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So I glued up a beautiful German spruce top (first time using German) and cut it out. Once I got it all cleaned up I noticed that the light reflects of the two halves very differntly. When you look at it straight on it looks fine but as soon as you look at it on an angle you notice the difference. The treble side looks duller while the bass side reflects a lighter colour. If I flip it over to the back it is the other way around, the bass side looks dull and the treble looks bright. So my question is what is causing this? I haven't run into this before. The only thing I can think of is that one of the sides got flipped over. The grain on this top is so nice and straight all the way through that I suppose this could have happened. My thinking is this would explain why the light reflection is opposite when I flip the top over.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I tried taking some pictures but it did not show up that well.

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
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House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
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It's grain runout. Tell tale sign. There's not really any way around it, that's just the way this particular tree grew.

I think it is due to the grain direction in a book matched pair of sides.  One half runs north the other south.  I only think this because I asked the same question a couple of weeks ago, but mine had to do with thicknessing with a plane and getting tearout on one side and not the other.  However, it stands to reason that one side would reflect light differently from the other.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

just a fairly uninformed guess here, but if there is much run out in the top and that grain is running in the opposite direction in each half, light will reflect differently off of each side. in other words, some grain pointing slightly up and some pointing slightly down. im not sure if that is worded correctly, but some people who know what they are talking about will be along shortly...

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sweat the small stuff.

beat me to it... and there you have it.

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sweat the small stuff.

Grain runout, as said before. As a purist thing, it's come to be frowned upon, but I wouldn't worry about it - decades of high end Martins can't be all wrong. I've never thought it was a bad looking effect.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

Josh - a nice looking top - I like the pattern myself.  What is the back and sides behind it in the picture? 

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Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Thanks guys, I went out to the shop and had another look and yes it is just runout. I thought that it might have been something else. But after spinning the top around and looking at it every which way I realized that there is nothing wrong with it. It really is a nice top and it has a great tap tone.

The b&S are curly Honduran Mahogany. Both the top and back are from our friend Bobc. I just love the look of this mahogany!

 

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

[QUOTE=Pwoolson] It's grain runout. Tell tale sign. There's not really any way around it, that's just the way this particular tree grew.[/QUOTE]

Paul, I agree it's grain runout, but entirely avoidable. You can take a perfect tree and get wood like this.

Imagine a perfect quartered log, split off the face and you have perfectly quartered tops. It's when the tops are sawed out and the sawyer loses the split face, that runout begins to reflect as shown.

Not hard to understand at all, in one view you are looking into the cut off fibers, in the opposite book-matched half, you are looking past the cut off fibers. One reflects dark, one light.

Then there is the imperfect tree, where it undulates the grain. My wife's Taylor has one of these abberations. Back then I didn't yet have a handle on what this phenomenon was. Great guitar anyway. And this top will most likely make a great guitar too. Can you say sunburst?

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Josh,
From what I've heard and from my own personal experience, German
Spruce is notorious for this. In fact, I think you will find it a rare
occassion when you won't see a color difference either side of the glue
joint. In other words, it should be perfectly acceptable as is. Now if that
were Carpathian and it looked like that - I would be dissapointed.   

Peace Out,
Simon

Simon

I have stuck to the more common spruces up until now. Lots of Lutz and Sitka with a few Englemann guitars as well. I want to give some of these other ones a try but with some of them I am not sure what is normal of acceptable (like this German spruce). It is great being able to check in with people like yourself who have more experience. thanks

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Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

[QUOTE=SimonF] Josh,
From what I've heard and from my own personal experience, German
Spruce is notorious for this. In fact, I think you will find it a rare
occassion when you won't see a color difference either side of the glue
joint.
[/QUOTE]

Maybe Colin was right in a previous post about the Euro spruce that gets sent to the US

Although - like adi spruce - today's wood is not of the same high quality as the really old trees cut in the past, it's not hard to find nice Euro spruce tops(German, Italian, Swiss, Belgian, Monte Carlo and soon Turkish - substitute your favour European country ) with no runout.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

i consider the species of the wood to be irrelevant to the question of runout. as has been pointed out by others, the runout issue has everything to do with how skillfully the tree was processed, and with localized runout, the environment in which it grew.

and if one looks at the prewar martins which are held up to be the holy grail, you will see runout aplenty.

infact, it is relatively rare to see a factory guitar without some runout. they simply don't spend the big bucks on high grade top wood that hand builders do. perhaps on their custom shop efforts, but not on the production run product.

Josh,
Colin might very well be right. I have bought a few super nice grade/
mastergrade German tops from some US suppliers over the years. In fact,
I called one of them with the runout question - asking why there was a
noticeable color change on a mastergrade German top.

He mentioned (Chris, from LMI) that the runout is still very minimial but
that it is much more apparent with German than their other spruces. I am
not sure if that is true or not. Chris is an honest guy so it could just be
that the particular German Spruce logs they have gotten have had this
issue.

Either way, I don't think it is a big deal. However, I personally like to see
a completely homogenous top. Maybe I will call up the European
suppliers the next time I need some real good Euro spruce.

Best of luck,
Simon

[QUOTE=SimonF] Josh,
Colin might very well be right. I have bought a few super nice grade/
mastergrade German tops from some US suppliers over the years. In fact,
I called one of them with the runout question - asking why there was a
noticeable color change on a mastergrade German top.

He mentioned (Chris, from LMI) that the runout is still very minimial but
that it is much more apparent with German than their other spruces. I am
not sure if that is true or not. Chris is an honest guy so it could just be
that the particular German Spruce logs they have gotten have had this
issue.

Either way, I don't think it is a big deal. However, I personally like to see
a completely homogenous top. Maybe I will call up the European
suppliers the next time I need some real good Euro spruce.

Best of luck,
Simon [/QUOTE]

Simon,

I know that the various wood grading systems are somewhat arbitary, but I thought that most were based on the "looks" rather than tonal potential of the wood. In this case I'm struggling to see how a set with a noticable colour change could have been sold as "mastergrade".

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

"Paul, I agree it's grain runout, but entirely avoidable. You can take a
perfect tree and get wood like this. "

True...

Here's an interesting pic....

A perfectly straight tree was intentionally resawn in 1/4"-in-20"-
increments to show how varying degrees of runout look under
varnish....

Theoretically, you can spot the amount of runout in a guitar top from 50
feet away....   

 [/QUOTE]

Simon,

I know that the various wood grading systems are somewhat arbitary, but I thought that most were based on the "looks" rather than tonal potential of the wood. In this case I'm struggling to see how a set with a noticable colour change could have been sold as "mastergrade".[/QUOTE]

Dave - I'm with you in on this one.  This topic made me have another look at the "master grade" sitka top I just received in the mail and I have the same colour variation.  Nice top except for the run out, but how does a supplier sell tops with run out as master sets?  Luckily, I only bought one and it was a good price ($53 USD), he jointed and joined it for free, so not a big deal in my case.  I'll definitely be more careful for the next one. 

Laurie

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Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

colour variation and runout reflection are not the same thing.

some spruces by their very nature are more likely than not to have colour variation, e.g., sitka or adi. others have much more uniform colour, e.g., engleman or european.

all will show the reflective difference denoting runout if it is present.

remember that what is AAAAA in one species may be different than AAAAA in another, since the amount of wood on the market will vary and the top grade is usually given to what is typically the best on the market at any given time. this just reflects the fact that the grading system is individual and highly subjective.

get to know your vendors, talk to them, tell them what you expect, and shop for quality, not for price. good vendors will always accept your return of the product if it does not meet your reasonable expectations.

learn what is reasonable expectable. know the wood you are after. if you return because your sitka or adi shipment was not uniformly milky white then you may be catered to once, but i wouldn't expect it again, for such expectations denote ignorance, not discernment.

the market is what it is, and there are vendors whose classification is almost always sound, and their prices reflect the trust you can place in them. but you have to know the wood well enough to know what you should expect, and know when you get it. support them with your business and they will support you.

znd then there are the vendors whose ratings are always at best hopeful, and at the worst fraudulent, and you have to learn to recognize them as well. hopefully you will not lose too much whilst you learn the difference.

we are so very fortunate to have amongst the olf membership a number of very wxcellent wood vendors. i have purchase wood from several of them and never been anything but totally satified with what i received.

out there there are also any number of other excellent vendors. you will often see their names appear here.

Micheal,

I hear what you say and it makes a lot of sense. I know that the grading systems are variable and can largely be marketing b***ix, but it would be better if top grade was labelled as "best currently available grade" rather than "mastergrade". Mastergrade has that connotation of being only of a standard that would be acceptable to the master builders and has a sort of "standard" to it - I'm thinking of where Colin refers to the great classical builders making multipiece tops so that each piece had the perfect quality and grain orientation to meet their exacting requirements.

For some species where "mastergrade" is currently unobtainable, the fact that none of this grade can be supplied serves as a great reminder to builders and players of the scarce resource that wood really is. You might have to wait 600 years for the next batch

Finding wood cutters and suppliers that know their wood and how to grade and process it and whose judgement and service you trust is key and I whole-heartedly agree with you that the OLF sponsors/vendors sit very much in this category - a blessing indeed.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

[quote]I'm thinking of where Colin refers to the great classical builders making multipiece tops so that each piece had the perfect quality and grain orientation to meet their exacting requirements. [/quote]

I have great difficulty believing they chose multi-piece (more than just a bookmatch) for reasons of tonewood selection, but I have no problem believing they scrounged what they could get, because wood was expensive, and labour cheap, and experience and skill guided them in making wonderful sounding instruments.

Let's not over-romanticize the craft, eh?

[QUOTE=Mattia Valente] [quote]I'm thinking of where Colin refers to the great classical builders making multipiece tops so that each piece had the perfect quality and grain orientation to meet their exacting requirements. [/quote]

I have great difficulty believing they chose multi-piece (more than just a bookmatch) for reasons of tonewood selection, but I have no problem believing they scrounged what they could get, because wood was expensive, and labour cheap, and experience and skill guided them in making wonderful sounding instruments.

Let's not over-romanticize the craft, eh?[/QUOTE]

Hey Mattia,

I'm not romanticising anything - I know nothing at all about classical guitar making and makers, but I know a man who does and he told me:

"Torres was a passionate advocate of the top being the most important part and was VERY selective in his top wood, and as getting good instrument wood was difficult, it is rare to find a Torres with a book-matched top usually the pieces (usually 2 but sometimes more) come from different planks and often are not joined along the centre line of the guitar, but they are perfectly quartered and sometimes only 1mm thick in places!"

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

That exact information was covered pretty extensively in Jose Romanillos' book on Torres.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Josh, as I understand it, some runout does not necessarily indicate an inferior piece of wood. I've read that a discriminating supplier will accept some runout as a trade for better quartered, stiffer wood. This is especially true for wood that now only comes from small trees, which is the case, I've been told, with true German (as opposed to Euro) spruce. Since it came from Bob C. you most likely got the real-deal German stuff, and it'll give you the potential for an excellent instrument.

Hey guys this has been a good and informative discussion. I've learned a lot from it. Thanks to each one for your input.

Carlton

I know this is a good top. It is well quartered and stiff and it has a great tap tone. I know that it is going to make a killer sounding guitar. And if it turns out as good as I think it will than I will probably use more Euro spruce in the future.

After I sanded the top to 320 much of the light reflection differences actually went away. Now the variation is only minimal.

_________________
Josh House

Canadian Luthier Supply
http://www.canadianluthiersupply.com
https://www.facebook.com/canadianluthiersupply?ref=hl
House Guitars - Custom Built Acoustic Instruments.
http://www.houseguitars.com

[QUOTE=CarltonM] This is especially true for wood that now only comes from small trees, which is the case, I've been told, with true German (as opposed to Euro) spruce. [/QUOTE]

What do you mean; German spruce is not European spruce?

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin