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I know that the use of Pine for top wood (and the whole guitar) has been discussed here before, but has anyone ever tried Sugar Pine? I just had several Pines cut down yesterday, several Ponderosa and three big 30"+ diameter Sugars (boy did they hit the ground with a big boom!) I had the fellers cut two 3' sections off the biggest one so I'll get the ends painted while I figure out how to split them.
John Arnold and others have talked about using Pine, but East Coast species. I think the Sugar Pine occurs only out West here.
Thoughts about it? Too soft?

https://www.wood-database.com/sugar-pine/
https://www.wood-database.com/engelmann-spruce/
https://www.wood-database.com/paulownia/

It shows sugar pine to be slightly heavier, slightly softer, and not quite as elastic as Engelmann spruce.
Some of the Asian instruments use Paulownia as a top wood which is even softer than sugar pine.

Seeing as the topic is 'pine tops'....I've seen Douglas fir used for soundboards.

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Peter Havriluk

The Ponderosa pine might be interesting, being a "soft yellow pine" and having a stiffness closer to Engelmann spruce (which admittedly is one of the less stiff spruces) although a bit heavier.
If we always look for the same sound and volume as we are getting from the lightest, stiffest soundboards we might be disappointed, but many instruments traditionally use other and sometimes unusual materials because of the sound qualities they impart.

If you adapt to it’s material properties you’ll probably be alright, as long as you don’t expect it to sound like spruce…

Thanks for the insights.
Clay, I've built two guitars with Ponderosa tops with White Oak b&s, Manzanita for bridge, fingerboard, binding and all the trim. All wood from my property here . They sound just fine. So, I'll get out the splitting wedges and see what the inside looks like on the Sugar Pine.

I just spent all day bucking a huge white pine that fell on our property a couple weeks ago during high wind. It has about 20 ft of trunk from the ground to the first branches. So I plan on splitting and resawing some tops.

In fact I was going to come here and call up John Arnold too then I see this thread. IIRC John says it's best to do spruce quickly, that is, to quarter it and resaw tops while the wood is still wet then stack and sticker. So hopefully he will come in this thread.

John's right: the sooner you can get that wood split down to wedges and get the ends sealed the better. I've used a couple of coats of latex paint to seal wood like that, and it works fine: it doesn't have to be water proof, it just has to equilize the moisture loss to be about the same as the side grain. Remove all the bark, and square stack the wedges (alternate layers crossing) to minimize the contact surface and maximize air flow. Cover the top of the stack to keep rain out, but leave the sides open. You'll want to turn the pile in a week or so, checking for signs of mold and end checking, and getting the the wood from the bottom on the top.

Once the wood is dry you can make some test strips and check the properties. A vibration test by tapping is easy to do, and if you know the dimensions and the weight of the piece, along with the fundamental resonant pitch, you can calculate the Young's modulus and damping. The averages you see in the literature are useful as far as they go, and great for designing structural frames, but there's enough variation in properties from one piece to another that it's better to measure for our purposes.

I compare sugar pine to Eastern white pine, so it should work just fine. I would treat it like Engelmann or Western red cedar, in that I would leave it a little thicker than a Sitka top.
I have also used Ponderosa for four-piece tops and for bracing.
I have a couple of dimple figure lodgepole pine tops that I cut many years ago. Though I haven't used them, I suspect they will behave similarly to other pine tops.
In general, I have found pine to be a bit less stiff along the grain than spruce of similar density. But I think that is balanced out by greater cross-grain stiffness.

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John

John when you buck logs out in the field for tops how big (long) do you make the drums?

Do you split into quarters and dry those?

Or do you split, quarter, then resaw tops right away while the wood is still wet?

For guitar tops, I cut the logs into 24" long blocks. I split those into quarters, and saw either 1" thick boards or 3/16" tops while the wood is still green. It is then stickered and dried with forced air. The quicker you can dry it, the better. Attempting to dry the wood while in quarters causes too many issues with cracking and staining. Leaving the bark on the split billets will reduce the cracking (slower, more even drying), but it will promote more issues with fungus staining and borers, especially in the summer months. Most borers originate from eggs that have been laid in the bark.
Blue stain fungus will grow in sapwood with a moisture content above 15%, and when the temperature exceeds 50 degrees F. While it has no effect on the physical properties, it does degrade it cosmetically.

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John

Thanks John.

It would be best for recovery to cut the soundboards from the 1/4 round, instead of billitizing first.. That way you can cut defect away like pitch pockets or whisker knots that show up inside the block.. the thickness at 8-8.25" of VG width, is the total that you can get tops from, unless your gonna get small body tops as well... Regardless, you can use the meat of the wedge to cut out defect by cutting whatever thickness you want to cut to stay or get back to VG and taper out at the desired width of board. Then if the wedge is meaty enough to clean up, or not for other product like bracewood, or resawn into flat top mando or uku tops.