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Originally Posted by spuerspeedo
Can you use pine for tops and bracings? If so dose it produce a nice sound? Thanks for your replies Dean.
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You could probably get away with using quarter sawn pine for bracing but it does split easy in some cases and spruce has more desirable characteristics for such a use. I chose to use spruce on my pine top guitars just to not chance it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John Arnold
My first 'serious' guitar build was a J-45 copy with a four-piece Ponderosa pine top cut from shelving board. Although the density is essentially the same as Sitka spruce, I found that the stiffness is less along the grain. It also tends to be very stiff across the grain, making it respond more like a hardwood top. Not necessarily bad, just different.
Pines are very resinous, so all the associated problems apply. Baking the tops or aging them for a long time will reduce the damping from the resins.
Besides the resin, another possible reason pine is not as desirable for a top is the strength along the grain. At similar density, pine is not as strong as spruce, and is more likely to break across the grain when subjected to impact.
The term "pine" encompasses a wide range...from sugar pine, which is softer and as light as Engelmann spruce, to Southern yellow pine, which can be as hard and as dense as oak.
Because I have a propensity for building guitars from local woods, I have dreamed of a guitar made from trees in my own neighborhood. Although hardwoods are abundant where I live, spruce is not native. Until two years ago, my best prospect for the soundboard was a white pine, which being a yard tree, was very wide-grained. But the tornado super outbreak in 2011 brought down a Norway spruce a block away, and it should make an excellent guitar. It also was a yard tree with wide grain, but the wood is very stiff and light.
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John have you heard of Paulownia? Not sure if it grows in your neck of the woods but it's all over Virginia and a guy I know swears by it at least for dulcimer tops. It's not a native species coming from Asia but it's a nice looking tree and they grow fast. Anyway it's on my list of things to try some day.