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My first guitar back in the 1970's was a classical of German Alpine Spruce and Brazilian Rosewood for the sides and back!
The Spruce was expensive as real German was getting hard to find so I paid $38 for the top which was one notch below what today we would call Master grade. The Brazilian Rosewood was a lesser grade as only half of the width of the back was quartersawn...
The build took forever as the only book I had to go by was A.P. Sharpe's How to make your Spanish Guitar which was all of 40 pages if that with mostly line drawings and very few details.
At the time I was a poor college student and could not afford a concert instrument so the money I spent on the wood cost me meals and other expenses but I was determined to build a guitar of my own. I used only hand tools and had very few of them except for a really expensive violin makers knife that was the sharpest thing I had ever seen.
In many ways it was the most expensive guitar I have ever built because the wood cost far more than I could afford, even though the prices are a bargain by todays dollars. It came out good and while rough around the edges sounded good. I was too embarrased to show it to any friends that were classical guitarists but it played well and met my needs. If I had built that guitar I would not have stuck with it till now.
When Torres was at his poorest he built guitars with 4 and 5 piece tops, with the sides and backs being Cypress or Maple. While the tops were 4-5 pieces, upon closer inspection you will notice that he was cutting the part of a board that was dead on quartersawn as he knew that ultimately that it doesnt matter what the guitar looks like, it is the quality not the price of the wood that matters.
His proof of that concept is his famous guitar that was built with a body that was paper mache but with a good spruce top. Similarly Bob Benedetto built a guitar from palletwood... it isnt completely about the wood either...it is about the combination of he skill of the builder combined with the quality of the individual piece of wood.
I only build classical and flamenco guitar but like other builders over time had come to the conclusion that it was the rarity of the materials used that helped to justify a higher price so I only would build with BRW and Alpine Spruce.
At the same time, I was lured away from building with just hand tools and got to the point a few years ago that there was no part of a guitar that I dont have a jig or fixture for... Tool acquisition syndrome can be as insidious as Wood acquisition syndrome!
While I was building in batches of 6 and was building a consistently good guitar, it had started to feel like I might as well be building fine furniture or cabinets as I was loosing touch with the building process and the wood itself.
I have no issues with people who are more comfortable with power tools and have not sworn them off...for me it is just a personal thing that I wanted to get back to where I was at when I built from start to finish with good but not extravagant woods and mostly with hand tools instead of machinery.
Last year I attended the Jose Romanillos guitar building class in Spain hoping to reconnect to the art of building, instead of the craft. It was what I needed as only hand tools were allowed from start to finish.
I will be attending his class in Spain again this year but the interesting effect of having rethinking my building is that this last year of 12 guitars only 2 have been Brazilian Rosewood and those were for previous orders. Another 4 were in EIR, and the remainder have been blanca's (3 classical and 3 flamenco) in Spanish Cypress or Port Orford Cedar (Lawson Cypress).
While I still have plenty of power tools and machinery, several of my power tools and pieces of machinery that I would have used as the primary way of building are not unused in favor of a more hands on approach.
All of this is a very long way to say, guitar building is about building as good a qualty as you are able for the stage and experience you are at using the best quality wood (at least for the top) that you can afford without going overboard and if the result sounds good and each build gets better than you have accomplished something special, both for yourself and those that will play and or own your guitars.
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