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On Aug 8 I sent StewMac a message that I wanted to return the top that I didn't like. Today, Aug 10, they replied and asked me to send photos so they could determine if I needed to return it or not, at their expense of course. I also received an email for a new StewMac order and they have already sent me a replacement top. I consider that to be very good customer service.

This is the top I didn’t like. Supposed to be AA torrefied red spruce.



Here is a comparison with a top that I think is just fine, also from StewMac.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Banjopicks, I would not recommend you order that product with what you are intending to do. One of the criterias we use to sort and grade is Symmetry. Even though 1/8" is all that separates 2 faces of a bookset, and when we first pass sand the money faces to just get rid of the fuzzies, its amazing how often symmetry is lost, and sequentially cut boards look like they are from different trees. Not very often , but more often than one would think. But we cut thousands of tops every month, so see a lot. Anyway , I doubt you'd be happy. A bookset of any grade is more pleasing to the eyes than a pair of unmatched orphan boards. Just keep in mind, the lower the grade a top is graded, the more character there is. And character include lots of different attributes.

I'm reading all the expertises and opinions in this thread. I have 27 yrs producing guitar tops full time. Well over 1 million in fact.

Regarding the top set that started this thread. On the patternable area, I would agree it's an A grade top.
However, what are we patterning? Most of the time I'm using a Martin 000-14 fret pattern that is shorter than the 12 fret. Because all the customers that buy hundreds and thousands of om/000 tops are building the shorter model. In that case it would be just fine, with plenty of meat to spare. That little bit of knot bleed is color character that is kinda cool looking and has symmetry. definitely one of a kind. But if your instrument is indeed the shorter 14 fret, then I would agree the top should have gone to a smaller body sort. Which instrument are you building?

Torres often built unmatched multipiece tops by selecting the best sections of the wood he had to work with. I'm sure with the orphaned tops you would have a higher percentage of good wood to choose from to make an acoustically good top if you selected carefully and made unmatched multipiece tops as he did, and were not constrained by the present emphasis on cosmetics people expect these days.
If I were to try this experiment I would buy a dozen of the "orphans", select the sections of them that looked the most promising, measure the runout and match it to avoid the chatoyance problems runout can create and not expect to have a highly sellable end product. Out of the dozen "orphans" you might get 2 or 3 acoustically fine tops and a similar quantity of less well matched material. Depending on how particular you are, you might get more or fewer soundboards.

For a similar amount of money you could buy a couple of book matched "AA" grade tops, avoid gluing up multiple pieces and have tops with greater commercial acceptance.

So, this just arrived. 10/10 for Stewmac customer service
I detect Bearclaw, and litle if any runout - so I'll forgive that it's not wide enough for an OM, at 14 inches it'll make an 00 or another L-0, maybe with flamed Myrtle or Cherry.
.

Sent from my moto g(50) using Tapatalk

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

This brings another question to my mind. To use these boards for a standard dreadnaught, it seem just a matter of taking some of the scrap upper bout wood and gluing ears on. I wonder if done right that it would even show. I have a rosewood billet that is only 7" wide and my plan is to either make three piece backs with figured maple in the middle or add the scabs. I'll probably experiment with both. Sorry if this is off topic but that's how I roll.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Nice looking "A" grade top, especially for Engelmann. If I wanted to build an OM I would add "wings" on the lower bout using the offcuts from the waist area. If well matched and joined they would be almost undetectable. If you used a wide purfle around the edge the "wings" would be almost completely hidden under it.
If the top has runout it is best to take the "wing" from the same side of the soundboard to avoid any chatoyance issues.

Yep, a good solid #1-A grade top.

[quote="joshnothing"]Hope SM makes it right.

Just thought I’d take the opportunity to say the last thirty or so tops I’ve purchased were from forum sponsor Alaska Specialty Woods and they exceeded my expectations in every regard. Brent has sent me “AAA” tops that in my experience would be sold as “AAAA” by other vendors, and “AA” tops with the only flaws right on the outside edge of the board which meant they could be used as extremely high-grade 0 or 00 tops.[/quote

I have been dealing with Brent Cole of Alaska Specialty woods for the last 25 years and I find his quality and price hard to beat if you are looking for sitka spruce.

It's funny others have mentioned packing material. I can't remember where one of my last orders as from but it was packed with what I'm almost certain is Lutz. It's got some dark grain lines in it that some people don't like but is perfectly on quarter and stiff as bricks. I kept it to build with some day.

That? Not so much. I've got some nice quality Red Spruce tops that have knot holes, literally branch holes, in it but they are well placed outside the template without any knot flash inside. That's garbage and disappointing to see because I've always gotten good wood from SM. In fact I could always rely on them as being 'expensive' but good quality.

just got 3 tops from them they were terrible and tried contacting them. Just posted on FB its sad

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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

It's my understanding that they merged with or bought out Madinter too. Which I would have thought would had increased their supply. I've always had good experiences with Madinter.

Several good points here.

Getting quality tops out of trees isn't easy. I fooled with resawing quite a few billets over the years, and gave up on it. The average billet would make 1, possibly 2 top sets, and the rest of the cuts would have sap pockets or hidden defects... I got one spectacular billet that turned out to contain a pin knot. As such, tonewood cutters have my admiration. They cut heaps of good looking billets, and a lot of it falls out because it's just not good enough for guitar tops. The devil is that once you cut it into guitar plate billets, it's no good for 2x4's or anything else.

Years ago, I did business with a supplier who cut a lot of found wood. That presented a different opportunity, as the wood often was streaky with variable grain, but very little runout. That wood visually capped at maybe AA. I loved the stuff because it was cheap, had a ton of character, and was good stuff.

A second bought huge lots of top wood from mills in Canada and then sorted it all himself. The lower grade stuff was a literal smattering of everything. Color streaks, wide grain, ultra-fine grain, runout, pitch and sap pockets, knots, you name it. For a slight upcharge, he would sift a particular grade stack for whatever you wanted. So for example, I wanted minimal runout, but was fine with wide grain and color streaks. I was extremely happy with the pile of tops at a price slightly above A grade. Others may not like those.

On the other hand, I did some business with another supplier who only started with spectacular trees, then downgraded based on defects. I got several stacks of downgraded tops from him (40+ sets,) and ended up underwhelmed. Sure, the color was perfect and uniform. So was the grain count... But much of it was downgraded for stuff like excessive runout, pin knots, and pitch pockets. This guy's top grade stuff was spectacular, perfect in every way, but the lower grade stuff tended to be a mess.

The moral...

It's worth calibrating what this supplier specializes in, and then buy that. If he specializes in only buying the very very best trees to produce AAA and AAAA tops - his defects will tend to be more mechanical. If the guy specializes in providing wood with consistently zero runout and good density, the trees which produce that may end up with lots of streaks and such, but otherwise be great. And so forth.

Thank you for the kind words Brad. Yep. It's been a great long run of business relations. I think we started the relationship at either an ASIA or GAL symposium, and circled the wagons at numerous events following.

Regarding soundboards and grade..
Through the 80's 90's and until just a few years ago, logging old growth in the SE Alaska rainforest and Coastal BC. Canada was going very strong. Remote Logging camps scattered on floats all over the place. And Home guard operations as well. Scores of 100's of millions of BDFT of old growth timber clearcut every year. Quality was established from the .1% of all the old growth sitka cut [ Sitka Spruce makes up less than 25% of the NW coastal Rainforest. Shade tolerant Western Hemlock makes up 60% of this forest.], that .1% was selected for soundboard production. People got spoiled. Everyone got spoiled, the manufacturers, the luthiers and the consumers. Consumers were buying with their eyes, and the industry either led or followed the trend. In the mid 90's-2K's I saw the huge discrepancy between grade criteria of red Spruce and Sitka spruce. I wondered how long it would be, before those differences would come closer together.
That time is here now. Logging activity started to slow from the real hey day between 97 and 2000 with the closure of Alaska Pulp in Sitka, and later Ketchikan Pulp in KTN, and the spruce mill in Ketchikan Alaska. Timber harvest production continued getting less and less. and the forest getting logged was getting more marginal, lower quality timber rough marginal ground, storm ridges and muskegs. But it was still old growth timber. But not the timber and stands that had once been.
January 2022 Sealaska Timber a subsidiary of Sealaska Regional native Corp. , the largest producer of Old Growth timber in SE Alaska pulled the plug, Put all remaining timber lands that they received in the 2016 ANSCA lands bill, into revenue generating corporate welfare via Carbon Credits. With that one operation shutting down 100 million bdft of Old growth timber is no longer available to the world market. And SEALASKA TIMBER also marketed timber barged in from producers in BC as well. That means fewer high grade spruce logs to gleen. But demand is still high. Something has got to give. Grade starts to adjust just to get the material to try and meet the demand.
First nations in BC and the provincial gov. of BC has also curtailed old growth logging.
One doesn't, or shouldn't give up sound, for a "soundboard". Well maybe some do!. I believe It would be more expedient to loosen the criteria of looks, for a "soundboard".
That's my 2 cents.

One doesn't, or shouldn't give up sound, for a "soundboard". Well maybe some do!. I believe It would be more expedient to loosen the criteria of looks, for a "soundboard".
That's my 2 cents.

+1

Boasting about felling 1,000-year old trees is a bit much for me. I try to use reclaimed or salvaged lumber whenever its available. Nothing (not even guitar tops) can be so important as to justify destroying the last remaining temperate rain forest left on this planet. Wake up folks.

Gary Davis

Some how I didn't take it that way, rather that it was the recognition of a dwindling resource, and that accepting less than cosmetically perfect wood would allow us to still build with sonically and structurally fine materials.
Having spent a number of years working in the soil and water conservation field, I have always been a believer in conserving and using resources wisely. That doesn't mean total "preservation" and never cutting a stick of wood, nor does it mean destroying every last old growth forest. Some trees should be allowed to die of old age.
I too, like to salvage and recycle old wood when I can find material that suits my needs, but I also recognize that for some things it makes sense to use materials that have been specifically selected, cut and processed for an intended use. Although old growth spruce is known to have the best qualities for soundboard material and is cut for that purpose, I take some consolation in the fact that it is a relatively small market, that impacts the forest in a relatively small way. That old growth forests are cut for dimensional lumber, plywood and pulp I do find unfortunate.

Gary, I didn't see where anyone was boasting about felling 1000 yr old trees. If you are thinking we do that, you're thinking wrong.
In my 37 years here in Timber, I've never seen a Tree in our SE Alaska Temperate Rainforest that was older than about 700 yrs. ,a couple spruce and a couple huge red cedar. That's extremely rare in our forest.
Most of what we process averages 400 yrs old.
And We at Alaska Specialty Woods Inc. are 100 % salvage sourced wood processors.

And as far as I know, We are the only soundboard producer of Sitka spruce, western red cedar, alaska yellow cedar tonewood products that doesn't use commercially harvested clearcut logged timber source. Larry Trumble-Wood Marine was another that was the same, But he passed away a few years ago. Stew mac obtains their sitka from PRT who sources timber wherever they can and 90% is clearcut sourced. I'm not bad mouthing anyone, Just stating fact and who we are and what we do. We prospect and setup to get Micro-sales from the USFS, which is exclusively dead and down timber. No green trees, Unless it's a green tree that was just blown over in a windstorm. We did get one of those in a sale we put together in 2016. But we didn't log that sale until just last month{July]. That tree and 15 other old blowdowns scattered across 6-7 miles of roads[within 200 ft of the road] was better left under the protection of the forest canopy, where it was covered in moss and kept cool, rather than bringing into our log yard where the sun could heat them and cause rot.
Other salvage has been Log floats and old bridge stringers and bulkheads.

In this video, Ryan is limbing the stalk of the freshly blown over green tree in 2016, just to get to the butt to tap a take a look-see wedge, to see what we were buying, at were we would eventually buck it off the rootwad.
and you'll see us bringing an old log float that once floated a families house in one of the many logging camps that were once scattered all over SE Alaska and Coastal BC Canada. And this particular float was built with salvaged fish trap logs from the 50's.

https://alaskawoods.com/a-day-with-the- ... woods-inc/

Here is a couple Pictures of some of that logging in the google drive folder link https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Just tell them it isn't acceptable, they will replace it right away, and you won't have to send it back.

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Thank you for the explanation Brent. I'm glad I was mistaken about your operation.

Good luck - Gary

+2

Ok if the back and sides are plywood from an old cupboard . Surely A grade hasn't been lowered in standard .