Which grade is this spruce top?

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by charles Tauber

Everyone who owns a guitar that he or she likes believe that the top on that guitar is a AAAAAAA Super-Deluxe-Master grade top. That is, until he or she has decided that guitar is lacking in some way, in which case it immediately becomes an A-grade top, unless he or she wants to sell it, in which case it immediately goes back to an AAAAAAAA Super-Deluxe-Master grade top for selling purposes.

Amen Rev! Preach on!

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

What? Yer mom never gave you The Warning Talk about wearing good underwear in case you get hit by a car and taken to the hospital?

Mother told me about the importance of wearing clean underclothing, but getting hit by a car and having strangers look at it never entered the discussion. My mother was a very pragmatic woman and would have snorted in derision at the thought.....


whm

[Simon Fay]

Grading for instruments is subjective but not arbitrary. Here are the guidelines:

• Straight grain.
• More grain lines per inch the better
• The least amount of knots, knot shadows, pitch pockets, or abrupt grain like bearclaw.
• Even color and even looking grain lines
• Medullary rays / silking which indicate quartersawn cut.

Runout used to not be a big deal but more folks are aware of it. So add no runout to the list.

What you have above are the guidelines to get a true Mastergrade top. I've attached a photo below of a Swiss Spruce top that I recently built with that is very close or right at what I consider Mastergrade. It is challenging to find tops that are this close to perfect.

Essentially, what the grading is trying to estimate is how close is the wood to a perfectly even, homogenous looking top with a lot of medullary rays and very tight grain lines. That's the perfect top. But don't let perfect distract you from tops with more "character". One of the reasons I love Adirondack is that you can find some really beautiful tops with attractive grain lines. But when it comes to grading -- just understand that the above characteristics are what is perceived as being ideal or perfect. In reality, there are very few tops that are truly perfect as defined by grading criteria.


To the OP, your top looks very nice and as mentioned above -- the silking is a desired quality and has never been perceived as a flaw.

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by Simon Fay

Grading for instruments is subjective but not arbitrary. Here are the guidelines:

• Straight grain.
• More grain lines per inch the better
• The least amount of knots, knot shadows, pitch pockets, or abrupt grain like bearclaw.
• Even color and even looking grain lines
• Medullary rays / silking which indicate quartersawn cut.

Runout used to not be a big deal but more folks are aware of it. So add no runout to the list.

What you have above are the guidelines to get a true Mastergrade top. I've attached a photo below of a Swiss Spruce top that I recently built with that is very close or right at what I consider Mastergrade. It is challenging to find tops that are this close to perfect.

Essentially, what the grading is trying to estimate is how close is the wood to a perfectly even, homogenous looking top with a lot of medullary rays and very tight grain lines. That's the perfect top. But don't let perfect distract you from tops with more "character". One of the reasons I love Adirondack is that you can find some really beautiful tops with attractive grain lines. But when it comes to grading -- just understand that the above characteristics are what is perceived as being ideal or perfect. In reality, there are very few tops that are truly perfect as defined by grading criteria.


To the OP, your top looks very nice and as mentioned above -- the silking is a desired quality and has never been perceived as a flaw.

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

Would you say that these criteria lead to better sound, or is that just luck?

[LemonCats]

The aging toner on my wife <3

[printer2]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

Would you say that these criteria lead to better sound, or is that just luck?

Heard one person that said, "The more I practice the luckier I get." after someone commented on his shooting skill. So the luthier's luck (or skill) can come into play with getting the most out of the wood. But whether a picture perfect top will always sound better than a lesser top? Probably not.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

Would you say that these criteria lead to better sound, or is that just luck?

Given the number guitars that I've played over the years with beautiful tops but that sounded blah, the the number of less than beautiful tops on guitars that sounded stellar, I reckon that there might be other criteria besides the visual.

Luck is random, skill is repeatable.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Mother told me about the importance of wearing clean underclothing, but getting hit by a car and having strangers look at it never entered the discussion. My mother was a very pragmatic woman and would have snorted in derision at the thought.....


whm

My mother was eminently practical. I think that she was concerned with her son making a good impression on all of those pretty nurses.

[MC5C]

I make archtops, so I never know what the grain is going to look like at the eventual surface. I am happiest when I see what I call fractal grain, where the complexity seems to increase the deeper you look. I have some redwood that has this in spades, but in bands across the top, as the arch rises the fractalness fades.

[Simon Fay]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Thank you for taking the time to explain.

Would you say that these criteria lead to better sound, or is that just luck?

No problem. Regarding sound, the cosmetic criteria are largely separated from the structure of the top (strength, stiffness, density, etc.). Most builders want a top that is lightweight and strong. Some folks think that lots of grain lines per inch correlate with strength but I believe that has been shown to largely be a false assumption. I've noticed no such correlation but my sample size is small (I only build about 10-12 guitars per year).

In conclusion, my advice is to not assume a high grade, expensive top will sound any better than a low grade top.

[RalphH]

My hummingbird has very unique (/odd) looking top. Masses of silking, but very variable grain pattern - the grain gets tighter and tighter until two lines are so close together it looks like one solid line, then starts to open up again, giving it a pair of dark lines running through either end of the saddle.

But Gibson chose to use it on a customshop model, so either they don't grade wood, or they don't worry too much about grain uniformity.



It sounds great, looks a little unique, so who cares beyond that.



Sitka is not Koa or Maple -- it's not so highly figured that some pieces are just mind-blowing. It's just not worth worrying about what it looks like IMO -- what it sounds like is all that matters.

[perttime]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

...

Would you say that these criteria lead to better sound, or is that just luck?

Just a lay mans opinion:
Straight and tight grain quite likely makes the wood more predictable to work with - and easier to work for great sound and structural integrity. The other things give you a look that you like - or don't like.

Personally, I quite like it when a top has some visual "character". Of course, it also has to sound right.

[AndrewG]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

What? Yer mom never gave you The Warning Talk about wearing good underwear in case you get hit by a car and taken to the hospital?

Yep, had that one-along with the stern admonishment to never, ever, run with scissors.

[HogsNRoses]

In my NGD post, I counted the rings on my new Gibson - 61 rings. There are fewer than 8 rings per inch in parts. The guitar sounds great, but one supplier of tone wood would grade it at less than “A.”

From Dana Bourgeois and others’ explanations, I gather that the tone of the top can be predicted from mass (less is more) and velocity of sound. Stiffness is an indicator of how thin you can make the top (reducing mass). The tightness of grain is related to stiffness and mass.

Mass builders make the same top thickness for each combination of species/grade and size. A hand builder can adjust the overall top thickness based on a measurement of stiffness. Taking it further, it sounds like Furch adjusts the top thickness throughout to a certain stiffness spec, making their tops consistent but also getting the most out of each piece of wood.

Here’s my off-the-wall hypothesis for getting a good top from a mass builder. Look for a light weight, well-sawn top. That way, you might get a less massive top for a given stiffness. My departed Martin D1 had nice little bear claw marks, perfectly symmetrical. To get the most advantage of that wood, it might have helped to make the top a little thinner than usual. As it was, it was a nice sounding guitar.

Don’t buy a guitar based on my hypothesis, though. The ultimate test of the wood is how good it sounds.

[RalphH]

Originally Posted by HogsNRoses

In my NGD post, I counted the rings on my new Gibson - 61 rings. There are fewer than 8 rings per inch in parts. The guitar sounds great, but one supplier of tone wood would grade it at less than “A.”

From Dana Bourgeois and others’ explanations, I gather that the tone of the top can be predicted from mass (less is more) and velocity of sound. Stiffness is an indicator of how thin you can make the top (reducing mass). The tightness of grain is related to stiffness and mass.

Mass builders make the same top thickness for each combination of species/grade and size. A hand builder can adjust the overall top thickness based on a measurement of stiffness. Taking it further, it sounds like Furch adjusts the top thickness throughout to a certain stiffness spec, making their tops consistent but also getting the most out of each piece of wood.

Here’s my off-the-wall hypothesis for getting a good top from a mass builder. Look for a light weight, well-sawn top. That way, you might get a less massive top for a given stiffness. My departed Martin D1 had nice little bear claw marks, perfectly symmetrical. To get the most advantage of that wood, it might have helped to make the top a little thinner than usual. As it was, it was a nice sounding guitar.

Don’t buy a guitar based on my hypothesis, though. The ultimate test of the wood is how good it sounds.

Wow, we are now guitar nerding to the extreme.

I count 26 rings per inch on the densest part of my hummingbird top. Average is probably more like 20.

More importantly -- it sounds great.