German Spruce

[Rick Schmidlin]

I really love my new Prucha with it's German Top,It projects well and the tone is out of this mandolin world with a great substain.Anybody else with exsperance or thoughts on German Spruce tops?


Rick http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/coffee.gif

[Michael Lewis]

Yeah, they can be great, good, mediocre, or poor. Just depends on the quality of the piece of wood and how it gets used. Some of my best mandolins have european spruce tops, but recently I used some outstanding light colored sitka that I got from Bruce Harvie. This stuff looks very much like red spruce, but is a bit more open when new, and very loud with complex tone. It might even be better than the European spruce I have used. My opinion, YMMV.