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Absolutely, yes, and like many of those wood imperfections they are prone to move more on the plates than the surrounding wood - a source of crack development.
Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Yet, as long as some guitar makers and companies don't care too much about using quartered woods, use wood with greatly oblique annual rings or slab cut wood, etc., little imperfections on otherwise great tonewood should be considered to be more than acceptable. A little CA may not be traditional, but can be helpful in stabilizing and working around these bad spots.
Working around the irregularities of bear claw spruce tops isn't too easy either, but, man, the visual result can be stunning. The better part of bear claw spruce originated from these cherished, light-weight (yet with excellent cross-grain stiffness properties), very old-growth, high-mountain trees, so the great tone is usually there as well. In some cases, IMHO, it's even the acme of great tone, when adding to a very good guitar the icing on the cake, that little "flickering" of tone, the great ability of easy modulation of acoustic tone.
Well, I admit I'm spoiled by the properties of fine violins; their "flickering" is provided also by the correct handling of the bow (countless variations of contact to the strings, time, pressure, location), the more impressive vibrato possibilities and, last but not least, the absence of frets. The tone of so many archtop guitars, especially of the ones mainly intended for electric use, may be considered to be good, but they can sound monodimensional to me, too uniform, not flackering at all. We might as well play an old synthesizer ... Musical tone, IMHO, should be as easily shapeable by the player as are human emotions, the whole range - the amplification just there to be heard loud enough through the band mix, i.e., moderately on average. Dynamic subtlety is another point ...
Well, bear claw spruce is often considered to be nothing but a flaw in the wood - which is botanically correct - but what a nice flaw!
Last edited by Ol' Fret; 12-25-2023 at 05:53 PM.
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12-25-2023 05:09 PM
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Hazelfichte is nice.
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Originally Posted by Banksia
Absolutely, yes! Neither does it look like oak nor probably behave like wood from the oak (Quercus) genus. Is that why it's not oak, but "oak"? The realm of commercial wood names can be as obscure as is the darkfield of archtop guitars, talking about euphemisms.
We can have a hard time when trying to differentiate woods like "Silky Oaks", Lacewood, Leopardwood, Planetree, Sycamore, and others. That's the economical (and political) mantra of the actual millennium: Confuse customers and mislead them!
What I have learned - speaking only for myself - is that the "real" Leopardwood (some call it Louro faia) from Central and South America could be the nicest, darkest, stiffest - and rarest. It's botanical name is Roupala montana, but older botanical names are still used like Euplassa sp., and others. Often Lacewood is offered as real Leopardwood.
Maybe it'd be the best to use local woods and learn how to work around - like the guy in the video was doing.
Southern Silky Oak | The Wood Database (Hardwood) (wood-database.com)
Northern Silky Oak | The Wood Database (Hardwood) (wood-database.com)
Lacewood | The Wood Database (Hardwood) (wood-database.com)
Leopardwood | The Wood Database (Hardwood) (wood-database.com)
sycamore, etc. (hobbithouseinc.com)
Once Daniel Slaman made a nice archtop with Lacewood back and sides; he didn't specify the wood more exactly, so it's probably Australian Lacewood or "Silky Oak". It might be successfully used for the top wood as well. To me it sounds on that clip similar to lighter Mahoganies - though, let's say, real Honduran Mahogany and African Mahoganies are quite different animals, uh plants!
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Haselfichte – Wikipedia Originally Posted by Hammertone
Is this what is referred to as Dolomite spruce?
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Originally Posted by RJVB
Some nice Hazelfichte trees could still grow in the Dolomites. After all, that region came in the public eye for having been the source of spruce for Stradivari and the Cremonese violin makers.
Today it's probably more of a marketing term; old mountain Hazelfichte trees, suitable for fine archtop guitar (or cello) tops, are hard to spot in the Alpes, be it in Italy, France, Austria or Germany. I like the term 'Alpine spruce', though I'm aware that outside of Europe some still talk of 'Norway' spruce.
Naturally, not every Hazelfichte wood is per se great resonance-wood! And not all luthiers do like it - well, it's hard to come by, much more expensive, more labor-intensive. If I think about it: it's a bit out of common sense.
There's another, often a bit neglected reason, why spruce and maple have been dominating for the making of arched instruments. It's their naturally bright color that makes it comparably easy to give the wood a nice or wonderful colored finish. Can you imagine mahogany or lacewood - or whatever darker or striped or whatever woods exist - on an archtop guitar furnished with sunburst finish? I do not. So all these more exotic woods shine with a natural, transparent finish. That's good, but a really masterly colored finish can be overwhelming for the observer, even surpass the most exotic and expensive tropical wood in the flesh.
Talking about great-looking colored lacquer finish: I sometimes roll my eyes when people are raving about this superb finish X or that awesome sunburst Y. One of the visual necessities of any colored finish on an archtop guitar, IMHO, is outmost transparency and the vivid changing of chatoyance of the wood figure in different perspectives. To achieve these goals is high art; sorry, but in this respect most commercially available products are a case for the trash can. Opaque or semitransparent? That's cheap. If you scrutinize your guitars - something the companies don't want us to do - you'll not find opaque lacquer on a real master instrument. A master maker knows that the retained beauty of fine tonewood is the visual essence of any fine instrument.
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Hazelfichte = bearclaw.
It's figured spruce.
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According to the German WP article it's a bit more than that, and you can recognise a haselfichte individual from the appearance of the wood under the bark. Maybe it's the ultimate form of bearclaw but I doubt you could call any spruce top with a few traces of the bear's claws hazel spruce. Originally Posted by Hammertone
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Yes, in short words: Originally Posted by RJVB
Every Haselfichte shows bearclaws, but not every bearclaw in the guitar top tells it's Haselfichte.
Haselfichte is supposed to be a gen-mutation of a spruce grown up in alpine climate zones.
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Of course, specific areas affect the quality of timber that grows in those areas. At the end of the day, it's just wiggly spruce, and I'm all for it!
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Sitka spruce in North America can show bearclaw marks as well.
Hazelfichte means the same like bearclaw spruce, but not every single bearclaw means it is Hazelfichte. Most imperfections we spot on spruce tops are branch-lines, due to a branch or knot near to where the wood was cut, so the grain leaves a non-linear uniformity.
Hazelfichte is a folding of the surface of the tree, similar to the flame in maple, but in a different plane. The name doesn't refer to the plant Hasel or hazel but to the German word Hagel or hail. The old believed that such a tree was heavily hit by a hail storm deforming the wood grain. We are still believing in that, while others like to believe in bears.
Hazelfichte is nothing more than regular spruce with some "messed-up" cells. Somehow a quite human condition, isn't it? Probably not unsimilar to the lacewood shown in the video above, just with a not so regular and predictable appearance. Jazz is not completely predictable music, so bearclaws or "cat-stepped" wood should fit in well with jazz guitars.
It has, IMHO, a real visual advantage, at least, on vintage instruments, i.e., about 100 years from now: countless repairs of cracks on the top, etc., will be much less noticeable in the tangle of pre-existing bear claws ...
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The times I've worked with spruce marked with bearclaw, it turned out to be exceptionally high strength to weight ratio and made excellent top wood. I can't make a blanket pronouncement with a small sampling but in my experience, it's an indication of an exceptional piece of wood. Originally Posted by Ol' Fret
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Flattop-related:
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Not really a hollow body or even scrap wood ...
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