What is the difference between European, German, Carpathian, and Alpine spruce?

[bho]

Hello,

What is the difference between European, German, Carpathian, and Alpine spruce?

Thanks.

[merlin666]

Different geography same tree. Germany is a country in Europe. The carpathian mountains and alps are two mountain ranges in Europe, both on several countries. Picea Abies also known as Norway Spruce grows in all these areas.

[pieterh]

As I understand it different geographic locations and growing conditions will produce subtle differences in the tree and thus the timber used for guitars.

What those differences actually are I will leave to a tree expert or luthier to tell us about!

[Rinaz]

Originally Posted by bho

Hello,

What is the difference between European, German, Carpathian, and Alpine spruce?

Thanks.

It's just all spruce and they sound differently because they have different stiffness, how they grow, how old they are, and the minerals in it. Some piece will sound identical. For example Engelmann Spruce has low velocity of sound because it's less stiff than Sitka or adirondack, so it produces more overtones, more articulation, more mid range, and greater sustain compare to Sitka or Adirondack but the trade off will be less punchy and less head room if you want to bang on the guitar. Some Engelmann and Sitka top will sound exactly the same.

So it is the same in this situation, the differences are subtle. Just my opinion.

[gmel555]

All the same species, just named based on where it had grown. That's why sometimes you'll see it just called "European" Spruce.

[Pura Vida]

Originally Posted by Rinaz

It's just all spruce and they sound differently because they have different stiffness, how they grow, how old they are, and the minerals in it. Some piece will sound identical. For example Engelmann Spruce has low velocity of sound because it's less stiff than Sitka or adirondack, so it produces more overtones, more articulation, more mid range, and greater sustain compare to Sitka or Adirondack but the trade off will be less punchy and less head room if you want to bang on the guitar. Some Engelmann and Sitka top will sound exactly the same.

So it is the same in this situation, the differences are subtle. Just my opinion.

I'm glad you brought up Engelmann b/c it sometimes gets included with some of the others as the generic European Spruce label, but my understanding is that it's grown in the Pacific NW, not Europe. And the species is different than the European spruce types, but they share some characteristics (but not all, like stiffness, as you mention).

[dan!]

Musically speaking? Very little difference, to my ears.

Some talk of differing amounts of headroom or warmth or yadda yadda...

There appear to be amazing sounding examples of all woods, and mediocre examples too...

[Wade Hampton]

They’re all the same thing, just (allegedly) harvested in different places. If you read some “tonewood expert’s” dissertation online about any supposed differences between them as though they were sommeliers discussing the minute differences between different grapes used for wine, they’re kidding themselves and kind of hornswoggling you.

Not the differences between grape varietals and terroirs, but between one European spruce harvested in one location and another.

Any such differences might exist between one individual TOP and another, but unless John Arnold, who knows far more about tonewoods than I ever will objects to that categorization, I can tell you that in my fairly extensive experience, there are no demonstrable differences that can be proven.

They’re all the same species, and any audible differences between them will be between one top and another, not one region and another.

About twelve or fifteen years ago now, many self-appointed “tonewood experts” who were used to pontificating online about the “superiority” of German spruce were embarrassed when it was discovered that most of the German tonewood supply houses were importing Engelmann spruce sets from North America, doubling their price and exporting them back to North America as German spruce.

Temporarily embarrassing these “experts,” at least until the passage of time made most people forget that little scandal.

There are some demonstrable differences between Engelmann and European spruces, my guitar builder friends have told me, but the two are actually close enough that it did fool some builders with very good ears.

And did, for years as those German tonewood suppliers proved....

So don’t pay TOO much attention to the hyperbole and marketing song and dance routines that even creep into something as niche and non-mainstream as selling tonewoods.

If you’re talking to a guitarbuilder who’s telling you that German spruce is better for what you want and the way you play, that probably means he’s got some European spruce that might be German that he thinks will give you the sound you want and that he wants to use. Tell him yes.

Yes, there are MANY mediocre high dollar custom guitars out there, mostly because customers who think they know what they’re talking about but really have NO idea have insisted on calling every shot every step of the way.

How do I know this? Hmmmm.....let’s just call it repeated misguided personal experience. Took me a while to figure that one out.....

This applies to female luthiers too, of course, I just used male luthiers for my example because there are far more of them.

As for “moon spruce” harvested by the light of the full moon, then cradled on the heaving bosoms of dewy, voluptuous blonde milkmaids wearing dirndl dresses while they reassure the newly cut lumber that its existence is going to be even MORE rewarding from now on?

Hmmm, I kinda doubt it.

That’s for violins, anyway. Most folklore surrounding violin tonewoods doesn’t and can’t apply to guitar construction because there are too many mechanical differences between the two instruments. They don’t always operate on the same principles.

Any differences between European spruce tops harvested from different locations are far more likely attributable to differences between individual tops, not the location where the wood was harvested.

I started getting custom instruments built in 1974 and have participated as either a customer or close observer ever since, actively commissioning custom mountain dulcimers, guitars, mandolins and banjos in the decades ever since.

I used to write for publication for magazines like Frets and Fine Woodworking for years before simply doing it for free online beginning in the middle 90’s, because it was never about the money for me anyway.

While many, perhaps most online forums would benefit from professional editors, there’s no money to pay them, and most participants would feel deeply wounded if they ever dealt with a real editor doing a good job, anyway.

There are so many folks who go berserk at the slightest modifications by our embattled moderators on here that it can make it unbearable for these volunteers and many of them burn out quickly.

Clarity of expression and relevance to the topic on hand are nice to have as well, but that takes practice. Plus I’m hardly the person to chide anybody else about staying on topic, given my Southern storyteller propensity to swerve into industrial-grade digressions at the drop of my elegant Panama hat

By the way, if anyone has posted any answers already that follow a different viewpoint since I began writing this one, I am not going to back away from what I wrote, but I wasn’t specifically responding to your posts, and I wasn’t being sarcastic about your thoughts on the matter.

So please accept my apologies for any unintentional slights or derision you might feel I was flipping towards you. I wasn’t responding to anything anyone wrote except the OP’s question, and intended no insults towards anyone.

I was just trying to convey what more than forty years of delving in custom instruments and trying to understand all the factors that go into what makes them work, which factors are important and which are very minor or even imaginary. (There are plenty of imaginary differences, despite what the marketing would have you believe.)

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Rinaz]

Originally Posted by Pura Vida

I'm glad you brought up Engelmann b/c it sometimes gets included with some of the others as the generic European Spruce label, but my understanding is that it's grown in the Pacific NW, not Europe. And the species is different than the European spruce types, but they share some characteristics (but not all, like stiffness, as you mention).

Good to know it helps. I have an Engelmann top guitar that's why I brought it up It is an old guitar so when I compare to my new 810e it's superior in all aspects and louder. maybe because of the BRW back&sides too. But the punchiness and headroom of Sitka is still there and very crispy. Engelmann has the same crispy sound but the sustain and volume just make it faded, not really clear. I have an old Sitka top (my 812c) still very crispy but it's probably due to the body shape. It's smaller so less volume and more crispy and balance. I bet when my 810e is older it will lose some crispy sound when it has more volume, but I don't really know for sure, it has EIR back&sides.

[Silly Moustache]

This may be apocryphal (big word for a Thursday morning!) but I don't believe that Germany was ever a large producer of Picea Abies, although whilst the Fir tree(Abies) was harvested in large quantities to the Nederlands for ship building and for piles in the areas beloe sea level, in the 17h century, it is believed that they replanted Picia Abies.

What is now Germany, Czechia had a long and highly respected tradition of instrument making not least the violin family.
In a triangle roughly between Nuremberg, Munich and Prague and where the borders currently lie,once called the Sutenland, there are many small villages surrounded by their main material -Picea Abies.

However a couple of world wars - constant disputes between German speaking peoples, and the Czechs, followed by the negative influences of the Soviet Union not only pretty much destroyed the tradition as well as somewhat more than decimating the artisan population.

Incidentally if you look at the origins of many well established American Luthiers, you will see that a large proportion of them originated from that area, not least C.F. Martin, Gretsch

However, much spruce wood was exported from Europe and much left from German ports, which is why, I'm told the term "German spruce" came around.

Whilst under Soviet control, Czechoslovakia developed a passion for American folk music and bluegrass in particular, but having no access (or funds) to acquire them many young men with either tradtion or just interstin luthiry, started to build Gibson style mandolins, gutars and banjos. and by the 2000, were making superb instruments of which I've had a few, including the excellent Jiri Lebeda F5 built in 2005 -one of the last built in his Praha factory.

Afterthought, Picea Abies is also known as Norway spruce but it mostly grows n Sweden, and further east.

[Wade Hampton]

Rinaz, all of the spruces can and often do look and perform identically to every other spruce. The different tonal responses are due to the characteristics of each individual top, not the species.

Your surprise at that should show you how the sweeping generalizations that can permeate the pronouncements by online “experts” and - especially - PR materials from guitar companies and individual luthiers are just that, sweeping generalizations and nothing more.

If you take those statements seriously, you’re either being steered by the guitar company into you making a purchase, and for ego reasons for people online who don’t know any more than you or anyone else knows, maybe even less.

One of my closest friends was president of Luthiers Mercantile International (LMI) for a few years, and they sometimes got in loads of spruce which they simply couldn’t even tell what species it was. The only way to tell for certain is to have a seed cone and look at it under a microscope.

Seriously. And remember, the staff at LMI are pros, as expert as possible in determining what the woods are that they’re selling. But sometimes it’s impossible to tell.

That sort of identification problem didn’t happen often, but it did occur more than once in the relatively short two or three years he was there.

So in those cases where the company or individual who had sold them the wood could not give them more certain identification, they would simply sell as whatever spruce species it most resembled in the minds of the guitar building and buying segment of the public. Without the seed cone to examine, there’s just no way to definitively prove the species.

So your “Sitka spruce” top might not actually be Sitka, although it probably is. But whatever tonal characteristics each of your guitars has, that tone is coming from THAT top not THAT spruce species.

Because all of the spruces can look, sound and perform like any other spruce. They really can.

I know a lot of well-organized folks read these forums want to have certainty about all these factors, and that’s a box that they want to consider checked, but these supposed spruce species differences do exist, and are sometimes present. But sometimes they aren’t and even genuine experts at LMI or any other dealers that sell tonewood can’t tell them apart.

Which leads me to people who claim that they can identify spruce species by appearance, even from fuzzy little photos posted online - now THAT’S a hoot. If a conference room full of actual experts passing wood samples around the conference table tapping, flexing and sniffing them can’t tell tell the species for sure, how is some Internet hero sitting at his computer chair tell? Does he put on a turban, light the room with candles and gaze at a crystal ball where the spirits of long dead lumberjacks tell them “Ja, sure. I cut dat tree down myself and it’s Engelmann spruce certain clear, you betcha!”

So the guitar tops that you and all of us have on our guitars sound the way THAT top happens to sound. Some slight species differences do exist, but they’re minor when they do show up and are rarely a major factor. They’re usually not a factor at all.

So buy guitars because of their sound, not the species of spruce they have.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[hermithollow]

The - average - properties (density, stiffness, hardness, shrinkage) of Engelmann and Euro spruce are so close that they are hard to tell apart. However there can be a substantial difference in the properties among the individual soundboards of either species. Engelmann spruce can be soft and floppy or hard and stiff. The same is true of Euro and the other spruces. Different types of guitars benefit from tops with different properties, so what is desirable for one may not be for the other.
To get back on topic, European,German, Carpathian, Alpine, and Norway spruce are all the same species. It is not so much where they have grown as - how - they have grown that makes a difference.

[Silurian]

My first guitar was made of Laminate spruce. I believe that Laminate is an area on the Austrian/Slovakian border, well regarded for it's lutherie traditions.

[mercy]

Ive had 2 engleman guitars and they both exhibited the same character of having a low ceiling. Also two Lutz, both having similar characteristics and many sitka, again having similar characteristics. Which leads me to believe that different species sound and look different. My experience is more important to me than something someone read somewhere.

[archerscreek]

I love my Martin dreads, but I feel bad now that the Adirondack tops not only missed out on being caressed by the heaving bosoms of voluptuous European milk maids under a full moon, but because they are now imprisoned into a life of being rubbed against by a sweaty American’s arm and subjected to frequent renditions of Blue Yodel #8. Sympathetic vibrations indeed.