It is a bit lighter in color, but will still take aging toner well. Were THEY cut from split billets? Of all the guitars I've owned and played, the above combinations stand out in my memory as being the best combinations. What about the bridge plate?How thick? Though not as pristine in it's looks as Alpine or Engelmann per se, it's revered as the king of soundboard tonewoods, and for . 4-Piece Tops: 6-6 x 28-36 bookmatched soundboards. Now, however, second-growth Adirondack spruce has matured and is being harvested for lutherie once again. Major acoustic guitar companies, like Taylor Guitars and Martin & Co., now offer dozens of standard tonewood choicessolid woods, laminates, and syntheticswhile a major supplier like Luthiers Mercantile International carries scores of options, including increasingly popular thermally cured soundboards. Many guitarists speak of Adirondack spruce in reverential tones. This can lead to disappointment if you grab a new Adirondack-topped guitar off the wall at the shop and play it. The guitars with Adirondack had a noticable difference in tone and to my ears . Stand a football field on one end and you get the idea. Oh yeathe bracesare they the same species as the soundboard? In 1992, it was added to the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) treaty, and then, in 2008, to the federal Lacey Act, which made it impossible to import Brazilian rosewood without a labyrinth of permits and paperwork. As for harvesting tonewoods sustainably, Taylor Guitars has taken important steps in this direction. Origin: Canada Goes Well With: Aggressive flatpickers or strummers. Geoff@vellarepair.com in Landing, NJ. Dana Bourgeois Excerpted from the 1994 Acoustic Guitar article Tapping Tonewoods.. Your purchases also help protect forests, including trees traditionally used to make instruments. Honduran mahogany, (also called Honduras mahogany, big-leaf mahogany, or simply mahogany) has a warm and woody sound, high in midrange content, thats dissimilar to rosewood. Bourgeois - Eddie's Guitars Suited for fingerstyle, single note lead, Celtic ballads, open and drop tunings, lush open chords, and singer/songwriters. What I do know, is that even when they dont seem up to snuff, they are still way better than comparable sitka or carpathian tops. hide glue? Suited for fingerstyle, single note lead, Celtic ballads, open and drop tunings, lush open chords, and singer/songwriters. Spruce: Sitka vs. Engelmann vs. Adirondack. But over-harvesting of this wood led to its being all but phased . Fundamental vs. Overtones A fundamental tone is the initial sound heard when you pick or pluck a note (and which decays at varying rates depending on the sustain); the overtones are complex harmonic layers that can make the note swell after the fundamental is initiated. We understand the draw of a town where it's easy to find people to pick with. Tapping a piece of wood reveals, not only the velocity of sound,but also harmonic content, clarity of tone, and high-, low-, and mid-bias. A couple of other variables that impact a guitars sound are its setupan instrument with overly low action tends to have an anemic tone even if its made from the most optimally resonant tonewoodsand even its scale length. . Martin 000-16 StreetMaster Acoustic Guitar - Sweetwater By no means does that make it an inferior tonewood. How much runnout is present if any? Al Petteway, the master fingerstylist based in the Asheville, North Carolina area, says, Im not sure how much it has to do with the top aging and how much it has to do with the vibrations loosening it up. It seems like the brand of strings makes a difference too. Adirondack Spruce. Sounds like Cedar but much tougher. This OM-H does Indian Rosewood and Adirondack Spruce right. I am trying to find Documentable Pennsylvania Adi. The Loar LO-18-VS Adirondack Top L-00 Acoustic Guitar. However, many people believe Adirondack Spruce to be tonally superior. Get to know a lot of them. Very comfortable hold for its size. My hope is that by reading this piece, you understand a little bit more about what youre getting into with either tonewood, and that will help you make the choice about what youre going to like. Both have scalloped bracing. Because small-body guitars, especially the old Gibsons the CEO-7 is modeled on, are often used for fingerstyle blues, I played through some Robert Johnson . Specs Many of the tops in vintage guitars would not pass muster for today's makers. : Adirondack Spruce is red spruce (picea rubens), but not all red spruce could be properly called Adirondack. Can I say, if I use the dreadnought for fingerpicking, I better choose an Engelman spruce dreadnought? Suited for fingerstyle, single note lead, Celtic ballads, open and drop tunings, lush open chords, and singer/songwriters. Slabs of tonewood from an ancient mahogany trunk known iconically as The Tree are among the most coveted tonewoodseven Slash of Guns N Roses had a custom acoustic built from The Tree. Even if I have to take a Chainsaw in the woods in the Poconos!). made a great anniversary Piano from Ezo. Inquire for higher grades. What makes Brazilian rosewood so appealing is its great beautyits deep, variegated coloring and its spider-web figuring. The name comes from the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York, where it grows abundantly. Open grain counts, color, dark grain, runout, and other problems make much of even the better logs unusable. The OMC Fingerstyle 1 is a guitar aimed at the fingerstyle player, with an emphasis on clarity. The two most hotly debated soundboard spruces are Sitka and Adirondack spruce. Ive certainly heard this about guitars that have been put away for months, and I can believe it. Guitar tops can be made from many different tonewoods, but the guitars most associated with bluegrass flatpicking have spruce tops. What species is THAT? 2022 Halland OM-H, Indian Rosewood/Adirondack Spruce - Dream Guitars But it has the uncanny ability to add complexityto the tone., A spruce soundboard on a new guitar can have a bit of an edge to its tone, and many players like the way it starts to open up with playing timesomething to take into account when auditioning any brand new spruce-topped instrument. Yamaha APXT2 3/4-Size Acoustic-Electric Guitar. What shape and size? Guitars sound better with age, because the fibers within the wood take time to develop their flex as the guitar is played and the string vibrations are transferred to the soundboard. Some with nice grain counts but areas of darker grain. I do not think it would open up the wood the same way, because the wood fibers would not be flexing in the way they do when the top vibrates. The top wood I find interesting is Ezo spruce. The fundamental is the root frequency as a tone generator would make it, luthier Bruce Sexauer wrote on the Acoustic Guitar Forum. Either species makes an excellent tonewood. They are both stiff yet lightweight, making for guitar soundboards that are strong and resonant. It would be a great fit for a GS or Dreadnought. It has the same bass and treble as rosewood, but a bit more mid-range. AdButler.ads.push({handler: function(opt){ AdButler.register(168183, 208206, [300,600], 'placement_208206_'+opt.place, opt); }, opt: { place: plc208206++, keywords: abkw, domain: 'servedbyadbutler.com', click:'CLICK_MACRO_PLACEHOLDER' }});if (!window.AdButler){(function(){var s = document.createElement("script"); s.async = true; s.type = "text/javascript";s.src = 'https://servedbyadbutler.com/app.js';var n = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; n.parentNode.insertBefore(s, n);}());} var AdButler = AdButler || {}; AdButler.ads = AdButler.ads || []; The guitar pick is a bluegrass guitarist's second most important piece of gear. Great stiffness gives the wood greater resonance, all other things being equal, and allows the luthier greater leeway to alter the tone and response of the top by changing the thickness.. Guitarists seldom agree on whether the width of the grain affects the tone of an instrument, but the general consensus is that the tighter grain looks better. How dense is that sample of spruce as far as lines per inch? Sugar always has that effect in water. Tops with one-side defects or near-misses in this price range are otherwise equal to $125-$300 tops. How large is the soundhole? Prior to World War II, it was the soundboard tonewood of choice for Martin and other makers. I think of responsiveness as the speed at which sound gets out of the guitar and into the ears of the audience after the strings are picked. Those two pieces of wood that make up your soundboard are going to be with you a long time. Lively materialsthose with a high velocity of sound, or low internal dampingbest facilitate the transmission of vibrational energy (sound waves oscillating from the bridge). You answered every question I had without droning on and on. . What shape and size? Quartering usually good but may not be perfect. Cedar vs Adirondack top for fingerstyle - Page 3 - The Acoustic Guitar Not a totally accurate/fair comparison though, considering they're shaped differently, and have other construction differences. This guitar begins with Martin's endlessly versatile Grand Performance body style a full 25.4-inch scale shape that perfectly slots between Martin's smaller-bodied . The woods discussed aboveebony, Brazilian rosewood, and Indian rosewoodcontribute similar tonal qualities when they are used as bridge materials as when they are used for fretboards. This includes much of the forest in western Maine and areas to the north and west. document.write('<'+'div id="placement_208209_'+plc208209+'">'); And considering that Adirondack spruce and varnish are options that alone can add thousands to the cost of a boutique guitar, the E20OOSS/v is a fabulous value, too. The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum-Adirondack Spruce vs. Sitka Spruce A guitar with an Adirondack spruce top will carry a bigger price tag than the same guitar with a Sitka spruce top. Was the spruce quartersawn well? Kevin Ryan Cathedral Grand Fingerstyle - Adirondack Spruce & Mahogany More than just the species of wood will have a big influence on how a guitar sounds. Comparable to mahogany with consistent, balanced tone, this African tonewood is sometimes seen as the poor-mans mahogany (Martin sometimes offers it as a substitute on the companys popular 000-15M model)it is slightly denser than mahogany and produces a brighter tone.