Hardwood tops

Dave_Mc · February 2023

WezV said:

Just a note on terminology. Hardwood and softwood refer to the biological structure of a tree connected to species/genus, not its measurable hardness. Hard wood and soft wood would be descriptions of it's hardness.

Hard to believe people get confused by that...

Seriously, though, if you care what an electric player thinks- and I've only tried a few, and I'm not even sure exactly what mahogany they were- the mahogany-topped ones I've tried were warmer and less complex-sounding, for want of a better word. At the time when I was only going to have one guitar (well, my sister actually, since I was helping her decide on one at the time) I wasn't that fussed and we preferred spruce- but if you were going to have several guitars it makes more sense. I'm not sure I'd want one as my only guitar.

Tannin · February 2023

Kalimna said:

You may find it useful to have a look at Turnstone Guitars all native acoustics. A price bracket above Brook, but stunning instruments to play and listen to. There will be no compromise in their construction, whatever the timber.
From memory, Rosie has used yew, WRC and Douglas Fir for topwood. Bog oak fr B&S, ash and sycamore for neck.

Cheers @Kalimna - some time ago you mentioned Turnstone and yew as a topwood, and I followed that up with interest. (The one You-tube video I found, unfortunately, doesn't convey much about the actual sound of the guitar.) I won't be buying a Turnstone - spending £7k on an instrument isn't out of the question one of these days but not for one made on the other side of the world - but there are useful ideas there which I can feed into a Brook build. They do look like lovely instruments.

mykewright said:

I think the difficulty will be anything like fir or spruce that's grown in the UK will be "commercially" grown, in other words as quickly as possible. What you ideally want for a top is something slow grown with the tree rings closer together for maximum strength which would equal thinnest top and lightest bracing. I'm sure Simon and Andy will guide you well.

Yes. I'm not really seeing much point to foreign timbers grown in the UK. Western Red Cedar is from North America and it is a North American timber regardless of whether the particular log was grown in England or southern Australia.

As a matter of interest, I grew up on the slopes of a mountain not far from Melbourne. Far-sighted foresters in the 1920s had planted vast amounts of Oregon Pine (as we know it here - the rest of the world calls the same species Douglas Fir). Oregon was a very popular construction timber with an excellent strength-to-weight ratio, so it made sense to grow it here. Sadly, although this was a well-watered location with lovely rich soil and the trees grew brilliantly, the warmer climate mean that they grew too fast and the harvested timber had a wide grain and was not as strong as the same species grown in Canada. Sometime around about 1970 or so I believe they declared the experiment a failure and stopped replanting it. Those areas are now more of the same-old-same-old Radiata Pine which is grown in huge quantities both here and in New Zealand. It is not regarded as a particularly good tonewood, though I've used any amount of it to build sheds and house frames.

Things like walnut and London Plane are technically foreign too, but they have been grown in the UK for hundreds, possibly thousands of years and in at least some cases grow wild as well as planted. So I'm happy to treat them as "quasi-natives".

More generally, I have for some time been umming and ahhing about my next build. The current build (a Tasmanian timbers baritone) is set, as is the one after next (another Maton, this one in all-Australian timbers). But for the next one I've been tossing up between Britain and Germany, Brook or Stoll - either way in local timbers so far as possible. Local European timbers would be much easier!

Maybe I could define "British" as "anything grown somewhere in the (former) Empire.

PS: I haven't told Mrs Tannin about this guitar yet. That could be the tricky bit!

drofluf · February 2023

In which case aren’t all of your guitars British by your definition?

Tannin · February 2023

^ Hmmm depends which part of Africa the ebony fretboards came from.

What else have I got?

* Rosewood - presumably India. Tick.
* Spruce - some from Canada (tick), some from Alaska (dubious tick), some from the eastern USA: also dubious - 1776 was a very long time ago, I don't think I'd count that as "Empire". Not in its glory days anyway.
* Cedar - Canada or the US. Tick.
* Blackwood, Queensland Maple, Satin Box, Silky Maple, Huon Pine, Tiger Myrtle, Southern Sassafras, King Billy Pine, Celery Top Pine, Bunya. All from Australia, certainly part of the Empire back in the day. Tick.
* Mahogany from somewhere in South America, so almost certainly never in the Empire. Cross.
* Rock Maple: USA or Canada.

So pretty close.

guitarjack66 · February 2023

bertie said:

drofluf said:

Tannin said:

WezV said:

Just a note on terminology. Hardwood and softwood refer to the biological structure of a tree connected to species/genus, not its measurable hardness. Hard wood and soft wood would be descriptions of it's hardness.

So Huon Pine would be a hard wood softwood, and balsa would be a soft wood hardwood.

I'm also interested in this discussion as I plan on making another acoustic this year. I have two sets of lovely English walnut and was tempted to do a matching top and back acoustic built with all UK grown woods

Indeed. That is why I used the prefix "quasi-".

This is my interest too, WezV. I am considering ordering a Brook in July. Seeing as (if I go ahead) it will be my one and only British guitar, I'd like it to be made from all-native timbers. The UK has lots of lovely back and neck timbers, but finding a suitable top is a bit of a challenge. I'm wondering how I would like a guitar with a hardwood or quasi-hardwood top - yew, walnut, oak, cherry, or etc. If pushed, I could go to European Spruce for the top, but let's explore the native options first.

Talk to Simon and Andy - I'm sure they'd be happy to advise on what will work.

Whilst I like the idea of a "Full English" guitar if I were spending that amount though I wouldn't want to make a compromise on the sound for it to follow a "theme".

they use UK woods wherever possible (obvious exceptions) and they always make use of any "fallen" trees around where the workshop is -

This is how most manufacturing of guitars should be done,imo.

Shadow · February 2023

Luthier Adrian Lucas who is based in Lincoln uses a lot of reclaimed wood in his builds.

https://www.lucasguitars.co.uk/woods

Tannin · April 2023

Thanks to the nice people at Modern Musician in Hobart - a shop where I've bought two guitars and will doubtless buy more - I got to try a number of hardwood tops out for myself today. I explained what I was looking to learn and was able to play every hardwood-top guitar in the shop, save three or four cheapies I didn't bother with and also a slimline Cole Clark. (I have no interest in slimline acoustics, they are for stage use, not stand-alone acoustic playing.)

I started with this one - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/cole-clark-ccan2ec-rdbl-angel-2-redwood-tasmanian (equivalent to £1,376. Ignore the incorrect labelling on their website it is, like all Cole Clark guitars, made in Victoria using South-west Victorian Blackwood from the Otway Ranges.) The chap said that the Redwood-Blackwood combination was interesting because in most guitars you get crispness and snap from the top wood with the back wood having more to do with the bottom and mids (this agrees with my experience) but here Cole Clark have gone t'other way about; the soft redwood top (a timber almost as soft as cedar) being sharpened with the crisp top end of the hard Blackwood back. He was absolutely right: a very interesting guitar to play, full and rich and warm almost to the point of being muddy, but with just enough of that crisp Blackwood top end to give it balance.

But I thought I was here to look at hardwood tops? So I was. On to this one - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/cole-clark-angel-2ec-blackwood-blackwood - which he was kind enough to fetch from out the back for me, there not being enough room to have it out on display at present. All-Blackwood, same price, and a very different guitar. Crisp and trebly and lots of attack, but without ever being unmanageable or harsh. I went back and forward between the two Cole Clarks for quite some time. I could happily own either one. Both are palpably different to any of my other guitars, a different sound and a different feel. The redwood one was in some ways rather like my cedar top dred, but nevertheless distinct - fuller-bodied, a bigger sound but less even and less versatile. The all-Blackwood one ... well, I keep coming back to the word "crisp". Very bright, louder than I expected, but controlled and playable for all of that. (Both had cutaways. Non-cutaway versions of the same thing would be even better.)

I also tried a couple of Cole Clark dreadnoughts in the same timber combinations just to see if they sounded as expected after playing the two Angels. In a word, yes.

On to the Taylors. First this one - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/taylor-724ce-koa - all Koa, quite expensive at £2,859 (remember that guitars are cheaper here in Oz, the same model is well over £3000 in the UK) and worth it in my opinion.

It was a lovely guitar, clearly the pick of the three (albeit double the price). It had a little bit of that magic quality the very best guitars have of making you feel like a better musician than you are. Yes, that is a real thing. I don't think anyone knows where it comes from, but some guitars really do help you play better. Apart from being effortless to play (any good setup can achieve that) they just naturally produce balanced, musical sounds. Instead of working to make the guitar sound its best, you can simply think about the tune that you are playing and let the instrument worry about getting the sound right.

Set that aside. The sound was deeper than the Blackwood, less attack, not so crisp, but still plenty of bite married to a fuller, rounder bass. I'm going to generalise that to Koa guitars more broadly (pending evidence to the contrary) because I then played this one - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/taylor-builders-edition-k24ce - very expensive at £4,553, it would be over £5000 in the UK - which was very similar as regards tone, but not a quarter of the instrument overall, in my opinion. I didn't take note of my reasons, nor did I spend long with it. A minute or so was enough to confirm the tonal qualities of the timbers, and to know that it was not a guitar I cared for at all.

Back to the first Taylor, the one I liked so much. It would be very interesting to compare it directly with a 3-Series Cole Clark rather than the much cheaper 2-Series ones I played today. In theory all Cole Clarks go down the same CNC production line and are identical bar the trim level. In reality, the more expensive 3-Series models get first pick of the timbers and a lot more hand finishing and tweaking. They tend to be pretty special. That Koa Taylor 724 vs a Blackwood Angel 3 would be a tough choice!

Anyway, the Koa guitars were a different experience to the Blackwood guitars. Most people usually say Koa and Blackwood are practically the same thing. Other people (a minority) say no, they are a bit similar but far from identical - Koa has more middle and a distinctive sound. I have been on the fence: Koa and Blackwood have different profiles (Blackwood is marginally heavier, equally hard, and much stronger) but as to the actual sound I didn't have enough experience to take a view. After playing two examples of each today, back to back, swapping between them as often as I wanted to, I have come to agree with the second school: they are not at all the same. Saying "Koa sounds like Blackwood" is like saying "Queensland Maple sounds like mahogany". It is only true insofar as neither of them sound remotely like rosewood.

Yes, only four guitars and two of them were Taylor, two Cole Clark, so hardly an extensive random sample. But I know both Cole Clark and Taylor guitars pretty well, I am familiar with their "house sound" and feel and I'm confident I was able to allow for that and hear the timbers, not just the brands.

Tannin · April 2023

On to mahogany and a pair of Martins. First this one which I picked up by mistake thinking it was a D15 . - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/martin-road-series-d-10e-sapele - and it was a mistake! It was, in a word, awful. To be strictly accurate, it is Sapele, not mahogany. But it felt and sounded cheap and nasty. I have no reason to think that was the timber's fault.

I quickly put it down and picked up this one - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/martin-d-15m - which (despite Martin's dishonest PR material) is not mahogany either, it is Sipo. That lasted about 30 seconds. It wasn't as dreadful as the D-10 but it had a different kind of awful. Again, not the wood's fault - Sipo is a perfectly respectable tonewood - just an awful sound. I cannot imagine what people find to like about this model. It sounds cheap and limited and crappy and boxy. Could you play blues on it? Sure you could, and it would go sort-of OK. But you can play blues on practically anything, including any of the many far better instruments. I didn't bother picking up any of the cheap plywood Yamahas on the other side of the room but I bet that any one of them would have sounded better. I'm not a Martin-basher - I like D-18s and D-28s and OM-28s and 000-18s and I love HD-28s, but wow! What a pair of duds!

Finally, just to hear something familiar and provide a known-familiar-sound-check on my conclusions, I picked up an old favourite in orthodox spruce and Sapele - https://www.modernmusician.com.au/taylor-314ce - and it was a shock. I know the 314ce and I very nearly bought one back in 2020. But this example, to my great surprise, wasn't a patch on the 314ce I remember. Granted, the strings were awful, but I suspect that has come about because this particular guitar is a crappy one and it's been sitting on the wall for a very long time. I've always regarded Taylor as having second-to-none quality control, but this guitar has shaken my belief. That very expensive Taylor I disliked further up the page, put that down to individual taste if you want to, but this 314 simply wasn't up to scratch.

Three duds in a row!

So I went back to the lovely 724ce, to the intriguing Angel 2 Redwood-Blackwood, and the delightful Angel 2 all-Blackwood. Three guitars I'd happily take home and play often.

What have I learned more generally?

* Yes, hardwood tops work for me. They aren't so very different to the softwood tops I'm used to, not in a scary way, and they offer an attractive variation on familiar themes.

* They vary a lot! From my limited sample today, possibly even more than softwood tops do.

* Given both of those things, yes, I want one or two, but I think I might be wise to limit myself to off-the-shelf instruments, ones I can play before I buy. For custom builds, I'm inclined to play it safe and stay with softwoods. (Probably.)

WezV · April 2023

Tannin said:

Anyway, the Koa guitars were a different experience to the Blackwood guitars. Most people usually say Koa and Blackwood are practically the same thing. Other people (a minority) say no, they are a bit similar but far from identical - Koa has more middle and a distinctive sound. I have been on the fence: Koa and Blackwood have different profiles (Blackwood is marginally heavier, equally hard, and much stronger) but as to the actual sound I didn't have enough experience to take a view. After playing two examples of each today, back to back, swapping between them as often as I wanted to, I have come to agree with the second school: they are not at all the same. Saying "Koa sounds like Blackwood" is like saying "Queensland Maple sounds like mahogany". It is only true insofar as neither of them sound remotely like rosewood.

They are very similar species of wood in almost all ways. I always find it odd that 2 such similar and related species exist in isolation on Islands, and nowhere else.

In terms of similarity as a tonewood. It's worth remebring you can take any species and grow it in 2 different locations and get a distinctly different timber. The environment matters a lot.

Sonokeling Vs EI rosewood is a good example of this. They are the same botanic species of Dalbergia latifolia, either grown in India or Indonesia. Sonokeling is often a little softer and usually has wider grain from being grown quicker.

Tannin · April 2023

Good points @WezV. ;

I've seen some very interesting work done with tree provenance (this was for conservation and revegation rather than timber harvesting but the same idea) comparing forms and growth rates of different-provenance seedlings of the same species in different local soils. Some of them, after say 10 years , you'd swear were completely different species!

On a matter of detail, Blackwood is far from isolated, it grows over an area roughly 3000 kilometres from north to south. There are about 1300 different Acacia species spread from Hawaii to Africa. Only a bare handful of them have been explored as tonewoods. What remains to be discovered?

WezV · April 2023

Tannin said:

Good points @WezV. ;

I've seen some very interesting work done with tree provenance (this was for conservation and revegation rather than timber harvesting but the same idea) comparing forms and growth rates of different-provenance seedlings of the same species in different local soils. Some of them, after say 10 years , you'd swear were completely different species!

On a matter of detail, Blackwood is far from isolated, it grows over an area roughly 3000 kilometres from north to south. There are about 1300 different Acacia species spread from Hawaii to Africa. Only a bare handful of them have been explored as tonewoods. What remains to be discovered?

Oh I know acicia's are not isolated at all, and Australia is a pretty huge Island to refer to as "isolated"

I just always find it odd that Koa is isolated to Hawaii, and that blackwood is its closest relative - How did that happen?

bertie · April 2023

WezV said:

I just always find it odd that Koa is isolated to Hawaii, and that blackwood is its closest relative - How did that happen?

Pangaea ?

WezV · April 2023

Hawaii is very young as Islands go, so likely never part of Pangaea, and it's unlikely this species existed at that time. That works as an explanation for common ancestors in many species across the world, but not so much for this example.

The common theories are Austalian blackwood seeds were spread to Hawaii by early Polynesian travellers or sea birds. Both could be true, but given the distance involved that is still pretty spectacular.

Anyway, we are getting off topic from @Tannin's great comparison of instruments now

bertie · April 2023

WezV said:

Hawaii is very young as Islands go, so likely never part of Pangaea,

just after I posted, I thought "hang on, Hawaii's volcanic, probably way after the plates all moved" - cant see any other explanation except "movement by living thing" bird/human ? how long have the been growing there is a big Q I guess

Tannin · April 2023

An interesting discussion! My assumption has always been that there are Acacias all over the Pacific just as there are examples of -

* Nothofagus - various species notably Myrtle Beech (aka "Tiger Myrtle"), a lovely and spectacular tonewood. These occur in Australia (3 species), New Zealand, New Guinea, South America, and various islands, more than 40 species in all.

* Araucaria - 20-odd species all across the Pacific including Bunya from the mountains of Queensland which is the most popular Australian top timber (sadly, I sold my only Bunya-top guitar last year but plan to buy another one), various New Caledonian species, Hoop Pine (Qld.), Norfolk Island Pine (guess!), and Monkey-puzzle (South America). One or more of the three last-mentioned should be familiar to most people as they are frequently planted as spectacular ornamentals in parks and botanical gardens all around the world.

* Flindersia - 17 species spread across Australia, New Guinea, New Caledonia, and Indonesia, notably including the very popular Queensland Maple but also two or three others. And so on.

On looking it up, I see that that yes indeed, there were 100-odd Acacia species native to the islands. However some of them have since been split off into other genera and I'm not sure how many of the island species are still classified as Acacias. (The 1300-strong Acacia genus was split into into 5 different ones a few years back, leaving about 1000 species still in Acacia with the remainder now in Vachellia, Senegalia, Acaciella, or Mariosousa.)

(Does modern taxonomy confuse you? If not, you are doing it wrong.)

Anyway, the starting point is that it is routine for plants to spread themselves around the islands, and after checking, this remains true.

However, Koa is a special case. It turns out that the Highland Tamarind (Acacia heterophylla) of Reunion Island in the southern Indian Ocean, 6000 kilometres west of Perth and 8000 kilometres from the nearest Blackwood is so very similar to Koa that geneticists have decided that it is in fact Koa (Acacia koa) and not an different species at all.

How can this be? Koa is endemic to the Hawaiian Islands in the Northern Hemisphere, 16,000 kilometres from Reunion. The South African study written up here - https://blogs.sun.ac.za/cib/birds-helped-acacia-trees-travel-18000km-from-hawaii-to-reunion-islands/ - concludes that the genetic distance between Koa/Highland Tamarind and its nearest relative (Blackwood) indicates a separation of more than a million years (i.e., humans had nothing to do with their spread) and that the lack of any genetic difference between Koa and Highland Tamarind shows that one population gave rise to the other (they were not both the result of 8000 kilometre transfers in opposite directions from Eastern Australia).

In short, Koa arrived in Hawaii from Australia more than a million years ago (which is not so very strange) but then travelled from Hawaii the 16,000 kilometres to Reunion, which is downright incredible. Seabirds are believed to be responsible.

WezV · April 2023

ICBM · April 2023

WezV said:

The common theories are Austalian blackwood seeds were spread to Hawaii by early Polynesian travellers or sea birds. Both could be true, but given the distance involved that is still pretty spectacular.

Polynesians is the most likely. Otherwise how did they reach Hawaii themselves? They were amazingly good navigators.

guitarjack66 · April 2023

ICBM said:

WezV said:

The common theories are Austalian blackwood seeds were spread to Hawaii by early Polynesian travellers or sea birds. Both could be true, but given the distance involved that is still pretty spectacular.

Polynesians is the most likely. Otherwise how did they reach Hawaii themselves? They were amazingly good navigators.

Not many women in the tribe then?

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