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fast rising luthier barry grez guitars..who is a member here..does some very interesting vids regarding body size and wood resonance
here's his latest- very interesting comparison of maple and spruce tops..acoustically...and of different sizes
i found it interesting how much warmer and bigger the 17" maple sounded compared to the maple top 16"
also how huge the 16" spruce sounded..and with flatwound strings besides!
good stuff..kudos to grez
cheers
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02-10-2016 06:48 PM
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Interesting differences. And very pretty guitars. I'd have loved to have heard a 17" spruce top (since my carvetop is a 17" spruce).
A couple years ago I had some correspondence with John Moriarty, a luthier in Ireland, who had been making custom full-sized floating humbuckers and I was looking to do something like that with my aforementioned archtop. He noted that he had stopped doing that because he was surprised at how little difference he found in mounting the pickup to the top, and the mounted pickup was so much more adjustable than the floater so the benefits outweighed the drawbacks.
I mention this because it is an article of faith that mounted pickups make a huge difference in the acoustic sound of an archtop and these guitars all had mounted pickups. The body size and construction may have made more difference than the pickups.
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Cool video, thanks! [I liked the 16" spruce the best.]
Has he done "Part 2," with the same guitars plugged in?!?! That would be interesting ...
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With the 16" spruce top sounding so much better than the rest, I can't help but wonder if it's the top wood that's making the difference or whether it has more to do with body depth, construction techniques, or pickup routing.
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The spruce tops were (to me) more vibrant, and louder than the maple tops, but like anything else two gits of the same model made of the same materials can have dissimilar acoustic properties.
As a point of reference some of the more pricey Gibson models like the L4 and L5 have spruce tops, as do all of the most famous acoustic flat tops. Maligned as they are the Korean D'Angelicos also have laminated spruce tops, no doubt (to me) a contributing factor to their great sound.
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I find maple tops sound the best, brighter, crispier, while spruce is darker... Funny, I never paid attention to it before, but it does make a diffrence.
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Spruce sounds...sprucey. And maple sounds mapley. Cedar sounds cedary and is a largely overlooked tonewood. I like Port Orford Cedar because it sounds cypressy.
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So then how's mahogany sound?
Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
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The depth of each instruments body would have made quite a difference as well.
Loudness and tone can't be just about the top material.
Also the wood on the back makes quite a difference.
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Yeah, I wanna know too! Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Mah Hog-gainy. Oink. Oink. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Interesting, I know the thread is about acoustic vibration but still, I would like to hear how that translates into the plugged in tone since these are electric guitars after all.
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Oink Oink. I got a "Mah" "Hog" gitfiddle (with gain). Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
but it actually has a spruce top.
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So which, if any, of these were solid vs. laminated tops?
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At least one smart archtop maker built a few "Luxus" models for folks who couldn't make their choice between spruce, cedar, maple, mahogany, etc.
This one, around 1950, is made of mahogany + spruce + pear (top and back), something that looks like Spanish cedar (sides), and wenge (fretboard).
Solid or laminated plates? They are made of solid woods with parallel grains, so per definition not laminated.
The size? 17", full hollowbody. Basically, I'd take the biggest archtop size I'd feel comfortable with. Guitar ergonomics and balance is a widely ill-kept field: sometimes you come across an 18" or even larger archtop and wonder why it feels so comfortable and cozy.
The sound? Well, IMO, audio / video clips can almost never live up to such guitars. You have to watch, hear, feel (and smell) them personally. Real emotions are sparked off by biochemical processes in your brain, not by processed recordings or marketing campaigns.
In comparison to the common (solid) spruce and maple guitars (of same size) by this manufacturer, this example sounds a bit warmer to my ears, also a bit less 'cutting through'; the rest of sound properties being equal.
My preference would generally be the classical spruce top and maple back plates - and no X-bracing. This way it is much easier to get the maximum of power, brilliance (natural trebles), dynamics ('headroom') and projection - if you want this. You can always tame such a beast by using flatwound strings, a warmer pickup, dialing your amp, or simply by changing your picking technique or using the thumb.
If you start with an archtop that was constructed and built from the outset to have that warm, pleasing, dark and smooth tone, you're fixated on that, under certain circumstances even ending up sounding muddy and hoarse. Power (= not loudness), brilliance, and headroom can't be dialed in electrically, at least, IMO, not in a natural sounding way.
YMMV.
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Solid woods are a very variable and inhomogeneous material. One of the most important properties of wood, scheduled to become a guitar or violin top, is the sound velocity c. The c formula is given by the Newton-LaPlace equation, determined by a stiffness coeffizient and the density. Of course, c depends on many other variables like angle and length of the woodfibre, age and moisture of the wood, wood faults, etc.
If you compare solid spruce (density ca. 0.41g/cc) with maple (ca. 0.60g/cc), spruce shows a much higher speed velocity (ca. 5,500m/s) than maple (ca. 4,500m/s). This is why the old lute and violin makers declared spruce to be the best wood for the top. Most modern builders still agree to them.
Laminated woods show an even larger variability than solid woods: in addition to the factors mentioned above, the number and thickness of layers, wood species used, the different glues and layer thickness, the temperature, the pressure amount and - time, etc., all these variables make it almost impossible to make a reliable, not bound_to_ be_ subjective statement about the quality of spruce or maple lams as guitar top woods.
The above mentioned Roger, for example, used a glue called 'Kaurit' (not between 1951 and 53) for some neck and plate 'laminations' (parallel grain lines), condensates of urea and formaldehyde. Now, there were at least five different sorts of Kaurit on the market at that time. Most of them demanded really high temperature and pressure machining conditions, never available in small and medium-sized guitar workshops.Last edited by Ol' Fret; 02-11-2016 at 11:35 AM.
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How would peach wood sound.... Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
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fuzzy Originally Posted by Woody Sound
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> Korean D'Angelicos also have laminated spruce tops, no doubt (to me) a contributing factor to their great sound.
laminated spruce <> carved spruce
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I applaud the effort, but there is no real science behind the comparison video. There is no control as others have stated. It would be better to show tap tunings of various species of solids and laminates tops (and backs if you want to take it that far) prior to construction.
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it's informative not definitive!
here's another
cheers
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Maybe a bit tinny too Originally Posted by Klatu
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Myself, I've always preferred spruce to maple.
My favorite combo for acoustic guitar is spruce top, mahogany body.
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to me it's hard to tell what those guitars sound like because the player doesn't dig in, use rest-strokes and / or bring out the real tone of the instrument.
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That's a very nice boat, the guitar ain't bad but I want to see more of that boat. Originally Posted by travisty
Oink Oink. I got a "Mah" "Hog" gitfiddle (with gain).
but it actually has a spruce top.Last edited by ESCC; 02-12-2016 at 10:30 AM.
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