EU vs USA: The Battle of the Spruces.

[@SimonC-j8x]

Cool! I love how you do the comparisons that I would do. Thanks for the demo Tom.

[@MoGiMaL]

It’s really interesting to compare the taps, if that is going to come through in the final sound. I got over a hundred sets of englemann with quite a range of densities, some as dense as 440 kg/m3. I’ve listened to all the taps many times. I can always hear more overtones standing out in euro spruce. I have only one white spruce set, and it is among the very best of the taps.

[@TomSandsGuitars]

I'm planning on doing a similar video based on grading

[@MoGiMaL]

@@TomSandsGuitars I look forward to seeing your call and criteria!

[@craigwilliams6145]

Well done Tom. I could hear the slight difference between the Engelmann and European spruce and the big difference in the red cedar. Very interesting.

[@stephenhenion8304]

Can you give us approximate price ranges for these tone woods?... love your channel and workmanship.... thanks again 🎵🎶🎵

[@jeffhildreth9244]

Note: No reply.

[@aaronlucasguitars]

Absolutely wonderful as always! So articulate and informative, keep it up!!!!

[@carlosreira413]

Hi again. Lately we're seeing a lot of EU construction lumber in the US lately, so its given me an opportunity to compare spruce from different countries. Generally German (Black Forest) spruce is the densest, with wider growth and stronger late wood. Austrian spruce is generally very light, at least in 2X lumber. Swedish varies a lot with the best being very dense, but mostly lighter than German. Latvia and Lithuania are also lighter in weight. Generally stiffness follows density, as usual. But my point I wanted to get to is that the lighter European (Norway spruce, p. abies) is very much like Englemann in stiffness and density.

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Interesting! Although I wonder how that correlates to instrument grade woods as construction timber tends to be plantation grown. Thanks for sharing!

[@carlosreira413]

@@TomSandsGuitars Yeah, I find it interesting too. Thanks for that reply. The European material is evidently from "managed forests," which means some boards will be from rather old trees and some from young. It's simply a matter of "grade" as in how many knots! Canadian wood is just taken from their seemingly endless swaths of forest, so a black spruce 2x4 will often show 50 plus in age. No interest is taken in the age of the tree, only what can be gotten from it. And this is called "sustainable." In a few countries lumber is reliably plantation grown. NZ and Chile for example have excellent "radiata" pine (Monterrey pine) plantations. You'll see this wood on many things, from pallets to glued up furniture grade boards. The growth rings are going to be wide, like a cm or more. Does the speed of growth effect the physical characteristics? Yes, but within a reasonable range. So a slow growth 200 year old piece of spruce with give you the same stiffness and tap tone as an equally stiff piece of other spruce, even from a 20 year old tree, so long as the density is also the same, assuming no knots or any defects. "Juvenile" wood, the first 5 years or so tends to be much less dense and less stiff. However! with thin wood, like for a guitar top everything is more critical. That's why high grade is so desirable. The reasoning behind all this is that MOE (Young's modulus, stiffness) is so important to construction, just as to luthiery. A stiffer board can span a longer distance without deflection, and therefore be graded higher and cost more. The stiffness numbers in the literature for construction material are equal to that of instrument material, but in both case, we're talking thicker material and no defects. Takeaway, is that for guitar tops, lots of growth rings per inch are not so super important, and might be undesirable if you want optimum stiffness, like for a jumbo steelstring.

[@carlosreira413]

@@TomSandsGuitars I looked it up, and the label "plantation" is used rather loosely. Southern Yellow Pine is more or less plantation grown, but not spruce, at least not on any scale. So the only difference in guitar wood and pulpwood is often the trucker's destination.

[@TomSandsGuitars]

@@carlosreira413 interesting, where did you read this?

[@carlosreira413]

@@TomSandsGuitars I'm so glad you find it interesting. I'm just a huge forestry, wood, woodworking, furniture, lumber business geek. Lots of online reading. But the info you're talking about I think I got from a guy in the Sitka spruce logging business who supplied wood to Gibson and other companies. His name is Larry Trumble, and he went by "Wood Marine" out of Klawock, Alaska. He was sourcing logs out of the rivers at that time mainly, but he had been a scaler in the lumber business for many years. That's a guy who takes a Doyle ruler and determines how many board feet are in every log and the trucker/logger would be paid by BF. They're now paid by weight so scalers are no more. He told me that most Sitka logs, regardless of age or quality went for, get this, pulpwood. To make paper. Kimberly Clark is one of the biggest corporations using very good logs to make toilet paper and such. It doesn't behoove them to grind up small trees. The guitar industry simply does not use enough wood to merit a stake in the overall business. Time is money, and logs are seemingly endless. Of course, environmentalists fight this, and have done so for ages, but the results they're able to get are tangential, such and such a road will be allowed for access, but not another, things like that. Privately owned forest is liable to be cut however the owner pleases. Huge companies like Weyerhauser get the government contracts to log US national parkland, thinning "overage" trees. I kid you not. I don't know how many instrument grade 600 year old Western Red-cedars go for roof shingles, but most end up in that role, which admittedly is a rather high dollar one. Clearcutting still goes on, the thinking being that making space is the best way to get nature to do her thing all over again. It's really hard to extract a big tree by helicopter or something, though I believe they do that too. But I got most of my information in my studies from the US Forest Service, department of the USDA website. Their tech pages are and endless source of lumber info. Every physical property is well established by many years of testing. This all came from times when a bridge might have been built from wood. It was critically important to know breaking strengths, and especially Modulus of Elasticity, the same thing that is important to luthiers. Later on, I did some arborist work with my brother and got to know the working side of a chainsaw myself. Good wood is everywhere, and generally wasted, at least in the US in the places like the East where trees are plentiful. I now mainly pull nails out of trashed boards. I'm working on 100 year old heartpine from a building next door. The contractors are replacing the old board and batten siding with some kind of plastic. The boards were put up a hundred years ago. They were from very old trees at the time, probably the legendary longleaf pine, the one that smells like turpentine. This tree built Industrial England in Dicken's time. The European methods are much different, as managing timber resources goes back to the Middle Ages if not before. England was importing shipbuilding material from the Baltic and Danzig in 1400 I would bet. Norway spruce would have been one of the sources of spars, I'm pretty sure, but Scots pine was used for planking being much harder and stronger, and better for steam bending. Douglas fir, white pine and other US species are planted in Ireland and other places that didn't historically have much forest. That's my understanding. I love wood, guitars, and I tap on every piece that's tappable! But just as an exercise in searching "the literature" Google "Norway spruce modulus of elasticity" and see how many technical studies appear, most having nothing to do with luthiery, though sound will often figure in, as it's a reliable way to judge the tree. They basically do a tap tone on the whole tree to see if it's good! Blessings of continued success and enjoyment to you.

[@zororosario]

Valuable comparisons of some of the lovely tone woods, Thanks

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Thank you!

[@123Yossarian123]

my favourite guitar is engelmann spruce/mahogany, i think its a bit more sensitive than other spruce tops but who knows

[@jeffmoe2660]

Hi, can you share with us your process. For determining the tonal itch of the wood? Tuner app? Something more elaborate? Thank you for what you share. ☮️

[@themidnightviking8234]

Hey Tom. I'm planning on making my first guitar and I would like to know if you have any wood recommendations?

[@davidarnold6376]

Interestingly Yamaha uses allot of Engleman on many of their guitars...even the cheap 800 series up to some of the LL's

[@MegaChoo2]

Very cool. So, would you vary the type and thickness of finish according to your topwood characteristics and the desired effect too?

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Ideally you’d keep the finish as thin as possible in all instances.

[@terrywright7893]

Simply fascinating, Tom! Are you suggesting you can reduce the mass (depth) of the Englemann/European Moon Spruce to mimic the same frequency response as the cedar?

[@TomSandsGuitars]

you can achieve the same deflection/stiffness by altering the thickness of the boards but the trade off is the mass/density/strength. Is it possible to mimic another species, not quite.

[@watchtheskies]

Hi Tom, have you ever made a guitar top with two different woods? I wonder what a half and half red cedar and spruce top would sound like?

[@TomSandsGuitars]

I haven't but never say never.

[@endubsar7442]

First of all thank you so much for the awesome videos Mate , I have a Question and i hope you can answer me its about Planing VS Sanding when it comes to sound board which method is better and why ? nobody talks about it . i wanna know if planing is better for vibrating than sanding ? or is it the other way around ? thanks

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Yeah great question. Theoretically a planed surface would be better, I’ve experimented with both and have concluded that for consistency and efficiency of build, a finely sanded surface is sufficient. We also seal the insides of our guitars which would also mitigate slightly against the subtle difference in underlying surface texture. 🙏

[@aliasname602]

Has anybody ever built a guitar top from gingko wood? I believe it's classified as a conifer, but might have some hardwood characteristics. A good conversation piece at least.

[@TomSandsGuitars]

I’ll look into it!

[@easternyellowjacket276]

That would be pretty cool particularly because gingko is considered a living fossil, as it is one of the oldest species of deciduous trees.

[@NoraphonKaedklung]

Thank you.

[@tedrobinson3802]

Just got some German spruce. The stuff sounds like taping on a sheet of aluminum

[@TomSandsGuitars]

It’s hard to beat

[@timothy4664]

Across a genus, there are a variety of reasons why different species may perform better as tone woods for their various applications. It's why I largely believe the European over Asian Spruce for top plates on violins has more to do with tradition than actual performance of the wood. Spruce with similar characteristics grown in a similar climate, elevation, mineral content of soil etc will produce comparative samples regardless of the continent of origin.

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Good point well made

[@MrFlintwalker1]

Who is this Arron?

[@TomSandsGuitars]

@@MrFlintwalker1 Aaron Lucas, google dark forest cypress 🙏

[@jessejonescomposer]

Woohoo! No 1 comment again! Just been considering these exact two woods myself. Thanks for the video!

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Right on!

[@hk4648]

m2? kg/m2?????

[@TomSandsGuitars]

Well spotted. It’s clearly a typo as I say ‘cubed’ multiple times in the video. 🤙

[@onehandslinger1475]

In my student days, some friends of mine were studying classical guitar and one of them became obsessed with tone, so he went to a musical instruments factory and selected three guitars from a warehouse. When he came back with the loot, we had to agree that his old guitar he randomly bought from a local shop was sounding better. I don't remember the back and sides, but I'm pretty sure it was plywood on all of them, but the top of his old guitar was a particular kind of spruce with straight fibre but wide rings, which meant the tree had grown at lower altitudes with longer vegetation season, allowing the tree to grow more in one year. The other three guitars had a typical narrow mountain spruce, straight fibre. The old guitar was sounding better, with a warm, more voluminous sound, while the three new guitars sounded somewhat brittle by comparison. I think it's a similar thing as with the swamp/hard ash electric guitars, with the hard, mountain ash offering a bright, compressed sound, while the swamp ash expresses more frequencies.

[@MoGiMaL]

In electric guitars 99.8% of sound of the guitar comes from the pick ups. Body wood won’t make a time change, but probably an note attack change.

[@damianwayne2479]

@@MoGiMaL You forget that electric guitar amps are not clean amps, even on the clean channel. Same goes for guitar speakers. They make a more discernible difference than pickups. Especially since pickups do Not have an audible output by themselves without an amp AND speaker minimum.

[@easternyellowjacket276]

Regarding the spruce, the old guitar has had time to open up its sound compared to the newer guitars. So it is kind of an unfair comparison.

[@dasonmusic]

Sounds like Adirondack.