luck with guitars and dulcimers that have silky tops, so that is something I look for. It's not a requirement, though - I've played (and owned) plenty of other instruments that had little to no silk which STILL sounded great.

So the presence of silk is an indicator of quartersawn wood, not proof of tonal superiority.

Bearclaw is more a matter of fashion and personal preference among guitarists. While there are some builders who'll argue that bearclaw tops sound the best, others disagree. I'm not going to argue that case either way, and will only say that I have never personally witnessed any corresponding tonal characteristics - good or bad - with spruce tops that have bearclaw figure. Some sound good, some don't.

So for me bearclaw is a visual characteristic, nothing more. I don't happen to care for its appearance, but wouldn't let its presence keep me from buying a guitar I liked otherwise.

Then Bufflehead wrote:

Originally Posted by bufflehead

My Taylor BBT, a fairly inexpensive travel guitar, has a solid, sitka spruce top with lovely silking and a single, striking bear claw. I assume that the boards would have been used in a much more expensive guitar, but were "demoted" to the BBT because of the bear claw for fear that the more expensive guitar would have been less sellable with such a "defect." Therefore, I got a remarkable top, both visually and sonically, on a <$500 guitar.

It's possible that it got downgraded because it only had one visible bearclaw mark, but what's more likely is that it was a small piece of spruce and so it got made into a travel guitar rather than a larger instrument.

That was one of the motivations when Larrivée started making their parlor guitars: they had some wood on hand that was too small to make into a larger guitar but too good to throw away.

But Taylor isn't going to downgrade a regular-sized guitar top because of bearclaw figure. On the contrary, the more bearclaw the better, and the more likely such a top will end up on a high end guitar. Because there are plenty of players who are willing and able to pay extra for heavily bearclawed tops.

But a top with only one streak of bearclaw by itself? Yeah, that top might get "demoted" to a less expensive instrument. A lot of that would depend on the tastes of the in-house employees who sort the wood stock for the guitar companies, and on the corporate culture and philosophy of the company itself.

Bufflehead concluded:

Originally Posted by bufflehead

I did an A/B comparison with two other BBTs when auditioning the guitar, and the one with the bear claw was clearly superior in tone. It desperately wanted to come home with me.

And you made exactly the right choice.


Wade Hampton Miller