Official Luthiers Forum!

OK a so master grade soundboard would be perfectly quartered; but how
much off-quarter would you expect AA or A or "student grade" to
be?  5°?  10°?  20°?  I'm really interested in the
actual numbers that go into these grades.



I got some nice tight-grained redwood that is reclaimed shelf, 10-15
lines per inch with not too much runout (about 20" of length for each
1/4").  Enough for 2 tops.  One is ~30° off quarter while the
other is 5° to 10°.  I'm wondering where these sit in the grading
scale.

How well quartered is only one factor. Stiffness, runout, and taptone are others that are perhaps better indicators.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Check out Shanes site at highmountaintonewood !
He has some pics of the off 1/4
Mc

_________________
Mike Collins

Wood tends to be less stiff the more off-quarter that it is. I just cut a Sitka billet and one side of the slice was reasonably stiff, and the other was floppy. The floppy side was about 20 degrees of quarter. The wood had decent silk, but the off-quarter was apparently enough to ruin a piece of wood for guitar sets.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Don;
How much you want for the off 1/4 set?
You can always add stiffness!

mike

_________________
Mike Collins

[QUOTE=Mike Collins] Don;
How much you want for the off 1/4 set?
You can always add stiffness!

mike
[/QUOTE]

What's your address again? I'll send a set to you.

I had another billet that I sliced that would be considered ugly as heck to some folks, except that it has a ton of silk. In fact, one of the tops from it is on the Sitka / Black Acacia SJ on my website. But, a .150" slice is so stiff you can't bend it the slightest bit in either direction. That one, is a keeper. I love tops with funky color in them. Call me insane.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I guess the first rule is there are no rules!! There is no accepted or standardized grade standard that we all use, such as is required for the building lumber industry for instance. Having said that, we all do agree (well most of us anyway) that a mastergrade set has it all, consistent colour, well quartered, stiff in both directions, consistent or even grain progression, all in all just something that once it hits your hands you KNOW it is a fine top. It pretty much ends there. So suppliers have a 6 to 8 to 10 or more grades. I have only talk about 4 and really most of my customers just tell me what they expect in a top and what they can live with outside those expectations and I tell them if I have it and what the price would be. So I guess the moral really is, find a supplier that can you can work worth and build a relationship, then when you get wood from them give them some feedback and as time goes on you will get exactly what you want at known price point. As for 'finding' wood and processing it into guitar parts, it can indeed happen! In fact I just resawed up four 54" long 3/4" thick shelves of very dense Phillipine mahogany that has incredible flame! Now, one would not think that Phillipine mahogany would be a good tone wood but these boards are stiff and tap well, they are well on quarter and look GREAT! So, they are tone wood. On a top, you can use flatsawn wood if you know what you are doing. It is not as stable but would be stable enough if you took precautions. It would be not be as strong as if that same piece were well quartered but it may be stronger as well quartered wood that is not as stiff...if you follow my drift! Me, I would be doing a lot of thinking before I made a top out of wood that was 30 degrees off quarter but if was pretty cool looking I might give it a try as well. As my buddy Mike Collins said above, you build stiffness into the top.

Good luck

Shane

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Canada

Thanks guys, good information...but mostly answers to questions that are different from the one I asked.



Chris, this is not figured redwood, totally straight-grained.  The
runout number I cited was vertical runout, not lateral.  They are
wide enough that I can trim them parallel to the grain and have no
lateral runout.  The extent of off-quarter grain does change
slightly across the board, so they obviously were not split before they
were planed down.  I feel like I know enough that 30° is pretty
far off, and 0° is perfect, but I'd like to learn more about the range
between those numbers.



[QUOTE=Don Williams]How well quartered is only one factor. Stiffness,
runout, and taptone are others that are perhaps better
indicators.[/QUOTE]



Quite true, I know this, I'm not asking about ALL the factors that go
into a specific grade, only one factor, the amount of rift.  So
let me ask the question slightly differently....



All else being being equal
(stiffness, runout, tap tone), how much off-quarter does the board have
to be to bump it down from master to AA to A to student-grade? 



Or perhaps this is not even measured with any accuracy as a matter of
routine...just eyeballed and considered as another subjective aspect of
grading...??



Not trying to be crotchety here, just after specific numbers. 

Thanks Shane for answering as I typed...so the boundaries are not so
clearly defined that you can't really put a rift° on them?  I
suppose a more rifted piece could find itself in AA territory if (let's
say) the tap tone was so superior that it made up for the degree of
rift....tradeoffs.



As far as the redwood goes, I'm still on my first acoustic instrument,
so my plan is to use the 30°-rifted top first, and the better
one....later.



My interest in trying to nail down this whole grading thing is because
I'm able to resaw just about anything, I'm getting better at it every
day, and this allows me to buy lumber in the ruff and save some
cash.  But I'm discovering that resawing soundboard material
properly is taking things up a notch, and so I'd like to get a better
idea of where the grading boundaries are.



On the flip side, being a scientist, it is part of my nature to put numbers to use.  If a quantity can be measured (and is somehow an indicator of quality), then it should be measured and not just eyeballed...eliminate subjectivity where possible.  But I realize not everyone sees it this way.

[QUOTE=erikbojerik] But I'm discovering that resawing soundboard material
properly is taking things up a notch, and so I'd like to get a better
idea of where the grading boundaries are.

[/QUOTE]

This is true! Top wood does indeed require more attention to detail that back and sides do, it is not typically as flashy though! There are a lot of VERY FINE flat sawn, rift sawn and run out laced back and side sets out there alive and well on fine guitars.

I have posted the numbers I use for the grades of my lumber. And note that they are percentages and degrees.   Having posted them I rarely use them as the significant grading factor. True the higher grades are very close to those posted numbers but the lower grades may be the same as those posted numbers for the higher grades. When I split billets they are very well quartered before they hit the saw.

Now the other thing you are about to learn about making musical instruments is that everything about the process, right down to scale length and tuning, is a compromise. Wood selection is very subjective. I have customers that call some wood master grade and the next will call it 2A, these are both high end makers but with two very different views on what they expect for a quality top. Truth is they have found a way to work a certain set of criteria in their top wood and that is what they want. So I have found imperical standards, such as in construction lumber, are all but impractical for instrument wood. Especially since measuring these criteria would be very involved and this wood can differ significantly from one part of the same tree to another.

I too have a science bent about me and wanted the same answers that you seek when I started to cut wood but have come to "accept" that they are not really attainable in a meaningful way, you will soon learn by doing what really works best for you.

Good Luck!

Shane

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Canada

Thanks again Shane.