09-12-2020, 07:09 AM
|
|
Charter Member
|
|
Join Date: Nov 2014
Location: New England
Posts: 10,483
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wade Hampton
Spruce tops are my favorite top wood, followed by western red cedar.
Quite honestly, I haven’t found the supposed characteristics of the different species of spruce to be even remotely as cut and dried as some believe them to be. There’s an enormous amount of overlap between them. What’s more, all of the spruces can and often do mimic all of the other spruces, in both appearance and musical qualities.
So while some folks put a lot of emphasis on those differences, in my experience it’s just easiest to take each instrument as an individual.
Most of my spruce-topped guitars, mandolins and mountain dulcimers have Sitka spruce tops. But I also have a couple of guitars with red “Adirondack” spruce tops, a couple with European spruce tops, and one with an Engelmann spruce top.
All of them sound good, which is all that I care about.
The fact is that I can hear more significant differences between the woods used for backs and sides than I can in the different species of spruce. I’m not denying that some differences exist, but in my experience they’re much less of a factor in terms of tone, balance and response than what the tonewoods used for backs and sides bring to the table.
Hope that makes sense.
Wade Hampton Miller
|
Completely agree Wade.
|