Echi -> RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard is too soft !!!! (Aug. 19 2015 11:46:03)
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I know quite well those mountains as the area at the border from Italy and Austria has been my holiday place since I was child. Stradivari and many violin makers from Cremona buy their top wood in a different place though as different factors like the altitude of the mountains, the grade of the sun rays etc. make a big difference on the final result. They mostly buy spruce grown in the area of “Val di Fiemme” in Italy: the resulting spruce is often more homogeneous than the so called “German Spruce” but less stiff longitudinally. It’s the very same red spruce variety (called hasselfichte by someone ) but grown in a different valley. Back to the TV show you mentioned, there are many generalizations. The brown stripes (which are the tree rings) are usually stiffer than the white wood “in the same top”, but this doesn’t entail that a top with more veining will be stiffer than another top with good spacing among the veins. It could be actually the opposite depending on the tree. What really matters is the stiffness (or density or Module of Young) longitudinally and perpendicularly to the grain direction of each top wholly considered. Some luthiers (like Andrea Tacchi for instance) have a small machine called "Lucchimetro" to test the speed of the wave through the wood and this is the most reliable way to understand how good can be a top. BTW a top with a good spacing among the grain means that the brown stripes are thicker and consequently stiffer than a top where the veins are many but small. Again, there are other factors really influential you cannot detect with a glance like no run out (the tree makes a swirl while growing up) and a perfect quarter sawn cut.
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