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Eric,

It seems taht you are already the proud owner, but I thought I should continue in this discussion. I sell tonewood and have a 'mastergrade' category and list what that grade is. Unfortunately, the grade standards are all over the place and even my grading remains very vague for good reason. As Don said above I will paraphrase....One man's gold is another man's stone. I have some high end builders that do NOT want tight grained tops. Although 14 is getting almos too low they would not hesitate using those sets if they were in the stiffness zone, not too stiff and not too loose, and were well quartered and had no runout. I find taht generally those taht build classical family instruments are much fussier about their woods than steel string builders, of course they have a lot less string energy to work with so are likley more in need of getting everything out of the top they can.

So I will echo the comments above. A guitar is truly the sum of all of the parts, the top probably being the most important. If it plays and sounds the way you like and you can afford the price...take her home!

Enjoy

Shane

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Canada

I was told by the builder that almost all European spruce has runout, mine certainly does; is this a true statement? Also, I was told by a reputable dealer of only high end guitars that European spruce is typically wider grained. Is this true? I think of Adirondack as a wide grained wood, but am not familiar enough with Italian spruce. Please forgive the questions but one more: is the issue with runout aesthetic or only (as mentioned earlier) a sign of less stiff wood?

[QUOTE=Eric] I was told by the builder that almost all European spruce has runout, mine certainly does; is this a true statement? Also, I was told by a reputable dealer of only high end guitars that European spruce is typically wider grained. Is this true? I think of Adirondack as a wide grained wood, but am not familiar enough with Italian spruce. Please forgive the questions but one more: is the issue with runout aesthetic or only (as mentioned earlier) a sign of less stiff wood? [/QUOTE]

European Spruce is as variable as Sitka, Englemann etc, I don't know where the idea that runout is more common than with other spruces comes from, certainly not from looking at a lot of wood. Severe runout can be detrimental to the wood's strength. And wider grained? Most certainly not in the Euro I've got and the big piles at my supplier, higher graded,(European grading 6-8) will be as fine grained as any wood around. I don't know about the Euro spruce that makes it to the USA dealers, maybe it's like the sitka that gets to Europe.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Italian alpine red spruce (picea abies) "qualita extra" the difference with any other european spruce is weight.





The pencil marks remind me that the average longitudinal sound trasmission speed of this board was 5650 m/sec. at 12% RH.
Cheers - Luigi

It's some of Luigi's exceptional Italian Spruce that I'm building with at the moment. If any wood can claim to be Mastergrade, well this is it! Great stuff.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Luigi! It's good to have you back! Those beautiful tops have my heart going pitter-pat!

Yes, that's some amazing looking wood.