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I'm curious, do cedar topped guitars wear out? My dad had a Takamine natural series guitar years ago, that seemed to lose its tone as the guitar aged, and I've had lots of experience with cedar topped Seagull (and their affiliated brands) guitars that all seemed to do the same. My final piece of anecdotal evidence was a luthier I knew who did some work for Leona Boyd, and he said she'd replace her guitars yearly or something crazy like that.

yes I don't think on steel strings that they get better with age

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

This is interesting and I can't wait to see this discussion develop. I can't really add any evidence. I only own one cedar topped guitar and I finished it just a couple years ago. I will add that I was surprised at how quickly it developed its tone after initial string up. I made a wood topped banjo with WRC once and it also changed very quickly after string up. I remember, at the time, wondering if it was the cedar that is breaking in much faster than the spruce topped instruments I have made. Maybe it breaks in fast and wears out fast.

I sure hope that is not true since I like the sound of this cedar topped guitar.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I made a WRC topped OOO 4 or 5 years ago and it sounds better than ever. I can only speak to my experience, but I can't imagine how a couple of thin boards could ever 'wear out'?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

First hearing about cedar years ago, the writer mentioned that immediate development, unlike spruce, is typical of cedar. I do not recall anything about wearing out.

Has not been my experience....

One question: Who built the first cedar guitar, and is it still playable?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

My first guitar that I built in 1978 has a cedar top. I can't say that I've noticed much change in tone over the years. It's always been pretty good, but not great. It's always been strung very light for fingerstyle playing, and maybe the lower tension makes a difference.

I have a couple of classicals with cedar tops that are also from the 70's (I didn't build them), and they still sound great.

Maybe string tension on a cedar top has some effect on making it wear out early. I don't know.

Dave

I've run across the idea that cedar tops "wear out" over time a number of times and I've always wondered if this is a real thing or if it's guitar lore. If it does happen, does it affect all cedar tops or only a portion of them and what percentage that would be? If it's real, does it happen to all cedar species? Some species more than others? If it does happen, why is cedar different from spruce. Or redwood or fir for that matter.



I wonder if breaking in fast and wearing out is a actual thing. I've not heard of breaking in slow and then wearing out. It seems like the general presumption is that when a spruce top "opens up" and improves over many years, it stays improved. As far as I know , it doesn't then deteriorate at some point (or maybe it just takes a very long time?). If that's the case, I wonder why it would be any different for cedar. If a cedar top sounds good from the get go, but doesn't improve further, I would be fine with that as long as it doesn't go downhill down the road.

A related question: if a torrified tops sound like an old, opened up top right from the get go, does it "wear out" over time?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Cedar is normally less dense than spruce. Long-grain stiffness at a given thickness tracks density pretty well for all softwoods. If you make a cedar top as thin as a spruce one the cedar is likely to be less stiff than it 'should' be. Tops seem to die when they dish in too much in front of the bridge from long-term bridge torque. From what I've seen cedar tops do seem to 'play in' less than spruce tops, but I don't think they 'play out' any faster if they're done right. It's hard to say, of course. The earliest use of cedar seems to have been in the early '70s (I have a cedar topped classical from that era), so there are no hundred year old ones to compare with the older spruce tops. We'll just have to review the data as it comes in.....

I'm sure Willie Nelson would wear out a cedar top in no time at all!
I bought a handmade Spanish classical guitar in the mid 70's, and it still sounds great. The top has a few small dings in it and a little bit of finish worn off near the fretboard from over zealous rasqueados, but otherwise is in good shape.
Western red cedar may not be the best material for steel string guitars, but there are certainly many out there that have held up O.K..
I use WRC for dulcimer tops and I prefer it to spruce for them.
As with Engelmann Spruce I have noticed a lot of variability in the quality of the wood - some is extremely soft and floppy and some much harder and stiffer. I avoid the soft floppy stuff even for dulcimers where you don't normally think of there being a lot of stress on the soundboard. I have read the better classical makers are selective of the pieces of WRC they use, just as they would be for spruce.

James Taylor stated this a few times My experience is that they tend to crack a lot easier than spruce. I think on classical they are ok but not a fan on steel strings. In my 20 yrs of working on these things I see a more issues on cedar than spruce. If Cedar as better you would see more of them but I do agree the tone is different from spruce , so it is another ingredient in the soup. I am just not a fan of them. Never hear on that made me want to buy or build one.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I recently played one of our cedar top classics that was made in 1971. Plays fine and sounds excellent. The customer bought it new and says it's still his favorite guitar. Cedar may not be the best wood if you want your guitar to last a century or more but most guitars (not all) start getting flabby sounding after after 50-60 years. We've been building for almost 60 years and I'm certainly getting a little "flabby" so I can't fault the guitars.

Thanks for all the input. I've been looking at a few different UK guitars, and a cedar top seems to be a common ingredient. I'm interested in a guitar that I don't have to drive/push as much as the two Martins I have, but also won't max out easily headroom wise. I'm also not in a position to buy a guitar with the mentality of simply replacing a tool when it wears out.

Just my 2 cents, all guitars will wear out!! Some a bit quicker than others. I have built a few cedar topped guitars and as far as I know they are all still playing and sounding ok. I still have a “000” cedar and walnut that I built in 2014 and it sounds great.
Just to add to that story about Leona Boyd.........years ago I had the pleasure of supplying sound reinforcement, and engineering for a concert that she gave in the city that I was living in. She was very astute about not wanting the audience to “notice the large speakers and amplifier stacks in the auditorium”, so I had to try and disguise them using stage props and curtains, etc. Heh,heh, not the easiest thing to do!
She was very particular about the quality of the sound reaching the front of house and asked me to play her guitar on stage, so she could walk around the auditorium and listen. Well, can you spell nervous?
Not being a classical player at all, I fumbled through some finger style blues and a rendition of Alice’s Restaurant. She was very kind after hearing me play and asked if I would go out and listen to her play WOW! A great player!!
Anyway she had a couple of instruments with her and I asked her if one was a backup instrument, she told me that at that time she would have a few guitars that she would be “playing in” getting ready to take over as her main concert instrument.
I know that this level of Concert artist would keep a few instruments on the go and they would be replaced as the sound would appear to deteriorate enough that a newer instrument may sound a bit better. These would be minute differences but when you have an ear close to perfect the subtleties do matter.
I would not be afraid of cedar, just my thoughts.

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Remember, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers!

I have Martins that are pre 1850 they don't wear out but will require a neck reset to reestablish neck geometry.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

With old instruments there's always the question of what they sounded like when new. Recording technology in the 1850s was...... With no bench mark it's hard to say. What did a Strad sound like right off the bench?

As an engineering material wood is considered more or less immune to fatigue issues in most uses. Most structures will probably rot out before they wear out. Instruments can be fairly highly stressed, though, since they're under constant string tension that is large relative to their weight, and need to be light in weight to respond well. It defies logic to think that the guitar would be the only machine that would never wear out, but it can certainly take a long time.

I think the first I heard of WRC being used was from Bill Lewis in the early '70's. IIRC he said some Spanish luthiers had used it in the late 1950's. He recommended (and sold) WRC to a Japanese company called Yamaki. They were very successful using it in their lower end guitars and only used spruce in the higher end models. I heard about Yamaki from a friend who went out to Vancouver BC to do some studio work with a band called Chilliwack. He told me the sound guys had them put some small towels in them so they could adjust the sound better. I know the one I bought was a big sound. Everything I've read about cedar from the '70's and '80's said they sounded very 'live' from new and 'played in' very quickly, but didn't improve very much after that. Some believe spruce guitars 'die' as well. In his books from the early '70's, Irving Sloane talks about being at a Classical performance in New York where the performer stood up, said 'this guitar is dead', smashed the guitar, and walked off the stage.

FWIW . I own 2 michael dunn guitars , the maccaferi was built in 72 and the jumbo carlson 12 string in73 . They are both ss wrc guitars with brazilian rosewood back an sides. Over time they have IMHO not improved much in sound . They are both excellent guitars with a loud booming sound that I have used for fingerpicking and slide guitar. I also own two classical guitars with cedar tops from spain . They are both factory guitars that have a good projection an sound. When . I compare them to 2 brazilian spruce top guitars . . there is a marked difference n the sound. . J romanillos in his book on cl guitars , states that wrc is only good for gardens. It seems to me , that playing style would greatly affect the longevity of a wrc top. Aggressive flamenco players would probably wear through a wrc top in short order . Wheras players with a lighter touch who play on a wrc classical would have a guitar that would be useful for years to come . My ss wrc guitars have scratches, an stains , and the 12 string has a slight belly behind the bridge. But they are both very playable. an sound great after all these years

I think that it's impossible to comment on if a cedar top sounds better with age because we also have the back and sides aging at the same rate and "coloring" the resulting tone as older wood might. Or, there is no way to evaluate a cedar top in isolation.

What I can tell you is that cedar tops in our world where we are the ones that repair guitars and that's the only thing we do cedar tops are much more prone to lifting bridges. Not only are they more prone to lifting bridges we see this on classical, cedar topped guitars as well even with the lower tension of classical strings.

Additionally when a bridge lifts on a cedar top it is far more prone to take a substantial scoop of wood with it making the repair at times more challenging, more expensive, more time consuming and less likely to be invisible if the damage extends beyond the foot print.

We have a saying in our world that other repair Luthiers like to joke about when we get drunk together. It goes like this "Cordoba means bridge reglue in Spanish." It refers to inexpensive classical under the brand name Cordoba that often, not always have cedar tops.

Now as a builder I built with cedar on the tops of my Heshtones many times including number 55 that sits unfinished in our shop collecting dust. It's beautiful, I love the chocolate brown color, it's lush with over tones and makes a superb finger style guitar or classical. Cedar can flat pick fine but I prefer the greater headroom seemingly of spruce for a flat picked instrument.

It dents if you look at it wrong.... meaning it's soft and it will teach you one way or another to keep your bench clean or you will be steaming out dents.

Back to our friend Connor I doubt that a cedar top wears out in terms of what we perceive... that we hear. But sure as shootin lots of changes are occurring to the rest of the structure over time so I am sure that people do at times hear a difference. As to what exactly is the culprit well that's going to take a graduate study and yet another paper to add to the millions of theories that folks have offered today about guitars with much of it being just.... plain.... wrong.

One last thing. It's a red flag in our business when a prospective client complains that the tone is not what what it used to be. This is the kind of client that we will often turn away unless they are famous and/or a regular or both. That's when we educate them that short of some obvious structural change or damage chasing something as subjective as what one person hears is not what we do or will do. For us to get involved in repairing someone's instrument we have to 1) want to..... 2) have a clearly defined work order detailing the scope of the project, eta, price and anything we require of the client that they have agreed to do and 3) we have to have room to take it in.

The real point here is that chasing something as subjective as tone is not an exercise in working toward a clearly defined AND measurable outcome. That's when we turn work away.

And really lastly here's a real life example in the last 24 hours. Client emails us with a Taylor 810 that "no longer sounds as good as it used to....." But he goes on to say there is a top crack, a back crack and he would like it repaired. So even though he failed the subjectivity test with the tone comment there clearly are likely reasons to why his ax sounds........ different than before. Cracks can be repaired, scope of work can be defined and our mission should we choose to accept is manageable and definable so we are taking this in.

Hesh just jogged my memory. Thanks hesh, Connor, Hesh mentioned a critical point about bridge failure. I have had at least 3 bridge failures using walnut bridges on thin cedar topped tenor ukuleles.. They were either glued on with 192 g or 314 g hide glue or fish glue. Several came flying off in the middle of winter when the humidity was low 25%, the other just fell forward. There was as hesh mentioned , some l splinter damage, So, it was easily repaired, with a replacement bridge and Titebond 1. Cedar seems to respond well to T1 , ,After being reglued no problems. The 2 BRW bridges on my cedar topped SS guitars have held up well, Except there is a slight bellying up behind the bridge on the 12 string. Which IMHO has a lot of tension pulling in on it. The BRW bridge on the 12 string is fairly large and substantial. My guess is that both bridges in the early 70/s were glued with white glue.

I have built a few steel string and classical guitars with WRC. I built one for myself in circa 1995 that I still keep on a stand in my house today and pick up and play once in a while. It's had medium strings on it since it was born and it's scratched up pretty good becasue I used to really like the guitar and played it a lot. It's not the same as it used to be but it's hard to say that it wore out. It could be that I only thought it was a good guitar because after all I built it, but it really was not very good and later on with so much more experience I know what a good guitar sounds like. Or it could be that it had changed, who knows. It's quite possible that I made the top too thin thinking it was like spruce back then too. I know for a fact that a too thin top will sound great for a littel while then just totally die. Segovia used to say that a guitar is only good for about 20 years before it is worn out. I'm not one to argue with Masters so there may be a kernel of truth to that.

WRC (and redwood) both have lower resistance to splitting and peeling than the spruces in general, although aged spruce drops off in that regard. In the cedar and redwood it seems to go along with the lower damping. I usually use a bridge that it wider (or deeper along the line of pull, if you will) on cedar and redwood tops to make up for that. You can use a lower density wood for the bridge to keep the mass down.

Good idea Alan on the different bridge dimensions for cedar. I wish more builders would consider this too and it might result in fewer people who have their guitars shed the bridge.