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  #16  
Old 01-24-2022, 04:03 AM
Dave JH Dave JH is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AZLiberty View Post
Agreed, though I think it has significantly fewer overtones than Sitka. Every one I have played has a very strong fundimental. I ended up selling the one guitar I had with a European spruce top because I could never bond with it's clean fundamental tone.
Interesting to hear your perception. I don’t own a Sitka guitar and haven’t done for a long time. I do remember it was a bit fuzzier sounding compared to adi or alpine if that makes sense, not as crystalline clear. I do agree there is a good fundamental to alpine, but find the same with adi. As some have mentioned here it’s hard to generalise as differences may be due to construction and voicing rather than inherent in the wood itself.
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  #17  
Old 01-24-2022, 05:04 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wade Hampton View Post
My experience has been that there is much less audible difference between different species of spruce than all the discussion on this and other forums would have you believe.


whm

This is my experience as well. There is so much overlap between the different species of spruce that it really comes down to qualities of the individual top, not the species.
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  #18  
Old 01-24-2022, 10:56 AM
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Default Spruces Described by Martin:

Adirondack Spruce Also commonly referred to as Red Spruce. Harvested
throughout Eastern North America. Presents both
wide pale-yellow and compressed reddish grain structure.
Its’ strength and overall stiffness makes Adirondack
Spruce a preferred choice for players seeking higher
volume and focused attack.
Adirondack Spruce - VTS Vintage Tone System. Everything you know and love
about Adirondack Spruce plus Martin’s proprietary
rapid aging process that most closely approximates
the sought-after performance of vintage era collectible
Martin guitars. This unique process stabilizes the top
leaving it less susceptible to the effects of temperature
& humidity while offering the responsiveness and sonic
presence of an instrument that has fully matured.
Cert. Euro. Spruce (High Altitude Swiss) A European Spruce harvested from higher elevations of
Northern-facing slopes, High Altitude Swiss Spruce grows
under different regional conditions than its close “Italian
Alpine” cousin. Presents a pale-yellow character with narrow
uniform grain, and sonic qualities similar to Adirondack (Red)
Spruce.
Engelmann Spruce A North-American Spruce harvested in western regions and
from lower latitudes than Sitka Spruce. Presents a very light
white color with close & straight grain lines. This material is
generally softer than Sitka Spruce. Widely accepted as being
more complimentary to smaller body shapes and to players
with a light touch.
Italian Alpine Spruce A European Spruce harvested from higher elevations,
Italian Alpine Spruce is among the stiffer varieties of Spruce.
Italian Alpine Spruce has sonic qualities similar to Adirondack
(Red) Spruce, yet exhibits more evenly spaced and slightly
narrower grain lines, and a pale-yellow appearance.
Mahogany Harvested throughout the tropical Americas. Presents a
uniform texture overall, and may occasionally exhibit
desirable irregularities such as “flame” or “quilt” appearance.
Most commonly paired with Mahogany back and sides for
an instrument that offers enhanced midrange and treble presence.
Sitka Spruce Harvested throughout Northwestern North America.
Presents pale white to pinkish-yellow color with
generally uniform and linear grain lines. Very responsive
and versatile across a great variety of body shapes, Sitka
Spruce brings a wide dynamic range suitable for many
playing styles.
Sitka Spruce - VTS Vintage Tone System. Everything you know and love
about Sitka Spruce plus Martin’s proprietary rapid aging
process that most closely approximates the sought-after
performance of vintage era collectible Martin guitars.
This unique process stabilizes the top leaving it less
susceptible to the effects of temperature & humidity
while offering the responsiveness and sonic presence
of an instrument that has fully matured.
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  #19  
Old 01-24-2022, 02:16 PM
tadol tadol is offline
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At the NCAL (Northern Cal Asso. of Luthiers) meeting yesterday, Brian Burns gave a demonstration of objectively evaluating spruces for top material. It was a discussion of measuring the weight, deflection, and frequency response of a piece of spruce to evaluate its potential for being a great top - and what kind of responses work better for different styles of guitars. This is an important exercise, as the grading of spruce for tops is generally very subjective, with aesthetic considerations taking the priority - most larger builders have to emphasize a consistency in appearance, and perfect looking tops are quick to choose and easy to sell, and much more important than taking the time to specifically evaluate each one. Small builders, and solo builders, can keep notes and remember how each guitars top felt and tapped when thinned and when braced, but thats a luxury larger builders can’t afford.

It’s long been known that builders find pieces of wood that have the great density, rigidity, and tap, but lack the aesthetic appearance that most buyers lust for. They will use those for instruments for serious players who only care, first and foremost, for how a guitar sounds - and maybe with a nice dark sunburst. ;-)

It was a good presentation, and worthwhile for anyone who wants to build and to understand and evaluate their materials. I think he has a bunch of that info on his website -
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  #20  
Old 01-24-2022, 02:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Wade Hampton View Post
My experience has been that there is much less audible difference between different species of spruce than all the discussion on this and other forums would have you believe.
Sitka rules!
Adi drools!

Otherwise, Wade is correct.
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  #21  
Old 01-24-2022, 03:38 PM
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It's been my experience in having handled all of those spruces and others and built guitars out of all of them that there are more important things going on then just species of wood. IOW I am of the opinion that 'spruce is spruce' and I am not alone in that opinion.

There are floppy pieces of Red Spruce just like there are very stiff pieces of Carpathian and so on. The stiffness and density, which is ultimately the driving force of tone, varies enough within these species of wood that you cannot make generalizations.

This is why small shop luthiers build either by feel, use deflection testing or more modern acoustic and Chaladni tests to determine top thickness for any given spruce based on it's stiffness.
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  #22  
Old 01-24-2022, 08:35 PM
MarkLee MarkLee is offline
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There's so much overlap in spruces that sometimes merchants who work with these things daily don't really know what they're looking at after it's been cut into soundboard slabs. Who cares? If it makes a nice sounding guitar and has been logged sustainably/ethically I certainly don't care what species it is.
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  #23  
Old 01-24-2022, 08:55 PM
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When I worked in the forestry department at Clemson
(as a programmer, not a forester) I was told that long
leaf yellow pine and short leaf yellow pine were indistinguishable
under the microscope.

-Mike
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  #24  
Old 01-25-2022, 08:26 AM
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Lutz comes from British Columbia and is a hybrid of Sitka and Engelmann ( White ) spruce.
It's a lighter color than Sitka more white ( like Engelmann ) with a very straight grain.
It's reported to be more like Adirondack in it's musical properties than the other spruces, so more head room and a little bit of a shimmer when strummed .
I have a Lowden F35 with a Lutz top which I'm delighted with. It's a very good all around do anything acoustic guitar, lots of volume and projection. Responds well to a light or heavy touch, great strummed or finger picked.
I also have a Martin OM28 Marquis with adirondack and I'd say that breaks up tonally when strumming heavily more than the F35 does. But it's a smaller instrument, different builder. They're both Rosewood back and sides.
Both super guitars , tonally very different, different as chalk and cheese both good at what they do.
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  #25  
Old 01-25-2022, 03:38 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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From what I can tell 'headroom' is mostly related to top density and stiffness. Red and Sitka tend to be denser than Engelmann and WRC, but there's plenty of overlap. Not every piece of Red ('Adirondack') spruce will have more headroom than any piece of Engelmann. It's about the piece, not the species.

Some luthiers aver that Sitka is the 'odd spruce out': all else equal it doesn't sound like the others. One measurement project found that there may be a basis for that. He (Haines) could not find any reason to expect the results he saw, and wondered if they might simply be artifacts of his measurement methods. The jury is certainly out on that one.
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  #26  
Old 01-25-2022, 09:11 PM
Pizzanetor Pizzanetor is offline
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ok, I understand that all spruce have different density and that some have different characteristics from others.

But there must be a reason why the Adirondack Spruce is worth 4-5 times the cost of a Sitka Spruce
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  #27  
Old 01-25-2022, 10:38 PM
varve varve is offline
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Sometimes it is nice to have data in graphic form. This graph is from some consulting work I've done for a specialty sawmill that supplies spruce tops, 300,000 of them per year. Full story in the last Fretboard Journal # 48, starting on page 74.

I like this graph because it is representative, in a few hundred samples, of the overall supply, as measured in several thousand billets at the mill over the last couple of years. We graph Longitudinal Modulus of Elasticity ( a linear measure of stiffness) on Y, and Density at 8% Equilibrium Moisture Content on X. The general linear relationship is observed, with a lot of variability around the regression line.

A few observations leap out:

Lutz (in green) tends toward the light and stiff, and with a fairly tight variability - perhaps because of its geographic range is limited to a couple of river valleys in vast British Columbia.

Adirondack ( in red, get it?) tends to the heavy and stiff, but with a HUGE amount of variability. In this case, the samples are from both the Hampton Brothers in the southern end of its range (the highlands of the Carolinas) and Boucher, in the northern end of the range. The cloud of variability is identical between both populations, which was a bit of a surprise to me.

Sitka (blue) is all over the map in both characteristics, but with a marked drop off in stiffness at the lower end of the density scale. This may be why the "lighter" species like Lutz and Engelmann tend to be preferred for lower density tops - they maintain their stiffness at lower densities.

Lots more to say on this, but it gives you some idea with real data. There is a bottom line, though, and that is that knowledge of species, by itself, is insufficient to know what you are actually getting when you buy a top as a luthier. Other research we have done (Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, October 2019) shows the importance of knowing the precise acoustic characteristics of your guitar top.

[IMG]LUTZ SITKA ADIRONDACK by David Olson, on Flickr[/IMG]


Cheers, Dave Olson

Last edited by varve; 01-26-2022 at 12:48 AM.
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  #28  
Old 01-26-2022, 01:07 AM
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Awesome chart Dave! You've made the engineer in me and the guitarist in me very happy.
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  #29  
Old 01-26-2022, 05:45 AM
MarkLee MarkLee is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pizzanetor View Post
But there must be a reason why the Adirondack Spruce is worth 4-5 times the cost of a Sitka Spruce
Rarity, and the hive mind perceiving it as superior because it's what a lot of prewar Martin and Gibson guitars used. Those two factors mean people can charge more for it.
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2003 Faith Jupiter - Engelmann & Trembesi - Lace California
2003 Epiphone Elitist Texan - Sitka & mahogany - Fishman Neo-D
2007 Epiphone Emperor Regent - spruce & maple - Vintage Vibe Floating CC
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  #30  
Old 01-26-2022, 06:24 AM
Pizzanetor Pizzanetor is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by varve View Post
Sometimes it's nice to have data in graphic form. This graph is from some consulting work I've done for a specialty sawmill that supplies spruce tops, 300,000 of them per year.
Thank you very much for this graph, it was really very helpful and clear!
Anyway, I spent the whole morning in a music shop and after playing several guitars of the same model, but with Sitka spruce and Adirondack spruce, I have to admit that I prefer Adirondack in practically all cases.
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Last edited by Pizzanetor; 01-26-2022 at 07:48 AM.
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