Redwood suggestions

[iim7V7IM7]

Originally Posted by ukejon

The final empirical scientific analysis has to do with overall sound quality:

Tonal perfection:
1) Western Red Cedar @ 99.7%
2) Redwood 95.3%
3) Norway Spruce 89.1%

No more need be said......

I was honestly responding to the earlier comment regarding redwood being soft and being prone to dinging by showing its average hardness relative to other woods.

Happy to fuel a laugh though...

[alohachris]

Aloha Friends,

Interesting comments RE: Redwood tops. And Howdy, Mr. VanSandt. Thanks for the laugh. "So close to an A!" - Ha!

Question to other luthiers: Is it NOT TRUE that, in most cases, you must work the final thickness of a redwood top to a dimension that is thicker than either spruce or cedar - especially vs. spruce?

I rest my case. Redwood, for Mr. VanSandt - the mostly flatpicker, may not be the optimal choice - but only for that reason, its relative frailty, no other.

Question 2 : Is it NOT TRUE that you must be more careful with a Redwood top on the bench in terms of handling it, working it, avoiding errant wood chips, resting things on it, clamping pressure, chisel angle in scraping off excess glue, & unintended impact hits to the corners? Redwood has been much more fragile for me to work with, IME, especially when compared to spruce. That translates directly to how redwood tops stand up to flatpicks & aggressive playing.

Friends, I'm not dissing Redwood as a topwood at all. I'm just speaking from my experience of building redwood-topped guitars (20 out of 221 total, mostly as a hobbyist, Harv) & repairing many, many redwood-topped guitars for real-world pro players of all styles who play out all the time with them. My conclusion is that flat-pickers & heavy nail or fingerpickers kill redwood tops before they kill spruce tops, IMO, no matter the vintage or type of finish, Joe. (NOTE: Joe, they're still surface finishes, 4-7 mils thick. And what about non-factory modern finishes for custom classical & other types of guitars such as french polishing & its modern variations? Do they really protect redwood from picks & aggressive playing either? What about acrylics or polyesters vs. nitro? More Protection? From flatpicks)?

Again, I'm not against redwood tops at all. They are gorgeous! Just reporting my experience in working with it as a practical topwood for flatpicking styles & more "active" players. Redwood can make a VERY, VERY beautiful guitar w/ great tonal properties. But it is weaker, one reason why, besides being pressured to play a Spanish-made instrument by his compatriots, Maestro Andres Segovia played spruce & cedar topped guitars in his life. I asked him once at a workshop in California about redwood tops & he told me that he thought Redwood tops - "being weaker" - would not handle all the traveling he did in those days. He told Richard Schneider the same thing many times. He preferred the tone of Cedar & German Spruce tops combined w/ Dalbergia nigra B&S.

To iim, thank you for the stats. RE: Port Orford Cedar?!? YES! That species has amazing potential as a topwood (back, sides & necks too). And outside of false-sandalwood (naio in Hawaiian), Port Orford Cedar is my favorite smelling wood to use in luthierie. Really "flowers up" the shop w/ its clean peppery-banana scent. Not long ago, I made two deep-bodied 00-sized guitars (25.5" scales) w/ Port Orford Cedar tops (one w/ very dense Madagascar RW B&S, the other w/ Macassar Ebony B&S. They may be the loudest guitars I've ever made, w/ a full balance across the tonal spectrum. Not quite as rich out of the box as German Spruce in terms of overtones (at least as far as my limitations were able to build), or as musical as Redwood. But the volume & projection of Port Orford Cedar were both amazing as is the tap-tone. Port Orford Cedar is definitely a wood I highly recommend for all kinds of topwoods. I'd like to make a whole guitar out of that species.

BTW, no one will deny that Redwood tops seem to mature & open up faster with regular playing than most spruce or cedar tops. That IS true.

A very informative discussion, friends. To Mr. Van Sandt, I hope you will receive the greatest of pleasure from both your new guitar & through the process of working with whichever great luthier builds it for you. Happy Trails.

Mahalo a Nui,

alohachris

[islandguitar]

thanks alohachris ( and ALL) for your insights! Great thread.... .....keep the comments coming if there's more out there! Thoroughly enjoyed learning more on Redwood and LS Redwood.

[ukejon]

Great posts, Alohachris (as always).

[Tim McKnight]

Originally Posted by alohachris

Question to other luthiers: Is it NOT TRUE that, in most cases, you must work the final thickness of a redwood top to a dimension that is thicker than either spruce or cedar - especially vs. spruce?

No not necessarily. Case in point, I don't dimension tops or backs according to a standard thickness but rather to a standard stiffness. I have measured spruce tops from .070" - .140" thick but with the same stiffness. The same variation applies to Cedar, Redwood, Douglas Fir, etc...

We had a customer visit us last Tuesday. We pulled three random Sitka spruce tops, all .150" thick and I showed him how we measure them on a deflection board. The three tops varied between, .080" - .240" which is a pretty typical spread.

I agree with you that Redwood wouldn't be my first choice for a flat picker. However, Redwood is a wonderful top for fingerstye.

[SongwriterFan]

Originally Posted by iim7V7IM7

Density:
1) Redwood @ 415 kg/m3
2) Norway Spruce @ 405 kg/m3
3) Western Red Cedar @ 370 kg/m3
4) Port Orford Cedar @ 465 kg/m3


Stiffness:
1) Norway Spruce @ 9.70 GPa
2) Redwood @ 8.41 GPa
3) Western Red Cedar @ 7.66 GPa
4) Port Orford Cedar @ 11.35 GPa

density/stiffness ratio

Calculating the density/stiffness ratio (I'll let you work out the units )

1) Norway Spruce @ 41.8
2) Redwood @ 49.3
3) Western Red Cedar @ 48.3
4) Port Orford Cedar @ 41.0

So, the ratio of redwood/cedar to spruce/port orford cedar is about 1.18 (18% different) . . . on average.

[Dotneck]

Originally Posted by harvl

I also really like the way it tends to mellow out woods that can be a bit too brite for me

Interesting thread...and I'm interested to hear your experience with redwood builds. I have a custom built mandolin on order...with a 150 year old redwood top over maple. Ken's (the builder) redwood topped mandolins have a reputation as having a darker warmer tone...and being loud. Should be interesting...

[s2y]

I don't have any info to contribute to this thread. I have this by KR Guitars in the works.

[SJ VanSandt]

Is that going to be the front of the guitar, s2y? That's pretty spectacular.

[s2y]

Originally Posted by SJ VanSandt

Is that going to be the front of the guitar, s2y? That's pretty spectacular.

Yep. Can't remember the source, but they had a good amount of this old growth redwood. Some plain and some extremely spectacular like this. At the time we couldn't find sinker redwood with good mineral streaking and then stumbled on tops like this. No clue how it will look under finish.

[harvl]

Originally Posted by Dotneck

Interesting thread...and I'm interested to hear your experience with redwood builds. I have a custom built mandolin on order...with a 150 year old redwood top over maple. Ken's (the builder) redwood topped mandolins have a reputation as having a darker warmer tone...and being loud. Should be interesting...

By 150 year old I assume you mean since it's been cut... I've been making a few mandolins lately (F5) and one I have in the works is Tree mahogany and LS... can't wait to hear how it compares with the others in the "batch" 1 is Engelmann & maple, one is Adirondack and maple, and the 4th one is maple and some real nice Doug fir that I have... there is actually a 5th one that is DF and some mildly quilted Sapele that is my "test model" for new jigs and fixtures I've made.

Harv

[harvl]

As a rule I’d go thicker with cedar than either redwood or spruce. Of course I seldom use cedar so I have limited knowledge of how much it might vary... or even if the cedar I’ve used was at one end of that scale or the other... and it's been at least 20 years As I said before, alohachris’ observations are correct for “most” redwood but that there is definitely redwood out there that goes to the far end of it’s range and that THAT redwood is at least equal to spruce in terms of hardness, strength, stiffness... LS being a prime example... but that is why LS typically adds $1000.00 or more to the price of a guitar. It’s one of natures marvels.

I have a general starting point for soundboards and then I adjust from that based on the character of a particular piece... not the species. I have redwood that I typically thickness to .135, the LS I deal with almost exactly as if it were Adirondack spruce which is a starting point around .110. I can’t say I deal with redwood any different than spruce but I will say this, while it may be just as hard as spruce, a ding or scratch definitely shows up better on redwood!

For many years I felt exactly the same as alohachris ... then one day a customer insisted on LS. I’d heard about it many years earlier from Michael Lewis... he raved about it but my exact words were “redwood is redwood and I already have great stuff” After I completed that guitar I bought all of the remaining billets of LS... that’s how unique and impressive it is. I also bought the remaining billets of the other Carter redwoods (TA, TB and FA) just so I could have something to span the gap between the LS and rest of the redwood I already had.

LS wouldn’t be my first choice for a bluegrass guitar either... but it would be my first choice for a flatpicker who wanted something different than the spruce guitar they already have... as is the case here.

Harv