Poll on variety of spruce top

[Rick Crenshaw]

I on the wait list for a custom mandolin. I'm wondering what wood to use for the top. The local fellow that owns one of the maker's mandos has a Sitka. It is a very good sounding mandolin for the money. I'd be happy with that tone in my mandolin. BUT, what is your preference in spruce varieties? What are the characteristics that make one spruce top more favorable over the others for you - and I realize this is one of those chocolate versus vanilla type questions.

I have Adirondack (Red) Spruce tops on my dreadnaught guitars and I think they provide a bit more pop and snap for flatpicking.

Also, would you make an issue over the type maple used? Rock maple, etc.

Thanks, Rick

Rick..

As a General rule Sitka is the most widely used.
Red Spruce will give you increased treble and midrange and can generally be driven more when used for a mandolin top. New it is very stiff and may require a longer break in period but in the long run it is probably the best type of top for a mandolin
Engalman gives you a better response on the bottom end and gives a more open sound right out of the box. But unlike Red spruce the harder you push it you really dont gain anything out of it.

[Mando Dan]

You can go with Sitka or Red Spruce, but I have heard great things about Alaskan Cedar. It has a greater strength to weight ratio than spruce so it will react clear and pure at any attack level. Although it is rare you might be able to get your luthier to check it out.

[goose]

I would definitely go with red. I have owned them all and I just love the growl and the clarity of red spruce. Add a varnish finish and you got yourself a mando!!!

[Rick Crenshaw]

Yeah, I wonder what his upcharge will be for a varnished finish. The model that the jam member plays is laquer. He discussed the finish at length with the builder and the builder applies the laquer on thin enough that the buyer couldn't really tell a difference from when he played it in the white and when he went to pick it up. The builder does varnish is top of the line models, but they go for $7500 - not the $3500 model I'm purchasing.

I will add any upcharges that affect tone though, and am thinking red spruce, the hardest back material, and the finish are areas that I would likely pay more.

Undecided yet on the radiused fretboard. The model I played yesterday had the minimum radius on it. Very hard for me to tell a difference in it from my flatboard, though I could see the radius. Maybe 12'?

The model I played did have the larger 'banjo' frets. I liked them. My mando loses tone as you get past the 9th fret. This mandolin still sounds great way up the neck and has a bass end whoof that sounds super. THe chop is excellent. The mandolin rocked. Pure old vintage Gibson tone. I'm psyched. I have to wait 10 months though.

[Scotti Adams]

..I prefer Englemann....its got the dry, woody sound that I like...my BRW #6 has it and my new varnished BRW will have it per my request...its a little softer probably resulting in the woodier sound...

[craigtoo]

Just out of curiosity, what did Loar put on the Gibsons in that era?

craig

[Charlie Ayers]

I've got mandolins topped with both red spruce and Englemann. The tone produced by the latter was described by Michael Heiden as being "sweet, and poppy" - it's very responsive, with overtones that I love (I like it on guitars for that reason too). The red spruce one is brighter, a little more crisp, a bit louder, but with fewer overtones, to my ear. I love them both.....

Charlie

[Chris Baird]

Wood species alone does not neccesarily provide any specific tone. Within any given species you will find a wide variety of chacteristics. Generalities can be made, however, because the average characteristics of one species can be roughly ascertained. The harder/stiffer/heavier woods are going to give a punchier more focused tone where as the softer/looser/lighter woods can be more rich and complex, possibly more responsive. Red spruce is on the stiff side and englemann is on the less stiff softer side ON AVERAGE. A good builder will not just pull a given species off the shelf and assume it is in the average but will treat each piece of wood according to how it feels/tests out and mostly disregard what it is called.

[Spruce]

Instead of generalizing about certain wood species, I think it's more useful to generalize about the individual trees themselves...

For instance, "BC" log from '83 was a Sitka that had incredible bearclaw figuring, came in many grain variations (it was 12' in diameter and produced 3 courses of wood), and had a great strength-to-weight ratio considering that it was such a lightweight wood. #It made some great instruments, including a lot of Monteleone GAs....

"M5" was a red spruce with uneven graining (common in the species), a great split, and yet was light in weight compared to any other red spruce I have ever disected...
A real rare bird weight-wise for a Red Spruce...

"C" log was an Idaho Engelmann from '91 or so that was very hard under the fingernail (rare in Engelmann) and yet light weight, 20 grains-per-inch, and large enough to produce bass tops (again rare in Engelmann).

"MM17" is an unusual Sitka in that it has uneven graining (almost a dead-ringer for red spruce visually), is very hard under the fingernail (again like red spruce), and yet is not too heavy. #A bit ugly to look at, it has produced some killer mandos and looks identical to Red Spruce under varnish...

My point is that characteristics that are usually associated with certain species
can and do occur in other species, and are not limited to a certain species.

For instance, Engelmann can be hard and heavy, or light and soft, or anywhere in between.
Sitka as well can be all over the map...

Red spruce seems to be one of the most consistant of the bunch, and is usually hard and heavy compared to the other spruces, but even then, variations occur.
For instance, bearclaw is rare in red spruce (at least in the areas I've cut wood in--I've yet to see a heavily bearclawed tree even in a tree with twist), and yet recently I've seen some red spruce that had incredible bearclaw...

So there are always exceptions to the norm, which makes stereotyping a species characteristics a bit pointless...

If one could prepare 10 blind samples of wood and have 100 luthiers have a guess at what they are, and have the answers all over the board with no one getting no more than 8 correct (this has been done), then what's the point of stereotyping if one can't even ID the wood to begin with?

There are just too many variables out there in the individual species...

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah, I got some sitka from Bruce that is impossible to tell from red spruce except it is a more even grain spacing. #Just finishing up some mandolins with red, sitka, and engelmann. #The red and sitka look the same, tap the same, and work with the same stringy resistance to tools. #It's like they came from the same tree except they smell different. #In a week or two I will be able to hear if they perform the same in a mandolin.