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For the last 10+ years all of my steel-string tops and bracing have been Red spruce (except for one Redwood top). I really like Red spruce but it's getting harder to find good tops and the price has gone up quite a bit. So I'm thinking of going to Sitka tops and bracing for the better availability and price. I've used Sitka but it was so long ago that I don't really remember how it compared.

I realize this is going to be pretty subjective. I certainly am aware that excellent instruments have been built from many species of spruce, I have played a lot of them. My immediate problem is a new commission that needs a top and I'm having a hard time finding a decent Red spruce top so I'm thinking I would like to use Sitka for this one.

How do Red and Sitka compare structurally, i.e. what differences might I expect in building with Sitka? Thickness, stiffness, cross-grain/long-grain flexibility? What could I expect in a voiced top - more or less flexible, taller braces, etc?

Of course the bottom line is can I get the type of responsive top I need? I think so but value the input from you folks. FYI I build my guitars to be responsive enough to use for finger picking but still with enough headroom for picking too (those who can control their attack, not your inexperienced bluegrass types, for example).

These questions are probably best asked of those who have worked with both species. I've spent a lot of time trying to dial in how I make and voice my tops, maybe I'm just obsessing over nothing, If you think that's the case then that could be a valid response too

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Steve, check out my Ebay store. I have some really nice red spruce tops listed, and more will be posting tonight around 9:00 pm Eastern.

Sitka is denser and heavier than most other spruces. It makes good sounding guitars, but less responsive in my experience. Seems less multi-dimensional, tonally, for lack of a better description.. Lots of variables, of course.

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Guitar Maker and Purveyor of the World's Finest Tonewoods
http://www.aaronhixguitars.com/
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I can speak for his wood I got a few sets off ebay He does grade fairly compared to stewmac .

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

That's just what I was going to say I still have that stack I bought from you years ago, and my last in-progress guitar made with one of them. It's such a radical design it will be hard to quantify the effect of the wood, but the tap tones give me high hopes. And the cut of the wood is as good as it gets, near zero runout.

The more I do this, and the more I measure my tops, the more I tend to understand it when Allan Caruth says that generally speaking, "Spruce is Spruce."

I remember years ago, like 20 years ago, I built a classical guitar with Sitka. This was before i knew much about anything really, but people in the classical guitar world were astounded that anyone would even consider using Sitka on a classical guitar LOL! It was a darn good guitar and if I had simply told them it was German, or Euro or even better Moon they would never had known the difference.

Good quality Sitka is still easy to get with little to no runout and cosmetically very good.

I've been measuring top woods for years: the Young's modulus along and across the grain, which largely determines stiffness at a given thickness, the related damping factors, and the density. It turns out that all the softwoods follow the same relationship between density and Young's modulus along the grain surprisingly closely. About 60% of the tops I've looked at fall within 10% of the same line if you plot density against Youngs' modulus along the grain: pretty good for a natural material. Since it's the lengthwise stiffness that keeps the top from folding up that's the most important measure structurally.

All woods can be all over the place in terms of density. On the average the Red spruce I've tested is a little denser than Sitka. WRC is the lightest, on average, but I have one WRC top that has exactly the same density as a Red spruce one in my stash. Euro tends to have low density for spruce, but the densest piece of spruce I ever tested was Euro. I've had Engelmann all over the place too. Generally speaking heavy latewood lines tend to add stiffness along the grain, but they add density faster. If you want a top with 'headroom' that's one thing you can look for. Relatively thin latewood lines tend to go to lower density, and higher lengthwise stiffness for weight.

Cross grain stiffness seems to be mostly related to the end grain angle; perfectly quartered wood is higher. Skew cut, with the rings at 45 degrees to the end grain, has the lowest cross stiffness. Flat cut, with the rings parallel to the face, is almost as tiff across the grain as quartered, but the ring angle tends to go to skew fairly quickly.

So far I have not found any, measurable property of Sitka that is systematically different from Red spruce. I will say that the damping measurements I take are done at low frequencies, and that could vary differently with pitch in the different species. It would be really time consuming to get enough data to say for sure. Redwood and WRC both normally have notably lower damping than any of the spruces, which is why I say that 'spruce is spruce', differentiating it from cedar and redwood.

Again, the lengthwise Youngs modulus generally tracks density pretty well, but there are always outliers, and some of them can be 'way out. you can probably get by most of the time by measuring density alone, but it's safer to get better data. There are fairly easy ways to do this. David Hurd talks about it in his 'Left Brain Lutherie', and Gore goes into in in some depth in his books. If you can get hold of the old Catgut Acoustical Society 'Journals' there are a number of articles there that also go into this. I'm told they're available on line. Look for articles by Danial Haines, and also a couple by Morton Hutchins.

The important thing to remember is that people will pay more money for a guitar if the soundboard is a spruce other than sitka, regardless of sound. Especially if felled while Jupiter is rising in Virgo during the vernal equinox.

Thanks to Mr Carruth for again providing us with the fruits of his careful enquiry. Just treat each top according to its actual properties, rather than any generalisation of species.

I don't know about this Mr Hix.
I've never done actual measuring except to weigh dimensionalized boards. and punch numbers into a calculator program to get density. I did do a bit of study on the 2 species. We are strictly sitka people in the spruce dept. Because that's what grows all around us.
https://alaskawoods.com/adirondack-spru ... ka-spruce/
This data is in general terms. Ive seen huge differences in weight and stiffness from log to log, tree to tree quadrant to quadrant and in the length of the trees/logs as well. Generally speaking heavier dense wood of any tree is within 10' of the butt. There is always more pitches there, It's Eeady and usually has fiunky irregular grain.
Sitka is definitely harder than any of the other spruces.

Regarding tonal response for finger style playing. We have an Ultra light sort of old growth sitka. there is quite a story on this sort and how it was discovered with the help of Customers like Greg Maxwell- Dogwood Guitars and Bryan Gallup, and came about.

Most old growth sitka at the 23 x 9 x .18" bookset will weigh about 19 ounces.
Our ultra light sort comes in at under 16 ounces.
Finger print texture makers these boards respond..
So this stuff that we had about 800 sets of that was gleened from 40-50,000 is quite special. the hardness, stiffness and toughness that is truly sitka spruce, with the added light weight/density that gets near engleman spruce and western red
cedar.
I don't know if it would be a very good fit for heavy playing though. Some have suggested not. We don't build, but we know our wood, what it takes to be a GREAT soundboard from selecting log to how to process it, we are 27 yrs soundboard people.

If you are looking for a substitute for red spruce you might look for a "low grade" Engelmann top with heavy latewood lines. Some of them might be as heavy and stiff as the red spruce you have been using and may look very similar. You could call it faux red spruce or red fox spruce or....?

Thank you all for the comments - both serious and humerous.

A. Hix, Looks like some nice tops on your website and you come well recommended but I must admit I don't like auctions. Do you have fixed prices offerings?

Al, I've been reading your posts for, I think, over 20 years since MIMF days and also corresponded and spoke with Mr. Hurd back when I was trying to figure out how guitar tops worked. I do agree that based on the measurable characteristics of the wood that spruce is, indeed, spruce.

The very few guitars that I sell are to serious players most of whom I have met while playing together. They're after the playability and sound my instruments have. I make what I want then make them available to the folks that are interested. As such I can pretty much use whatever woods I want to - within reason of course.

You guys have convinced me that I should be able to get good results with either species so in the final analysis I suppose I just need to convince myself. To that end I just ordered a AAAA torrified Sitka top from Brent. Still cheaper than an AA Red Spruce top from StewMac. I've got two guitars on the bench so I need to build two tops anyway; I'll just add in a third and compare them as I go.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Sitka can make great guitars. It doesn't inherently have as much overtone content as something like engelmann or euro, but I think that actually comes out as a warmth. It's a bit more fundamental, but can certainly be built so all those overtones ring out (if that's what you're thinking about in terms of responsiveness). My favorite guitar from the Santa Barbara show in 2015 was with sitka/amazon rosewood, made by Joel Michaud.

Ervin Somogyi and Michael Chapdelaine did a project together called The Somogyi Incident where Ervin built three relatively identical guitars using euro, sitka, and cedar, and Michael played them. You can catch a video playlist showcasing each guitar here. There are plenty of other sitka Somogyi's on YouTube you can watch as well.

I also really enjoyed this video showing off a sitka guitar from one of Somogyi's more recent apprentices.

James, those are all wonderful sounding guitars. You are correct that I like the harmonic content that comes with Red spruce. I also like that I can drive the tops harder and still get good clean sounds. My build methods have changed quite a bit in the last 10 years, hopefully in a positive direction, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this Sitka top turns out.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I get a good chuckle when I read something like this: https://www.rosewoodandhog.com/sitka-vs ... pruce-top/

I think it comes from the comparison of factory built to spec guitars. You *might be able to generalize the species of spruce if you build say 100 guitars with Sitka, Euro, and Red Spruce each. Build dreds to spec, same back and sides with the same bracing and all tops 1/8th in thick with the closest bracing you can get, all from the same flitch for example.

Then do blind tests and see what generalizations people can come up with. In such a case it's possible that one species will generally appear to have X values while the others don't or do but have some other qualities too. At a spec of 1/8th you will 'hear' the average Youngs Modulus of that species and make generalizations off of that. But as builders we know we can control that and make a Sitka top sound like what ever you are going for.

Then of course there is determining what the blind testers mean when they say for example, it sounds dark. That might mean something totally different inside the head of another blind tester.

It's difficult stuff.

FWIW, torrefied tops are considerably less dense than their non torrefied counterparts. If you’re trying to make a sitka top that sounds like adi, that may not have the best choice. As well, torrefied wood tends to have less headroom (obviously) and less tonal complexity.

Ed, that's interesting about the torrefied wood. I have had very good luck with the torrefied Red spruce so that is why I went ahead and ordered the torrefied Sitka. We'll see where it leads. Maybe I need to get a 4th top of non-torrefied Sitka and maybe knock out 4 guitars this year? It would probably be worth it.

edit: Called up Brent and ordered another top. Guess I'll put 4 together

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The torrefied red spruce I have handled is lower in density and higher in stiffness than the non-torrefied equivalent. This was determined by torrefying one half of a bookmatched pair.
I suspect it is also true with Sitka.
As far as I can tell, Martin made no structural adjustments when switching from red spruce to Sitka in the mid-1940's.
Average density and long grain stiffness of the two woods are almost indentical. IMHO, the main difference is in damping and cross-grain stiffness. Sitka tends to have higher damping and lower cross grain stiffness.

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John

One thing I’ve noticed is that for every guitar, no matter how pedestrian it may sound to me, there seems to be at least one person, somewhere, who thinks it sounds great.


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Josh, is that because there’s a sucker born every minute or because there’s a lock for every key?


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John,

Did the top actually become stiffer, or did it have a better stiffness to weight ratio? ‘Cause all the testing that I’ve done had had the torrefied wood become less stiff, in accordance with it’s loss of density…

Steve,

I’ve had good luck with torrefied wood as well, it’s definitely a predictable and useable tonality…