Cedar VS Spruce tops

Bob Holo

Underbuilt guitars will go plop after they break in. Builders who don't understand how spruce and cedar differ and who build as if they were the same wood - just a little different in density - will produce cedar guitars that are more underbuilt than they anticipated because they're counting on cedar to have isotropic & elastic properties similar to spruce and it just doesn't. Cedar relaxes more quickly, so if you stress it to tighten the soundboard instead of using brace placement & brace taper and soundboard thickness to achieve the desired strength, then the guitar will go plop after it relaxes, and cedar will go plop more quickly because it relaxes more quickly due to its lower modulus of elasticity and because it is less hygroscopic. This is particularly true in post-Torres classical guitars which are braced lightly and whose dominant design element depends on the isotropy and elasticity of the soundboard. Some builders, like Fleta & Friederich, have evolved wonderful cedar classical designs, but if a bog-standard builder makes a Torres-style guitar out of cedar and braces it identically and just thickens the top a little because "it's cedar and that's what people usually do when they make cedar guitars" ... well heck yes... a guitar like that will go plop in a few years because after the cedar relaxes, the bridge plate rotation is largely supported by half a dozen spruce braces that wouldn't make a decent sized chopstick, because the builder mistakenly assumed that cedar has a very specific type of strength which it does not.

Anyway, I respect the sample size of your observation and I think that your observation is probably accurate, but I think there may be other reasons that those things occur. Screw it. Let's just cut to the chase and discuss politics. Haha.

On that note, I would be remiss if I didn't point out how amazing and rewarding I find it to be able to come here and discuss things with people with similar interests and professionals with similar backgrounds. What we have here on Djangobooks is rare. If you like podcasts - here is one of the most thought provoking I've heard in a long time. Warning - it has nothing to do with music and has a lot of NSF language because the topic is three long-time professional bloggers trying to figure out why chatrooms and comment sections are generally such incredibly hostile and mean-spirited places where the true exchange of ideas and experiences rarely if ever takes place.

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/how-internet-subcultures-combat-free-speech/

Al Watsky

Cedar guitars burn better than spruce guitars and for the record I prefer the aroma of burning Brazilian RW to Indian.

Jazzaferri

They make great kindling in an emergency

My Dunn Ultrafox has a pencil cedar (actually juniper) top. Which is soft like WRC and my Jazzaferri (what Michael D and I called it) has a WRC top. My DuPont has a European Spruce top (I beleive). All have their own sound and all sound marvellous to my ear.

Lutherie is an art. @Bob Holo excels at it. Now if only I could get him to build me a guitar with a little wider neck LOL. Thanks Bob for sharing your wonderful insights on wood.

Al Watsky

I've been inside Fleta's and Friederich guitars, those are good guitars. The Fleta's I found to be really very unique in that every typical point of stress was addressed, beautiful doublings and linings that were serving their purpose and intentionally limiting the regions of resonance. Very clever individual and well thought out work. The results were plain to hear. They were cedar. Way less murky than the average cedar top.
The Friederich's I have less affection for , not that they were not great just that they were not my kind of guitar.
Its all about esthetics for me.

Bob Holo

Al Watsky wrote: »

The Fleta's I found to be really very unique in that every typical point of stress was addressed, beautiful doublings and linings that were serving their purpose and intentionally limiting the regions of resonance. Very clever individual and well thought out work.

:-)

Yeah, the first Fleta I ever encountered bit harder than a highschool crush...

it was that sense of mastery. As you say - clever individual and the level of craft was wonderful. It was a great guitar and it was apparent that no part of the greatness was luck. I haven't seen a broad enough swath of his guitars to know his work well, but the few I've seen were inspirational.