Wood and its grain?

[G7MOF]

I have a Fylde mandolin with a Western Red Cedar Top. I hear talk that says the more grain a piece of this is the better it will sound. Mine has 32 to the inch is this considered a tight grain?

[Mark Gunter]

There was another thread about grain tightness/looseness just recently, in that one there was no consensus about this, and generally folk seem to conclude that other factors are way more significant.

Your thread title made me think of a joke image I saw posted by American Musical Supply today, because I think the caption to that joke should be "50 Shades Of Grain"

[Mark Gunter]

On a more serious note, here is the other thread, titled, "Is There A Grain Of Truth?"

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...Grain-Of-Truth

[minuteman]

I grew up in humid Florida with a sawmill in our back yard. Every wall, floor, dresser, desk, cabinet and table in that house was made from trees we cut, sawed, dried, planed, and built in the shop my father built. I was taught early on about the importance of the cut and its relevance to the heart of the tree. To this day, a trip to the hardware store to get 2x4's is an hours long trip looking at the cut of each and selecting the best.

That said, tightness of grain was never really considered outside of cosmetics. We'd matched grain patterns in furniture tops for appearance. Then again, we didn't tap them for sound either.

Just my two cents, but the cut holds more value in my book.

[Bob Buckingham]

Cedar will have a different tone than spruce they differ enough as woods to have pronounced differences with the cedar tending to have darker tonal qualities. Both sound good though.

[fscotte]

Yeah it's really more of an aesthetic issue. I've seen wide grain very stiff and tight grain that was flexible. The tree the wood came from is more important. I guess if you had two pieces of wood from the same tree, one tight grained, and the other less grained, you may have more strength in the tighter grained piece. You may.. Because wood can vary even in the same piece.. So.. Just on the surface, GPI is just a number.

[Dale Ludewig]

From my experience, there is no consistent correlation between GPI and stiffness. At all. I have some douglas fir here that is about 32 gpi and is floppy and garbage basically. I was excited about it when it came in. I was using for a couple uke tops and it's worthless. I have some red spruce guitar stock that I got from Old Standard down in MO; it's like 4 gpi. And stiffer than you can imagine. Now multiply this with the thickness of a carved mandolin top and things really get interesting. GPI is a cosmetic factor. Weight and stiffness is what matters as far as acoustics are concerned. IMO.

[Spruce]

I hear talk that says the more grain a piece of this is the better it will sound.

Nope.

Mine has 32 to the inch is this considered a tight grain?

Yep.