What does “select spruce” really men?

[caravan]

There’s a nice looking Korean jazz guitar for sale on Elderly instrument’s website that states it has a “spruce top”. It’s a Samick JZ 4 La Salle for only $525. Notice the different descriptions out there for the top:

Epinions.com says “solid top”, while J Hale Music.com and Matts Music.com both state “select spruce” for this same guitar. Better Guitar.com states “laminated spruce top” for the JZ 4.

I guess the word “laminate” is like a dirty word.

I have nothing against sub-$1000 guitars, in fact I own a few. I just seems that I have to do some research about each guitar that comes along for sale to find out all the specs.

[barrymclark]

It means an extra $100! haha.

No, it can really mean anything. Ideally, that means they picked a piece that nice to look at and, tonally, just so. However, some companies will say that and they put little to no effort in selecting that bit of wood. Some use it and they really only went with how good it looked while others got it purely for how good it sounds and paid no attention to its looks.

[kambor]

Yeah I guess they somehow reserve the finer grained laminates for their more "expensive" guitars. Not that it matters too much on a laminate guitar, but hey at least it looks good (at least to me). But in the end, is just plywood...

[oldane]

It means that the people writing the ads have selected their words carefully to ensure big sales.

There are many opinions on the merits of closed grained vs. wide grained spruce, European spruce vs. American spruce, Adirondack vs. Engelman etc. But a good luthier can make a good sounding top from many kinds of spruce. He/she will know how to carve and brace a particular piece of wood to get it to sound the way he wants. Some luthiers tap the wood as they carve the spruce to hear how it sounds ("tap tuning"), others prefers other methods for getting consistant sounding guitars.

With laminated guitars, I guess the spruce in the top ply doesn't make any significant difference to the sound, and the term "select spruce" have little more than cosmetic significance here. We might as well talk about the "select glues" used for the lamination.

I remember an ad from my youth for Orlik pipe tobacco: "Smoked by all shrewd judges. For men of destinction. For the particular few." At the age of 17, I was obviously not a judge, but it was comforting to learn that I was a man of destinction and among the particular few.

[hot ford coupe]

My understanding of the term "select" is that the luthier went out of his way or really spent time searching for the best possible sounding and best looking piece of wood for a top of the line, responsive acoustic instrument. I've watched a few videos where a luthier demonstrates how he chooses a particular hunk of wood. Some pieces of spruce sound pretty good when you first tap them, but some pieces have incredible resonance right from the beginning regardless of grain sizes and color. When choosing wood for a back, sometimes you can find a piece of maple that has figure beyond belief. If that piece of maple also sounds great, it would go into a premium guitar, usually one with a natural finish so that figure can really be seen.

[MGI]

Originally Posted by oldane

There are many opinions on the merits of closed grained vs. wide grained spruce, European spruce vs. American spruce, Adirondack vs. Engelman etc. But a good luthier can make a good sounding top from many kinds of spruce. He/she will know how to carve and brace a particular piece of wood to get it to sound the way he wants. Some luthiers tap the wood as they carve the spruce to hear how it sounds ("tap tuning"), others prefers other methods for getting consistant sounding guitars.

+1.
I don't think any factory have luxury to handcarve the tops, so, it's just a marketing BS.

[caravan]

Sorry about all the speling errers.

[hot ford coupe]

Originally Posted by MGI

+1.
I don't think any factory have luxury to handcarve the tops, so, it's just a marketing BS.

What about the Heritage factory? They do have a standard model which is designed to be used electrically that's supposed to be carved but what about the tap tuned model? Wouldn't that be hand carved?

[Vihar]

Originally Posted by caravan

Sorry about all the speling errers.

No problom.

[kamlapati]

"Select spruce" is simply marketing spin for "not solid or carved."

[pineapple]

'Select spruce' means real 'laminated spruce'. 'Laminated maple' may stand for 'several layer of maple and other woods' (see Gibson ES 175, where the laminated maple top/back are made of maple and poplar).

[Joe Strummer]

Caravan-- I don't know much about the top, but I played that guitar a couple of days ago and was positively impressed (for the price). I may have bought it, but the body is way too big to be comfortable for me. Nice guitar, though.

[MGI]

OK, let me explain some things. Luthier SELECT the pieces of spuce for each archtop individually, selection mostly depend on customer's tone requirement. As you all know, ofcourse, no similar pieces of the wood exist. So, selection of the spruce is quite important part of the building of handmade instrument. After selecting the spruce for top, luthier start the carving process. The profile of the top, the curve and the thickness - all depend on this, particular piece of wood - stiffness, how many lines per inch, etc. During the carving, luthier tap the top from time to time, and listen the tone. There's the moment, when he have to stop - further thinning will make the sound thinner. The pricess of carving take hours and hours, I don't think any factory doing it, that's why even handmade guitars from the factories, like Heritage, sounds differently. Ofcourse, their custom orders - absolutely different things. Laminates are not a spruce or maple, it's just a plywood, that manufacturers of cheapies beautifully call "Laminates". It will never sound well acoustically, doesn't matter, what. Just compare it with really good handmade archtop, and you'll hear the difference right away.

[Patrick2]

Originally Posted by hot ford coupe

What about the Heritage factory? They do have a standard model which is designed to be used electrically that's supposed to be carved but what about the tap tuned model? Wouldn't that be hand carved?

Heritage will begin the carve on all of their solid spruce carved top guitars by machine process. It's not a CNC. The machine was custom made specifically to do the rough carve of the tops and the maple backs as well. About 25% to 50% of the "rough carve" is done by machine. The rest is finished by hand. The tap tuning process . . correctly described herein by a few other members is always the last carving step to be done. Most of the time, the tap tuned tops are sent over to Aaron Cowles, in Vicksburg MI. He worked at the Gibson plant for about some 18 to 20 years "back in the day". There are a few people sill at Heritage who are quite capable of tap tuning . . . but, it's just more effecient for them to send it over to Aaron. Also, it's one of Aaron's greates abilities. He says he was "trained by the master" at Gibson. He told me the guy's name, but I can't remember it.