#16
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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
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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. |
#18
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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. View Images Close |
#19
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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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More than a few Santa Cruz’s, a few Sexauers, a Patterson, a Larrivee, a Cumpiano, and a Klepper!! |
#20
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Adi drools! Otherwise, Wade is correct.
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1 dreadnought, 1 auditorium, 1 concert, and 2 travel guitars. |
#21
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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. |
#22
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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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2002 Paragon OM - Torrefied Sitka & Bigleaf maple - Carlos Juan CS Sensor 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 2017 Vintage VJ-100 - Bearclaw Sitka & Sapele - Gretsch Deltoluxe |
#23
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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 |
#24
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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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Steve |
#25
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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. |
#26
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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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I suck at playing guitar but at least I try. |
#27
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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. |
#28
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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
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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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2002 Paragon OM - Torrefied Sitka & Bigleaf maple - Carlos Juan CS Sensor 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 2017 Vintage VJ-100 - Bearclaw Sitka & Sapele - Gretsch Deltoluxe |
#30
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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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I suck at playing guitar but at least I try. Last edited by Pizzanetor; 01-26-2022 at 07:48 AM. |