A/B comparison maple build vs rosewood

[Sadie-f]

I posted about completing this guitar a couple of weeks ago, https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/...d.php?t=681799

I've since made the final adjustments to the soundboard tone (removed about 10% of the thickness at the edges of the entire lower bout, gaining a good bit of volume and some clarity; and thinned the LB bass side to improve bass response.

She feels pretty balanced, this link has recordings of this guitar compared to my Adi>rosewood Santa Cruz OM. I don't think anyone will confuse my build for rosewood .. well I can tell the difference easily with plain old earbuds.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...cP?usp=sharing

The recordings were made in identical setups, a large diaphragm Telefunken mic centered at about fret 10, and a small diaphragm SM-81 focused on the lower bout. The same mixing was done with both, just adjusting for more fairly equal L/R, and mixed with the XY mics on my TASCAM, which are giving a little more of the tone of the room. There were no EQ adjustments.

I will say I like the contrast between the two guitars, other than that, I'll save my own feelings about what I've built for after some comments.

[hifivic]

Maple Tele's have more bite than rosewood so no surprises here.

[koolimy]

I'm guessing that A is your Maple guitar, and B is the Rosewood Santa Cruz? They both sound really good, congrats! I feel like your guitar actually sounds a bit more interesting, it just needs a bit more time to settle in, maybe fine tune the setup. It kinda has that new guitar sound. The Santa Cruz sounds good but it's a bit more flat, if that makes any sense.

This is your first guitar? Wow! It looks amazing! My first guitar was nothing even close to yours, as mine was an ugly, mistake ridden mess LOL.

I think you should post an update maybe a month down the road. I feel like the guitar will open up more and settle into a more mature sound. Even now, it sounds good!

[jaymarsch]

Thanks for posting the clips. From listening to the first clip of your guitar and now this one, it’s interesting to hear how you’ve shaped the sound. Well done!
I’ll guess that the first clip is your guitar. I like the note separation that it has, which in my experience over the years can be an elusive quality to achieve in a build. I agree with koolimy that over time, it will just get better as it settles in.
For this being your first guitar, Sadie, you’ve crushed it out of the park. Your engineering skills and keen musical sensibilities have served you well here. Brava!
Best,
Jayne

[RJVB]

The first ("y") sounds really nice and delicate, with a promise of deepening out with sufficient playing. The other one has a kind of shimmery nasal trait that I personally do not like at all so I too would guess that's the RW one.

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by koolimy

I'm guessing that A is your Maple guitar, and B is the Rosewood Santa Cruz? They both sound really good, congrats! I feel like your guitar actually sounds a bit more interesting, it just needs a bit more time to settle in, maybe fine tune the setup. It kinda has that new guitar sound. The Santa Cruz sounds good but it's a bit more flat, if that makes any sense.

This is your first guitar? Wow! It looks amazing! My first guitar was nothing even close to yours, as mine was an ugly, mistake ridden mess LOL.

I think you should post an update maybe a month down the road. I feel like the guitar will open up more and settle into a more mature sound. Even now, it sounds good!

Thanks @koolimy kind words there, and correctly identified :-)

I would not call the Santa Cruz 'flat' (and don't mind that expression either) .. I would say that I'm finding my new axe to be surprisingly 'expressive' .. the first word I used for her was 'articulate' and that's continued to be true. I find I can get a lot of range of tone from this Sitka>maple combination (braces are Adi spruce btw). Perhaps what you're hearing in the Santa Cruz is that her harmonics are simply unstoppable. So with my new build, I can tamp down the harmonics by plucking with the bare pads of fingers, and bring out a lot of brightness using nails.

The Santa Cruz top is old growth Adirondak .. harvested pre-1930, and counting the grain lines, would have been a sapling in say 1750 or earlier. It's basically impossible to de-emphasize the harmonics.

As to the build being pretty, I've approached this *very* slowly, there's about 500 hours into the build (not counting time building re-usable tooling), where most folks would finish a guitar in 1-200 hours, and made plenty of mistakes, managing to keep them all in the realm of fixable as I worked (.. all told, I'd say the backtracks/fixes amounted to 10% of the working time).

In a month, I may have taken the Sitka top off to try this body with a cedar top. I can't agree more, she's changed a lot in just a couple of weeks. .. TBD. I have more time in sounding out / tuning the tops than any other part of construction, and as this guitar sounds good with this top, it may well go back on .. the western red cedar is going to sound better (for what I am looking for), and there's a good chance it will ultimately go on a maple body guitar with fewer mistakes fixed.

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by jaymarsch

Thanks for posting the clips. From listening to the first clip of your guitar and now this one, it’s interesting to hear how you’ve shaped the sound. Well done!
I’ll guess that the first clip is your guitar. I like the note separation that it has, which in my experience over the years can be an elusive quality to achieve in a build. I agree with koolimy that over time, it will just get better as it settles in.
For this being your first guitar, Sadie, you’ve crushed it out of the park. Your engineering skills and keen musical sensibilities have served you well here. Brava!
Best,
Jayne

Aww, thanks Jayne :-), and yes, you heard her before I finished tuning the top post-assembly.

I agree, she's going to change lots. In the two weeks since that last tuning, the tone has already matured.

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by RJVB

The first ("y") sounds really nice and delicate, with a promise of deepening out with sufficient playing. The other one has a kind of shimmery nasal trait that I personally do not like at all so I too would guess that's the RW one.

Y (with id3 track tag of 'b') is my Santa Cruz, with an Adirondack top - only 15 months old, I agree with you in expecting that instrument will still be rounding out in 3-4 more years.

I can offer that some of the faults in "x", my first - Sitka>maple are in the setup not being fully dialied in. Neck relief is on the high side at 0.013" and action at F12 is 7/64" on E, a good bit higher than I'm used to. I've got lots of space to fix this, and it's not a priority either. I like how she plays quite well, and the tonal contrast to my two rosewood body OMs.

[koolimy]

Originally Posted by Sadie-f

Thanks @koolimy kind words there, and correctly identified :-)

I would not call the Santa Cruz 'flat' (and don't mind that expression either) .. I would say that I'm finding my new axe to be surprisingly 'expressive' .. the first word I used for her was 'articulate' and that's continued to be true. I find I can get a lot of range of tone from this Sitka>maple combination (braces are Adi spruce btw). Perhaps what you're hearing in the Santa Cruz is that her harmonics are simply unstoppable. So with my new build, I can tamp down the harmonics by plucking with the bare pads of fingers, and bring out a lot of brightness using nails.

The Santa Cruz top is old growth Adirondak .. harvested pre-1930, and counting the grain lines, would have been a sapling in say 1750 or earlier. It's basically impossible to de-emphasize the harmonics.

As to the build being pretty, I've approached this *very* slowly, there's about 500 hours into the build (not counting time building re-usable tooling), where most folks would finish a guitar in 1-200 hours, and made plenty of mistakes, managing to keep them all in the realm of fixable as I worked (.. all told, I'd say the backtracks/fixes amounted to 10% of the working time).

In a month, I may have taken the Sitka top off to try this body with a cedar top. I can't agree more, she's changed a lot in just a couple of weeks. .. TBD. I have more time in sounding out / tuning the tops than any other part of construction, and as this guitar sounds good with this top, it may well go back on .. the western red cedar is going to sound better (for what I am looking for), and there's a good chance it will ultimately go on a maple body guitar with fewer mistakes fixed.

Maybe flat wasn't the right word, and I bet a lot of information was lost in translation. But at least to me, the maple guitar sounded more lively, and the notes seemed to jump off the fretboard a bit more than the Santa Cruz, which was more subdued and even. In a way, your guitar was also more raw, while the Santa Cruz was more refined. It also seemed like you hadn't fully dialed in the setup, as there were slightly more mistakes on the Maple recording. But at least to me, it seemed like once you dialed in the setup and once the guitar matured, it would be a better (!!) sounding guitar than the Santa Cruz. Maybe it's just my taste LOL.

And don't be too humble. I probably put similar hours into my guitar but came out with a much worse result. Your hard work and talent have paid off and to me it made a truly great looking and sounding guitar. You should be proud of yourself!

It's a pity that you'll take off the top, as it sounds really good as is, but I understand you want to do that as an experiment and because Cedar might be more your type. I am looking forward to hearing that one!

[Stonehauler]

Your maple one (verified with my own ears and your post) has really clean separation between the notes. It's one of the reasons that I love my maple 12 string over the rosewood variant.

Both are great sounding guitars, but the rosewood has slightly more in the way of harmonics, which give it a...smoother? sound. Hard to describe, but it sounds like a more nuanced guitar. The maple gives outstanding clarity to the note being played, both good and bad. When you don't get the string held down perfectly, the maple makes it clear. When you get it right, you hear that note and nothing else.

If they were MY guitars (and I am envious of yours), I would probably play the maple around the house and for fun because of that clarity. If I were gigging (which I don't do), I might prefer the rosewood as it provides rounded over sound that some audiences seem to like.

I do a little wood working, and the best analogy I have is this. Imagine you just cut and milled your boards. On the edge, there is that...sharp...perfect 90 degree corner. It's exactly correct. That is the sound of the maple. Now, take a 1/8th inch round-over to the edge. That's the sound of the rosewood. Still perfectly straight, just slightly smoother to the touch.

The 90 degree edge is what you want when joining that board with another, getting you that perfect seam. The round over is what you want on the outside edge after you put things together to give it a softer feel.

Nice playing and great guitars, both sound excellent!

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by koolimy

Maybe flat wasn't the right word, and I bet a lot of information was lost in translation. But at least to me, the maple guitar sounded more lively, and the notes seemed to jump off the fretboard a bit more than the Santa Cruz, which was more subdued and even. In a way, your guitar was also more raw, while the Santa Cruz was more refined. It also seemed like you hadn't fully dialed in the setup, as there were slightly more mistakes on the Maple recording. But at least to me, it seemed like once you dialed in the setup and once the guitar matured, it would be a better (!!) sounding guitar than the Santa Cruz. Maybe it's just my taste LOL.

"jump off the fretboard" probably rhymes with the pyramid bridge, the SCGC has a belly bridge, which helps with greater sustain, at the expense of immediacy of note attack, the smaller/lighter bridge tends the other way.

I was a little surprised at the strong emphasis on fundamental note in this build .. like, I'm expecting that in a mahogany build I have planned (and hope that one is also more / different than my expectations).

And don't be too humble. I probably put similar hours into my guitar but came out with a much worse result. Your hard work and talent have paid off and to me it made a truly great looking and sounding guitar. You should be proud of yourself!

I've been building things at high specification for decades, so that helps - and I do take pleasure & pride in having this. I've also had advice and support from a lot of wonderful corners. not the least being folks here on AGF, also a local luthiers group, and probably most of all, the time Richard Hoover gave me when I visited the SCGC shop, September 2022.

It's a pity that you'll take off the top, as it sounds really good as is, but I understand you want to do that as an experiment and because Cedar might be more your type. I am looking forward to hearing that one!

We'll see. If Mr Hoover is to be believed (purely rhetorical expression coming from me), I'm missing something in not having a binding on the guitar yet (too rigid a connection between top and sides), and hopefully whichever top is permanent on this body will gain just a bit more when I can cut away that joint to be replaced by the purfling & binding.

I'm 95% sure the cedar top in question will be better (to my ears) on about any guitar. The Sitka spruce in place now had the least inspiring tap tone of all the tops I've got to choose from, while the cedar is only matched by an old-growth red spruce set I'm saving .. tbd whether it gets mated with an amazing 80 YO mahogany B&S set, or possibly with a black locust set I expect to pickup in spring.

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by Stonehauler

Your maple one (verified with my own ears and your post) has really clean separation between the notes. It's one of the reasons that I love my maple 12 string over the rosewood variant.

Both are great sounding guitars, but the rosewood has slightly more in the way of harmonics, which give it a...smoother? sound. Hard to describe, but it sounds like a more nuanced guitar. The maple gives outstanding clarity to the note being played, both good and bad. When you don't get the string held down perfectly, the maple makes it clear. When you get it right, you hear that note and nothing else.

If they were MY guitars (and I am envious of yours), I would probably play the maple around the house and for fun because of that clarity. If I were gigging (which I don't do), I might prefer the rosewood as it provides rounded over sound that some audiences seem to like.

I do a little wood working, and the best analogy I have is this. Imagine you just cut and milled your boards. On the edge, there is that...sharp...perfect 90 degree corner. It's exactly correct. That is the sound of the maple. Now, take a 1/8th inch round-over to the edge. That's the sound of the rosewood. Still perfectly straight, just slightly smoother to the touch.

The 90 degree edge is what you want when joining that board with another, getting you that perfect seam. The round over is what you want on the outside edge after you put things together to give it a softer feel.

Nice playing and great guitars, both sound excellent!

Thanks, your feedback is super helpful, and great analogy to the wood-working domain.

Just as I think the better the guitar, the less forgiving it is of mistakes; when I really care about a recording, I'm using top of the line condenser mics that are equally good at catching the buzzes, as they are of catching the nuances of the instruments being played. when I only need feedback on the simple stuff, I'm content to record with just the mini XY mics built into my TASCAM.

[jaymarsch]

My apologies if you’ve covered this and I have missed it, but how does the SCGC OM and your OM compare relative to bracing in terms of material, mass, type, and pattern? Please feel free to direct me if you have already covered this in another thread. Thanks in advance. :-)
Best,
Jayne

[koolimy]

Originally Posted by Sadie-f

"jump off the fretboard" probably rhymes with the pyramid bridge, the SCGC has a belly bridge, which helps with greater sustain, at the expense of immediacy of note attack, the smaller/lighter bridge tends the other way.

I was a little surprised at the strong emphasis on fundamental note in this build .. like, I'm expecting that in a mahogany build I have planned (and hope that one is also more / different than my expectations).


I've been building things at high specification for decades, so that helps - and I do take pleasure & pride in having this. I've also had advice and support from a lot of wonderful corners. not the least being folks here on AGF, also a local luthiers group, and probably most of all, the time Richard Hoover gave me when I visited the SCGC shop, September 2022.


We'll see. If Mr Hoover is to be believed (purely rhetorical expression coming from me), I'm missing something in not having a binding on the guitar yet (too rigid a connection between top and sides), and hopefully whichever top is permanent on this body will gain just a bit more when I can cut away that joint to be replaced by the purfling & binding.

I'm 95% sure the cedar top in question will be better (to my ears) on about any guitar. The Sitka spruce in place now had the least inspiring tap tone of all the tops I've got to choose from, while the cedar is only matched by an old-growth red spruce set I'm saving .. tbd whether it gets mated with an amazing 80 YO mahogany B&S set, or possibly with a black locust set I expect to pickup in spring.

I don't know exactly what binding does tonally, but I bet your guitar will look even better with the binding! It looks great as is, I didn't realize it didn't have binding until you mentioned it LOL.

If you can get such a good sounding guitar with an uninspiring top, the sky must be the limit for you with actually good tops! It seems like you have quite a few projects in your mind or in your workshop, really interested to see how those turn out.

It must be so cool to actually receive mentorship from a legend like Mr. Hoover. Please don't tell him I like your guitar better than his though LOL.

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by jaymarsch

My apologies if you’ve covered this and I have missed it, but how does the SCGC OM and your OM compare relative to bracing in terms of material, mass, type, and pattern? Please feel free to direct me if you have already covered this in another thread. Thanks in advance. :-)
Best,
Jayne

Both are X braced, forward-shifted and scalloped. I took tips from my Santa Cruz on profiling the scallops/tapers especially on the tone bars, and both have a tongue brace placed above the transverse "#1" brace - the big one above the sound hole. The tongue brace reduces the likelihood of cracks in the top alongside the fretboard extension.

I can't perfectly work out the exact placement Santa Cruz uses for location of the tone bars (these are in the lower bout and run from the treble side of the X, quite close to the bridge plate, which is sometimes cut away to make space for them, across the center of the lower bout to the sides)

IAC, what I used for the locations was the OM plan from StewMac. Again, it's essentially a Martin OM bracing style, although one of the things I found along the way was that the design, is that the Martin OM uses a much more relaxed waist curvature. The Martin shape would have been a good deal easier to bend than the design I worked from (which is exactly the shape of my Santa Cruz)

This is essentially the bracing used by Martin, except for tap-tuning the bracing after gluing up the basic structure, again, I think there's some variation in exact placement of the tone bars.