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Hello everyone, Hope everyone is fairing this troubling situation in good health and spirits.
The subject matter story is here on our Blog - https://alaskawoods.com/asws-new-ultra-light-sort/
A brief description of the character of most of this extremely light, high resonance sitka is that the texture tends to be more Open, with looser grain than most old growth. The finer texture would be similar to the Norway spruce from Europe, and other to be similar to Red Spruce. We currently have 4 grade sorts, that are listed as variations in our non-figured dreadnought size flat tops. Links to those sorts are in the article as hyperlinks wherever "ultra-light" is mentioned.
Have a GREAT day doing what you love to do!
Regards, Brent Sr

I definitely like the idea of weight being part of the grading system of sorts.

Thank you John, There are a few folks that have interest in this, and that is why we have taken on the task of watching for it and segregating. I just did a quick calculation of how much old growth sitka log we have cut ad dissecting into various stages of guitar tops. Since 1995-6 about 2,000,000 board feet of large diameter Old growth Sitka Spruce sawlog. And that volume of log has produced aprox 1,200,000 guitar tops. In our first 15 yrs or so, we would cut approx 50,000 guitar tops worth of log, but 80% was shipped out as wholesale block to another soundboard producer. We have actually supplied 4 different producers. But 15yr to just one. While supplying the other producers which was a division of ASW, I was the sawyer/producer of soundboard products in our shop, with production of up to 10,000 tops per yr. After 2011 we ceased most wholesale block, sent a couple 40' cans to Maderas Barber in Spain, and another 3 -40' cans to a producer in China. Though we would notice some light weight wood, we Never thought much of it. Since Greg, brought it to my attention with the one bridge stringer log, we started watching for it.
There is not much old growth Sitka that is this light of density. To put it into perspective...Of the last 500,000+ bdft of log we have brought in, less than 10,000bdft gross Scribmner with a net recoverable scale of under 5mbf is this very light weight density type log. And the reason it's such a low recovery, is because the log is float log with toredo damage that will only yield 25-55% of the log.. We have seen plenty that has the texture, and the look of this light density but turns out to fall into the range of most sitka. Which is quite dense compared to Norway, Engleman and lutz[hybrid]. Anyway, thanks again for your words of encouragement.

That's awesome!

Just a couple weeks ago I bought some mahogany neck stock wood from a supplier in Oregon that was sold as light weight too. I am building two now for clients who emphasized that they like light weight guitars. Of course the idea of light weight in tops is totally different then overall weight of a guitar, I still liked the fact that this seller of wood took the weight into consideration.

Hi Brent,

I bought one of these tops a while ago from you and am in the middle of building a J-45 style guitar with it.

I have paired it with a very light weight set of koa and am very excited to hear it.

It "taps" very nicely.

It should be done in a couple of months and I will certainly report on how it came out on this forum.

That’s awesome Brad. There have been quite a few of this sort going out during the last 8-10 months. Before we actually had them listed in the store. After talking with the customer on the phone and talking to them about what they were looking for. You were one of those folks! I would Really like to learn Bryan Gallups Tonal Rating system. It’s from that system and Bryan, that I learned what I know today about the tops I have in this sort. Of coarse his system is Very Finite and specific to A board. We cannot measure every board. But we can and do segregate material type by the physical properties we can measure feel and see.

Brent--

Absent some sort of barter (which, if anybody could arrange, you could), it will cost you $4,000.00 to learn it. See the link below.

https://www.galloupguitars.com/galloup- ... d-tuition/

I have spoken to Bryan about his program. We supply his school with the sitka they use. I haven't been able to get definitive answer from him about me, or one of our team taking the class. I hadn't really pushed it either since cashflow and time are both in such short supply. I saw the voicing class, and didn't think it was the tonal evaluation part, but rather voicing specific boards in a build.. Of coarse the total evaluation is a big part of that. I think it's awesome, but could be a double edge sword in my business. Might learn that a lot that we produce and sell, and that everyone loves, really isn't very good at all.. Martin Guitar loves our product, as well as Gibson Custom and OAI-Nashville, Lowden ,Breedlove custom and Bedell to name a few larger production outfits, and at least half the members of this forum. Because it is so precise and board specific, I think he has a reluctance for us to use it in a more general sense, like we would want to do. For instance, product from a log, or a quadrant of a length log, will meet this range of tonal rating. Greg Maxwell, found that all the tops from that Black Bear Ck Bridge stringer log, that started this venture, and sort, all rated very high. We are already cutting VG, in a radial cut fashion, Which is a more Vertical Grain cut than quartersawn. And by this type of process, stiffness doesn't vary too much, except by the specific log fiber, from tree to tree, log to log, etc.