What is your favorite top wood? (multiple responses OK) (poll)

[AH Acoustic]

Hi all,


What is your favorite top tone wood?


* Note: Multiple answers in your reply are allowed.


* A comment about why would be helpful as well.

[Andromeda]

Cedar, Sitka Spruce and Walnut are my top three top tone woods.

[Birchtop]

Sitka Spruce

[mikealpine]

Redwood/Sinker Redwood.

[AH Acoustic]

Originally Posted by mikealpine

Redwood/Sinker Redwood.

Thank you for posting this. This would have been a good poll option to specify also.

[Always Learning]

I have four acoustic guitars of various styles, various tops

1996 Amalio Burguet 2M (Cedar Top) nice warm sound
2019 Cordoba C10 Parlor (Cedar Top) ditto on the warm sound
1996 Seagull S6 Dreadnought (Spruce Top) Crisp sound and it projects
2018 Epiphone Joe Pass Emperor II Pro (Laminate Maple Top) it has a warm tone

I like the tone of the solid cedar tops on my two classical guitars. My Seagull steel string guitar's spruce top plays and sounds like a dreadnought ought to sound like. And my Joe Pass, well it's a electric hollow body jazz box thru and thru and for the style of jazz I like, the sound unplugged is that sweet warm tone. And of course when it's plugged into an amp I only play the neck pickup.

Now, back in the early 70s I once owned a 1967 Tamura Flamenco guitar. The luthier Hiroshi Tamura gave each of his models names, that guitar was called a "Mercury" That guitar had a solid Japanese Hokkaido Spruce top and it sang. You could play that thing on one of the busiest LAX runways and those on the other side would hear it even when a plane was taking off. I of course exaggerate, but that awesome guitar sure had projection. I wish that circumstances back in my 20s hadn't forced me to sell it. Back then when I purchased it from my instructor I paid a whopping $400 for that baby. The terrible thing is back then I didn't know how rare this guitar would become. But when I sold it two years later I did get my money back and then some.

My take on which top is better all depends on the sound that pleases you most, and also who is playing the instrument. You can always mike a classical or steel string or add a piezo pickup at the saddle and plug into an amp if you are playing to an audience.

Also I bet if you were to go to a Toys R Us (do they still exist?) and pick up a solid plastic "childs" guitar and put it in the hands Andres Segovia, Paco de Lucia, Julian Bream, John Williams, Charlie Byrd or Michael Hedges, they could make it sing, plastic top and all.

[Willie_D]

Sitka has always been a favorite, and I'm falling in love with mahogany as a top wood recently.

[Jeff Scott]

Paulownia.

[Wade Hampton]

I voted for “Other,” because I like most of the top woods mentioned in the poll.

So in terms of rankings, for me the first choice is spruce, my second choice is western red cedar, and that’s about it.

In the decades that I’ve been playing guitar, I haven’t found any always reliable, infallible way to tell one spruce from another. So I just listen to the sound of an individual guitar when I play it, and either I’ll like it or I won’t.

Western red cedar seems to be more consistent than the various spruce species I’ve ever encountered. I own three guitars and three Blue Lion brand mountain dulcimers that have cedar tops, so I have do have some experience with it.

Redwood is similar but not identical to cedar in terms of its tone and response, but I’ve only played redwood topped guitars on a few occasions. So my hands-on experience with redwood tops isn’t enough for me to make any sweeping statements about it.

All-mahogany and all-koa guitars can sound great, but currently I don’t own any. As general rule, though, I’ve preferred well broken in all-mahogany guitars better than the all-koa and all-walnut guitars that I’ve had a chance to play.

One of the all-mahogany guitars that I’ve enjoyed the most are the Guild D-25M. I’ve owned a couple of those over the years, and think they’re great guitars.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Silly Moustache]

As requested I have voted for three - sitka, Adi, AND Euro.

[BillyMays]

I sure like my Myrtlewood top, boomy and great mids.