Adirondack Spruce? (Full Version)

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Andy Culpepper -> Adirondack Spruce? (Jul. 24 2019 1:21:27)

I picked up a really nice Adirondack Spruce top on a whim and I'm wondering if it will make a good flamenco guitar. My gut says that it will, and I'm sure I'll use it at some point.

Googling around a bit, things like this caught my eye, from the Breedlove website:
Adirondack spruce has been the choice of bluegrass pickers for decades, and seems to add power to any guitar design. If it’s loud you want, Adirondack is for you. Adirondack is even more dynamic than Sitka spruce, and has a higher ceiling for volume. You can strum an Adirondack-topped guitar aggressively without distorttion or loss of clarity. For the aggressive player who wants volume and clarity without distortion; the player or collector who wants the vibe of a pre-war guitar.

Anyone have experience with it?




gerundino63 -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jul. 24 2019 7:50:57)

Maybe this is a bit helpfull Andy,


https://maderasbarber.com/las-maderas/




JasonM -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jul. 24 2019 13:49:22)

My understanding is that it’s a stiff and dense spruce, no?




Andy Culpepper -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jul. 24 2019 16:42:27)

quote:

My understanding is that it’s a stiff and dense spruce, no?


Yes, it seems to be. Not a bad thing though necessarily, it just means you're going to end up with a thinner top. Stiff and dense are both OK as long as they go together. Dense + floppy is where you don't want to be.




hannabach -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 12 2020 21:50:36)

Back in 2006 I had the same idea and had Jeff Sigurdson in Vancouver build a Flame Maple and Ad/spruce blanca...still have the guitar...trebles on the softer glassy side with deep basses, and good separation with clarity...volume is very good...difficult to describe sound with words.[im



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hannabach -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 12 2020 21:54:40)

Second photo back and sides



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Ricardo -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 13 2020 13:16:04)

Oooo that’s a nice looking guitar. You just reminded me I have been neglecting my maple sanchis of late. Need to dust her off.




ernandez R -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 13 2020 23:20:08)

Andy,
I recall coming across that vary statement about AS and noting it for future reference.

And no, I have not used any AS, I'm only eight guitars in and still feeling things out like basic construction.
My first question though is, Blanca or Negra? Only one top so you can't do both?

If you keep the rest of the woods the same how does/is this top going to interact with the woods and your building style?
Curios how the thinning, bracing, tapping of this top will influence how each of these things are done knowing they all effect each other?

Are you trying to brighten up your Blanca or add a touch more sustain to your Negra?

I guess I'm interested knowing you have a well founded baseline so using this material is less a shot in the dark then say if I did it. I just strung up two in the white and one is great, my best ever, the other is an f'n cannon but I'm not exactly sure why. Was asking the boss the other night how it sounded different and she said, it has cojones.

In my short tenure as a builder I was surprised how many mentioned how much of the process was less science and a good amount of intuition. I'm coming around to thinking even less deliberate science and more magic of the unconsance mind.

Would be fun to make this as scientific as posable but without having you give up too much of the soul of your luthiery.

And of course thanx for sharing,

HR




Andy Culpepper -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 14 2020 0:24:00)

quote:

I guess I'm interested knowing you have a well founded baseline so using this material is less a shot in the dark then say if I did it. I just strung up two in the white and one is great, my best ever, the other is an f'n cannon but I'm not exactly sure why. Was asking the boss the other night how it sounded different and she said, it has cojones.

In my short tenure as a builder I was surprised how many mentioned how much of the process was less science and a good amount of intuition. I'm coming around to thinking even less deliberate science and more magic of the unconsance mind.

Would be fun to make this as scientific as posable but without having you give up too much of the soul of your luthiery.


It's really not a shot in the dark or an unusual material - it's just Spruce. Spruce with slightly different characteristics on average than other varieties, but you have to adjust to variations in wood with every guitar you build. Two pieces of European or Englemann Spruce can differ more than an Adirondack to a European for example.

I ended up using the Adirondack on a classical guitar, came out great and I sold it to a gentleman from Thailand. Here's a video if you're curious, though the sound experienced a tiny bit of distortion in the recording process unfortunately.



Hannabach, awesome guitar! I've been building more with Maple lately and absolutely love it.




NorCalluthier -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 14 2020 0:50:33)

Hello Andy,

I made a double top and a solid top flamenco with Adirondack spruce, and they were both quite successful. That was for a talk at Healdsburg on double tops. I used the Adirondack because I had two tops that had very close to the same good test numbers. I ended up liking the solid top better, but the wood worked out quite well for both.

Having said that, the sum total of my 30 years of experience is that wood testing is vital to consistently making first rate instruments.

Wood varies dramatically, and as much as I practice my "touchie-feely" skills I'm still regularly fooled. I recently got in two torrefied tops from a Swiss supplier. They both felt very much the same stiffness cross-grain. One tested nearly twice as stiff as the other. My test method takes into account variations in thickness.

I have a video on my website describing my test methods, and there is a link there to a .pdf that expands on the topic:

www.BrianBurnsGuitars.com

Cheers,

Brian




hannabach -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 14 2020 11:50:54)

Brian,

Really appreciate your contribution to this topic. Very detailed and informative videos on so may aspects of the build process. Especially on wood selection, I learned at lot.
You are to be commended on the work and research for your scientific methodology, for taking the guess work out of tone wood selection.

You could open up your own grading business on that alone.

To build a superior guitar takes years of knowledge, dedication and the right process.

Beautiful guitars and a great website.

Be well James




hannabach -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 14 2020 13:31:08)

Andy,


Fully agree with you on the species of wood comment you made, (Spruce) whether it be Picea abies European) and the western cousins Sitka, Engelmann and
Adirondac. Great article here http://www.lutherie.net/eurospruce.html

I think great guitars can be built from any of these.

It comes down to skill and knowing what you want to create from that slice of timber:)


Be well thanks for your comments

James




Tom Blackshear -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 14 2020 14:16:01)

quote:

I ended up using the Adirondack on a classical guitar, came out great


Andy, the only spruce variety I've settled on is Engelmann which gives me the music I'm looking for, and it seems fairly easy to coax a warm sound out of it with top graduation.

The sitka spruce I used turned out to be rather steely in its age, and not very appealing.

But I have to admit that most varieties of wood can be worked to bring out beauty once the builder learns its idiosyncrasies.




NorCalluthier -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 14 2020 17:12:34)

Hello James,

Thanks for your kind words, but I should say that my methodology falls far short of being "scientific". I had the good fortune in my late teens of working at the Stanford Microwave Lab for a couple of years. I got to rub shoulders with real scientists doing real science. Their work was really rigorous, and mine is constrained by by lack of time and money---theirs wasn't!

I'm trying to make a living at guitar making like the rest of the guys doing it...Anybody know a wealthy guitar enthusiast willing to fund research?

Cheers,

Brian




ernandez R -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 15 2020 0:01:32)

James,
I recall reading this http://www.lutherie.net/eurospruce.html about a year ago and based on many other comments gave me support in my plan to use only locally harvested spruce from my Alaskan local: both Black and White spruce. It is more probable there are micro climatic and geographical variations making the qualities we are searching for. On the other hand there is the acquired skill of manipulating the wood to get to our goal with each piece in hand.

Focusing on the Flamenco top perhaps we don't want the stiffest piece one would like for the classical guitar and her sustain? Tom, perhaps this is what you were implying with your experience using AS on a Flamenco? Particularly on the outboard ends of the bridge lower bought? I'm talking straight up Blanca here.

I had read about a year ago Brian's information on his testing and his system is sound. So much so that I have already contacted him about spending a couple days picking his brain and testing some of my local spruce. Coincidently we just received the email this morning with dates for a trip to Santa Rosa this May so keep your eyes open for an email Brian; not a wealthy enthusiast but at least a few shekels for sharing your time and experience ;)

and Andy: sorry for being less then clear, I was implying it would be a shot in the dark for ME to use an AS top, not you ;) Knowing your level of experience looking forward to your sharing how you end up dealing with the stiffer top plate and its integration with bracing sound bars etc.

Thank you all for sharing your time and experience, it is invaluable to me.

HR




hannabach -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 15 2020 3:58:56)

ernandez,

Certainly it is a quest worthy of pursuit, sifting through superstition and finding the best useable facts...Brian has quite the process, finding, then dialing in the tone wood to get his desired and repeatable results.


I have recently purchased two sets of back and side wood (Palo Escrito) for a flamenco project for someone to build down the road.

Would be interesting to see how they check out.

As you recall Brian says less dense for the blanca tops is preferred.

Your trip to California sounds fantastic.

Thanks for sharing

Be well

James




NorCalluthier -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 17 2020 16:20:03)

Hello All,

I've made successful guitars with Euro spruce, Englemann spruce, and Adirondac spruce. In every case the test numbers were good enough to justify the work involved in making a guitar out of them.

I'm prejudiced in favor of Euro spruce just because my hero in the guitar making world is Jeff Elliot, and that's what he prefers, even to getting Euro spruce brace wood.

There is a vast deal more difference within a species than there is between the averages of the different species. I just think that I'm more likely to find good wood in a batch of Euro-spruce.

And if those variables weren't enough, there is the sawyer, and how well seasoned the wood is---older is better! I once rejected twenty some 30 year old Euro spruce tops because they had poor cross grain stiffness. They went off quarter toward the outer edges because the sawyer was going for greater yield, rather than wasting some wood and staying strictly vertical grain---I hated to send those back!

I keep thinking about making a short sustain flamenca blanca, and that may require using top wood that tests poorly! I've got some old ponderosa pine shelving that I keep looking at, and some paulownia that is really low density, but ugly to look at...

Cheers,

Brian




Tom Blackshear -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 17 2020 17:07:39)

quote:

I keep thinking about making a short sustain flamenco blanca, and that may require using top wood that tests poorly!


Brian,

Respectfully, I understand your engineer's mind about these things but there are varying schools of thought that take elements of design to turn out a basic difference in tonal perception.

In my 58 years of guitar building, I've come to the ideal that there is no tonal outcome that is perfect, without final tweaking methods that finalize the voice.

Sure, many guitars can get by with being by design only, but in retrospect, very few I've ever built without certain tweaking methods would be the best I could build.

I grew more confident in this in 2004 when I investigated the 2003 Manuel Reyes flamenco guitar; to find that I was doing some of my fine tuning similar to his. But the big difference was that he supposedly preset his top's fan braces with different shapes, sizes, and tapers before he completed the construction.

The tell tail evidence was that, upon my investigation, I found that his guitar's second string was not quite as strong as the first and third strings. So I developed a method to fine tune the fan braces through the sound hole, and Little by little, I gained the knowledge on how to finalize sound.

Then, of course, age takes over and gives the sound its propio sello.




NorCalluthier -> RE: Adirondack Spruce? (Jan. 17 2020 18:35:24)

Hello Tom,

I do final tweaking when I tape the back on to the guitar. I'm mostly getting the air resonance down to just where I want it, but I also shave down the fan braces to get the main wood resonance down some, and where it's just above or below the pitch of the 3rd string.

I'm still experimenting with this technique, and make no claims to being an expert, but so far it has helped a bunch. Being able to track just what has happened as a result of my changes to the bracing tells me when I've done a good thing or a bad one! In one case I reinforced my "wing braces" by gluing on spruce stiffeners because I had planed them down too far...

See final voicing under the My Process section of my website:

www.BrianBurnsGuitars.com

Cheers,

Brian




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