wood choice for classical guitar top wood

[Dan of SC]

I have built 5 steel string acoustic guitars ( hobbyist) with mostly good results, now I want to build a a nylon string. What are my choices for top wood and what are the differences in tone and other qualities? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Danny Gray

[brad4d8]

most makers choose either spruce or cedar. As to sound, general consensus is that cedar is warmer and spruce brighter. Of course, such descriptions are totally subjective. I have two cedar and one spruce, prefer the cedar.

[Mandobart]

Just note when people say "cedar" they typically mean an actual non-cedar, western red cedar (thuja plicata) or Port Orford cedar (chamaecyparis lawsoniana). Though not true cedars (plant family Pinaceae, native to the mountains of the western Himalayas and the Mediterranean region) they are excellent tone woods. Western red cedar is used a lot for classical guitars.

Similarly, redwood is an excellent choice for classical guitar. I have 5 western red cedar topped instruments and 2 redwood topped, from 3 different builders. They all have a warm sound with lots of sustain. None of mine are classical guitars though.

[Dan of SC]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

Just note when people say "cedar" they typically mean an actual non-cedar, western red cedar (thuja plicata) or Port Orford cedar (chamaecyparis lawsoniana). Though not true cedars (plant family Pinaceae, native to the mountains of the western Himalayas and the Mediterranean region) they are excellent tone woods. Western red cedar is used a lot for classical guitars.

Similarly, redwood is an excellent choice for classical guitar. I have 5 western red cedar topped instruments and 2 redwood topped, from 3 different builders. They all have a warm sound with lots of sustain. None of mine are classical guitars though.

So Mandobart, are you saying yours are steel string guitars with these top woods?

[Mandobart]

Originally Posted by Dan of SC

So Mandobart, are you saying yours are steel string guitars with these top woods?

One is a steel string guitar. Two are carved top mandolins (an F4 and an F5). One is a carved top F4 octave mandolin. One is a custom carved top 10 string Hardanger viola

The redwood is on two customs - a 10 string mandola and a 10 string mandocello.

Except for the Hardanger they're all wearing steel string sets, either phosphor bronze or monel.

[ssynhorst]

There are also quite a variety of spruces in top woods. But a good set of Sitka spruce or of Western Red Cedar would be good normal choices. You could expect the spruce to be a bit brighter and the cedar a bit warmer to start with. As the instrument plays in and matures those qualities may change in wonderful ways.

Many of the best violins are 300 years old. Some of the best guitars may be going on 90 so far. - Stevo

[nikpearson]

A species which goes under a number of geographical guises: German, Italian, Swiss and Carpathian spruce. In general this species has less colour than Sitka.

Western red cedar and redwoods are alternatives if you prefer a darker coloured top.

I’m not convinced most people can even reliably tell the sound of a spruce an cedar-topped instruments apart. So perhaps go with your aesthetic preference.

One word of warning: western red cedar requires very careful handling as it marks very easily.

[MikeB1]

I'm wondering if a recorded example would be helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MWiYdTRKyQ

I realize there are variables that could contribute to the differences. In this case, it is the same guitarist, same piece of music, and he's playing the same style.

I'm not an expert about this, but I've also read that spruce is louder and that cedar is better suited for someone who plays with a softer attack.

What does the wisdom of the group say about that?

[iim7V7IM7]

Originally Posted by Dan of SC

I have built 5 steel string acoustic guitars ( hobbyist) with mostly good results, now I want to build a a nylon string. What are my choices for top wood and what are the differences in tone and other qualities? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Danny Gray

Start with the materials of choice such as European Spruces (e.g., German, Italian, Swiss etc.) or a low density North American species such as Engelmann Spruce. The nylon strings impart much less energy to the top, so less dense sets are typically preferred. If you want to venture out, yes Western Red Cedar is a fine choice as well.

[ssstewart]

Canadian eastern Spruce for sustain and balanced tone.
Canadian cedar for more warmth

[nikpearson]

And was very pleased with the result.

But again I’d suggest focusing on the aesthetic rather than thinking one wood will give a certain sound.

In blind testing, I’ve witnessed some pretty good classical players be unable to pick cedar from spruce, and when you consider back and sides wood I’d go as far as to say it’s impossible to reliably identify what an instrument is made from.

Top thickness, graduation and bracing play a more important part in determine the response and timbre of the instrument.

[fitness1]

My ear typically likes a softer Engelmann or Euro spruce top.

Bear in mind there is a wide range of tonal characteristics within each.

[xzy]

I agree with what's been said especially about euro spruce. I think there are still some excellent suppliers of euro spruce. I know of one in Germany, and one in the Alps. There are others.

I have a lovely sounding euro spruce top ( Picea abies ) with some bearclaw, also known as hazel spruce, or haselfichte as the Germans say, that's turned a beautiful warm golden color. Of course even a great piece of euro won't matter if it's wasted on a poorly built instrument. I have a traditional fan braced classical built by one of the great American builders of our time.

I'm wondering if anyone here besides myself, exclusively use gut strings. I've tried a lot of nylon, but at least for me with my instrument, gut ( it's a very large topic ) really exemplifies what I consider to be a truly organic sublime experience not only musically, but also from a players perspective. The unique way the strings vibrate and feel, the unsurpassed degree of tonal color, and the total immersion into the moment makes gut my choice. Of course, these are only my subjective feelings, yours may/might differ.

When I play my instrument, I feel as if it's a symbiotic experience. I'm told stories of a time when it's wood were still living trees, and it's strings were still living animals. For me, it's an amazing journey back in time. A profound experience to be sure, even spiritual and yes, metaphysical.

If your instrument should speak to you....listen. Perhaps if you are lucky, your instrument will tell you it's secrets too. If so, you can never give it up. It’s the pact you make. It will tell you stories of a time when it was alive, a time gone by, but in doing so, you must never abandon it…

...and if it has a great Euro spruce top, it's icing on the cake

[barefootluthier]

Hmmm. That surprised me. Usually, I prefer cedar. As expected, the cedar top was a bit warmer. But this spruce top gets my vote; the trebles were more scintillating, the individual string sounds clearer, more defined. The spruce seemed to have a little bit more power.
Tavi is a guitarist I'm very familiar with. He is particularly good at doing these types of comparisons--matching volume, touch, and tempo exactly--so I feel that the difference had nothing to do with his playing but the innate characteristics of the wood.

Incidentally, have any of you tried Lutz spruce? Taylor is now using Lutz on the tops of their 500-series guitars. Lowden and Takamine now offer Lutz, along with others. I've used it a lot over the years. It's a great wood--offering the stiffness and tonal projection of Sitka with the lighter weight of Engelmann. More resonance than Adirondack. I got in on it early and still have several billets of it with up to 40 grain lines per inch! Crazy good stuff. LMI and Stew-Mac both sell it now. I recommend it over most other spruce tops.

[Alan Carruth]

I could go on all day about this, and often do, but I'll try to cut to the chase here: you're going for the lightest weight top you can that is just stiff enough. In general, any top that is stiff enough to hold up under bridge torque will be strong enough. What counts the most is bending stiffness along the grain. It turns out that this, in turn, is mostly determined by the Young's modulus of the wood along the grain (E-long), since this determines the stiffness at a given thickness. If you measure a lot of top wood samples you'll find that E-long pretty closely tracks density for all soft woods, and that they all follow the same rule. That is, if you get a piece of Western red cedar and one of, say, European spruce, of the same density, they're likely to have similar E-long values (60% of samples fall within 10% of the predicted E-long based on density).

You need one more piece of information to make sense of this: the stiffness of the top varies as the cube of the thickness, all else equal. Making the top twice as thick makes it eight times as stiff. By making a low density top with low E-long a bit thicker you can make it stiff enough, and it won't weigh as much as a top made of denser wood, in general.

What this means is that you want to use a piece of soft wood that has low density for the top, without worrying too much about the species. WRC tends to be lower in density than the spruces in general, but every species varies a lot in density. Red ('Adirondack') spruce is generally denser than European or Engelmann spruce, but I have a Red spruce top that almost exactly matches a WRC top in density and E-long.

There are other characteristics of wood that make a difference in timbre, of course. All of this also presupposes that you can do a good job.

Generally speaking I recommend that students start out with a low density piece of spruce. WRC has a fairly soft surface, and dents really easily. Redwood makes a good top, but all of the redwood I've gotten has been on the dense side. Also, Redwood and WRC both have more of a tendency to split than spruce. This is also true of Douglas fir, but that's usually too dense for Classical tops.

Use one of the 'standard' designs, such as a Torres pattern. Keep in mind the slogan that was supposedly the manta of the engineers that built the Ford Tri-motor airplane; the first successful airliner: "Simplicate, and add in more lightness".