Official Luthiers Forum!

A quote from Jean-Claude Larrivee in Acoustic Guitar Magazine. I'm sure he's referring to Sitka seeing that's his preference. He also says that 3 millimeters, going to have to check my metric ruler, between lines makes by far the best guitar. Why do we continue to "squeeze in"our tops as close to the center and cut off the outside edges. The wider grains are towards the "outside". Has anyone thought about cutting,say, one inch off of the tightest grain, in the center and pushing the top to the outside towards the wider grains? Or reverse the tops so the center seam is the widest grains? Or on the bass side put the wide grains out,normal, and the turn the treble side, wide grain towards the center? That would look wierd though. Clinton

It comes from the fact that the tighter the grain count typiclly the stiffer the cross grain value.

So am I the only one that cuts most of the waste from the wider grain side of the board? Clinton

That would be 8 lines per inch, quite wide for Sitka.
I recently finished a classical in Euro spruce of app. 10 grain per inch and for my level of experience it sounds too good I would say. Got me my first commision! Very light and reasonably stiff.

In any case if you want evenly spaced wide grained spruce, Carpathian seems a good bet.

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Build log

I think people favor the "center" or tighter grain because it is usually more perfectly quartered. The grain widening on some spruce is sometimes only a gradual change from quartered to slightly off quarter. The cross grain stiffness is highest when the wood is perfectly quartered and goes down sharply as it slabs out. Some of the wider grained but still well quartered spruce certainly is really awesome. The best red spruce I have ever seen was very wide grained, but perfectly quartered and like Alex said, some Carpathian is very much the same. It was incredibly stiff in both directions. But then some of the tight grained stuff is also just as stiff. You can't classify it simply by grain width.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Iirc, Brain Burns found, when he measured a couple of hundred tops, that there was a small correlation between grain count and cross grain stiffness. The wood does get a little stiffer across the grain on average when the lines are closer together. This is normally swamped by the influence of quartering, though. The tighter grained stuff also tends to be a bit denser, and that usually means the top will end up being heavier at the same stiffness.

Whenever some maker says that something doesn't work, I mentally add in the words: "for you". I've got an old cedar topped classical that must run fifty grain lines to the inch in the middle, and it sounds fine.

The variable grain count seems to be about the age of the tree too. I do a lot of climbing and trekking in the...Carpathians and see a bunch of spruce. Since I started building i look at them with a different eye and go ecstatic when i see a straight one with no branches, but 99.99% they are either too young and branchey, and if not, still too young. I've seen a felled one which seemed quite thick, I could not embrace it and im a big guy. Well, 3/4 of it, the center, had at least 4mm width between the circles, and only a small portion towards the exterior was tight enough to make tonewood. Not sure it was enough to make a violin.

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Build log

Jean Larivee has made many contributions to guitar making. However, his saying something does not make it so.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Personally, I have found grain count to be pretty much meaningless when it comes to evaluating the quality of tonewood.

Density and stiffness count and there seems to be little correlation between those things and lines per inch.

Mark

Diddo what Mark just said.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Don't you think that the public perception is "tighter the grain the better". Now we've come to accept Adi that isn't as tight grained as in the good ole days. Clinton

like others here I've also found little correlation to grain count and stiffness cross grain, and have also found closer grain lines to have a higher density.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

I agree with Mark as well.

Recently I built a Carp topped OM that after I did the deflection testing I decided to reverse the book match and put the wider grain in the center of the top. This guitar sounds fine and it's JJ favorite guitar of the ones that I have built.

I agree that each top needs to be evaluated individually, but I have had some nice results with wider grained tops on steelstring guitars. Tighter tops seem more useful on classical guitars since they often enhance the trebles. On steelstring guitars the trebles are easier to come by.

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Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com