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Posts: 1705
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
Extremely Dense Western Red Cedar
I ordered some Western Red Cedar soundboard sets that looked nice. They turned out to be extremely dense--0.43 g/cm3 air dried vs reports of 0.31 to 0.37 oven dried vs 0.36 for the Engelmann spruce I have. They also ring like a bell. Amazing stuff. Old growth. And brittle.
I was expecting the WRC to be less dense than the spruce I usually use and to make the soundboards a little thicker. Now I am not sure what to do. Has anyone experienced WRC like this?
Shipped out my first cedar top guitar couple weeks ago but only had it in my shop about a week before the owner picked it up. I only had an hour playing it myself but wish I had it a month. Just as well, it dents just looking at it wrong ;)
where he measured the density and it was low but I don't recall the numbers, ah here 324kg/m3.
Care to do a postal swap, I know you've gotta have some nice spruce squirreled away in your shop ;) PM if your interested. Just sent three sets to Italy two weeks ago hand carried by some visitors.
Almost forgot, Gary had hurt his back and said he could no longer harvest and was out of the business. I got some billets of Alaskan Yellow Cedar from him, sawed up about 30 back and rib sets and the shop smells amazing.
Any one else interested in a postal trade give me a pm, I'm not interested in selling outright.
Seems dense WRC would be more suited for a steel string guitar? Completely out of my depth here but I recall in my reading something about that.
I boxed up my second WRC top just a touch thinner then the first and I've got this nagging feeling it's not thin enough, this one built as a classical with hickory top linings so it's completely off the chart for me.
The third WRC top will be all Flamenco and so thin you can...
HR
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I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy, doesn't have to be fast, should have some meat on the bones, can be raw or well done, as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
Posts: 1705
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
RE: Extremely Dense Western Red Cedar (in reply to ernandez R)
HR--I appreciate your offer and will keep it in mind. First I'll see what happens with the current WRC. I agree, this dense stuff makes one think more of steel string guitars. But who knows? It's an experiment.