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Posts: 109
Joined: Mar. 19 2024
From: Hunan, China
Cedro or Spruce？
About one week ago, I watched a video about Javier Castano's guitar which was a cedro blanca. One comment said that cedro and cypress are the best combination. I know some great guitar players‘ guitars are made of the same wood combination, such as Yerai Cortes, Jose Fermin Fernandez, Juan Habichuela Nieto, Jesus Guerrero.
Then I visit Mariano Conde's Instagram and find that it is difficult to recognize the top wood because of the color of the paint. But Mariano makes cedro negra more than blanca.
Is this combination do much better than spruce and cypress?
cedar vs spruce is a debate with a long story in classical guitars. To put it easy, they are just different woods, so it really depends what you look after and how familiar is the luthier with cedar. cedar is generally speaking a lighter wood with a different stiffness ratio.
I somehow always ended preferring the combination cypress/spruce for a better separation of the voices, a certain sparkle and a faster attack. Ten years ago I used to own 2 guitars made by Gerundino with cypress back and sides, almost identical but for the top and the year. The cedar one was more powerful, with more growing harmonics but somehow darker and "softer" in the attack .... There was something I always found disappointing in that guitar but I couldn't figure out what: in fact the cedar one was kind of less projecting and with a different treble quality. Anyway, I ended up selling both the guitars ... but always found that cedar gerundio thing in other guitars I tried later. today I am also playing a braz rosewood + spruce '86 Gerundino which I find extremely good I think but maybe a little "classical" sounding for someone.
I think that the combo rosewood and cedar can make a very good negra though if you look for loudness and definition and the maker knows how to deal with the wood. In fact some makers are famous for their cedar/cypress guitars (Barba padre, Gerundino, Ramirez) but in general I'd go for spruce/cypress or a rosewood/cedar. Just my 2 cents.
I am telling you, in blind tests nobody could really tell. But nobody wants to do a proper blind test so there is always a bias present. The general consensus is that cedar need not “open up” like spruce, ie, the guitar will never improve from how it is “now”, or new. Most likely this is also biased. I used to not like Cedar on principle (yes I was biased against my experience with an old Ramirez that I did not really like). Yet that Felipe Crespo I heard and played was shockingly superior to all the other guitars in the room back in 2014. I had no choice but to discard my prejudices.
When people say it is “the best” that is because of the look or contrast of light and dark wood (light sides and back with darkish top seems “exotic” compared to the standard Blanca’s). Like in the summer when your girl has yummy tan lines.
Thank you Echi. Your reply is impartial and objective. I prefer spruce and cypress, too. But I also interested in cedar and cypress too. Maybe I will try some in the future to ensure what I like
My teacher has a Jose Rodriguez with cedar top and cypress back and sides. I think the tone is great but different from spruce and cypress. It sounds like warm and soft but also has the flavor of flamenco.
But to be honest I am a Conde Fans and I notice that Conde's cedar tops' color are unique and they are not my type. I am hesitant with the choice
Somehow I agree on biases and yes, there are guitars with cedar top sounding as I would associate to spruce and viceversa. I suppose généralisations carry some truth if you get them with a pinch of salt.
Good makers know how to use different materials for their purposes and eventually a guitar of a certain maker carries the identity of her maker.
Yet I still think you can associate a certain carachter or quality to cedar or spruce: I suppose I can do it. Also, we are spacial entities perceiving the reality with all our senses: it's true I may misjudge a certain thing just by listening a recording but mostly I enjoy a certain guitar when I play.
One thing to consider beyond any sonic concerns (real or imagined) is cedar is a softer wood which is more scratch and dent prone than spruce. Depending on your technique or how you tend to treat your instruments that might be the most significant factor in the decision. As far as sound and response goes, either can be used to make a good flamenco guitar. It's more about durability for some players, IMO.
There's a huge difference if the cedar top is finished with a polyurethane finish (like in the Ramirez guitars) or with shellac. in the latter case scratches, dings etc are a significant risk. Worst nightmare is to have to replace a golpeador from a cedar top. My first big mistake, many years ago, was to accept such a job: No matter how careful I was, some wood fibres tore apart with the golpeador, which led to the need to refinish the whole top. Second time I tried this was years later, on a cedar topped Sanchis. In this case I made use of the common products and was extremely careful: I also lightly heated the top with a hairdrier. Everything seemed ok and yet few days I noticed a strange light refraction effect, shadow like, on the finish under a certain light...
I agree with you. About three years ago I had a cedar negra made by a chinese luthier whose name is Friedrich Jiang. One day I was going to replace a golpeador and the glue took away some wood of the top. The top became very ugly and I sold it
One day I was going to replace a golpeador and the glue took away some wood of the top
When I used to work in a taller, I discovered that cedar has no lateral strength:you can crumble a tapa with fingers. (You cannot do that with spruce) So the luthier has to provide this lateral strength and many have achieved it.
I have heard and played good cedar guitars, but I would not accept one, even as a free gift[;)
I have had a 1967 Ramirez 1a cedar/cypress since it was new. It was the first good guitar I had. It taught me how to play.
For years it was the best flamenco guitar I had ever played. Eventually I liked a friend's 1973 spruce/cypress Conde better.
At present I like my 1982 Arcangel Fernandez spruce/cypress a bit better than the Ramirez. The Arcangel is one of the best flamencas I have played. Richard Bruné has a couple that I might like a little better.
The top of the Ramirez, finished in polyruthane, is marked up all over. The spruce Arcangel, which I have played since I bought it in 2000, is pristine. So is a spruce/Brazilian polyurethane Manuel Contreras Sr. which I bought at the shop in 1991, and played most days until I bought another classical in 2000.
Just 2 observations: Polyurethane gradually penetrates into the cedar making it quite a though surface. I think in the case of Ramirez it works very well. The problem is with soft finishes.
Second aspect is the stiffness/weight ratio and the lateral to longitudinal stiffness ratio: generally speaking cedar is lighter than spruce .. cedar is more homogeneous with regard of stiffness ratio, while Spruce tend to have much more longitudinal stiffness, proportionally. As usual there's a a big variability among different pieces of woods.,
Polyurethane gradually penetrates into the cedar making it quite a though surface. I think in the case of Ramirez it works very well. The problem is with soft finishes.
My impression was that the polyurethane on the '67 Ramirez grew thinner and stiffer by gradual outgassing and cross-linking. But whatever the mechanism, the Ramirez finish was much thicker and the cedar top was easier to dent when it was new than it is now, 57 years later.
I have what may be the last of Tom Blackshear's guitars. He described building this one on the Foro, a spruce/Indian Reyes model. He described starting another, a negra modeled on Conde, but I don't think he finished it. Due to a problem with his hands, Tom did not French polish the Reyes model. He sent it to his neighbor in San Antonio, Tom Nuñez, who put a beautiful nitrocellulose lacquer finish on it. Blackshear said that after it was lacquered the instrument had to be re-voiced by sanding the braces some more.
Blackshear had his doubts about this instrument, but after comparing it to my ´67 Ramirez and ´82 Arcangel Fernandez, he declared it fit to go out into the world. He offered it to me at a good price, and I bought it, curious as to how it might develop.
When it was new the trebles very nearly overpowered the basses. While very powerful the trebles weren't as brilliant as those of the Ramirez or Arcangel. After a few years, and several hours of playing, the basses have filled in, and the trebles are much more brilliant. It has no notably weak or powerful notes. Overall, the instrument is quite loud. Of the guitars I own it is--for me--the best for playing both classical and flamenco, though it is neither the best classical nor the best flamenco.
I attribute the change to two factors. One is the normal development of a new spruce guitar. The other, I suspect, is the maturation of the nitrocellulose finish.
The sound is clean and sweet. The luthier is Mayoral and it is the first time I know him. I saw some Mayoral guitars on Wallapop and I used to think Mayoral was factory made
But I don‘t like this deep red color. I like cedar with light color.
Nitro was invented and introduced by Dupont in 1921 as an automotive finish. Apparently it was normally referred to simply as "lacquer" and was quickly adopted for use by other industries such as furniture and musical instrument making. Here's an article about it:
Nitro was invented and introduced by Dupont in 1921 as an automotive finish. Apparently it was normally referred to simply as "lacquer" and was quickly adopted for use by other industries such as furniture and musical instrument making. Here's an article about it:
In Spain the industry started making use of nitrocellulose after the civil war. In the field of Spanish guitar making there’s a big difference between companies and individual makers. The latter mostly kept using shellac. Small companies already in the late 1950 begun instead to send their guitars to Valencia or Barcelona, just to have them finished with nitrocellulose professionally. Basically in Valencia there have been factories of Spanish studio guitars. The Conde brothers used to have a deal with the Sanchis company (the father of Ricardo) for the purpose while Ramirez had deals with people based in Barcelona and formerly with Taurus. Ramirez was the first company to make to adopt polyurethane in 1965. Such a thick finish (generally used for wood flooring) in that context was a good idea in order to satisfy the needs of Segovia and also to compensate the natural softness of cedar. Segovia couldn’t keep using his Fleta on tour as that guitar was exceedingly prone to warping. Eventually Ramirez implemented a varnishing departmet in Madrid, while other companies, like the Sobrinos de Esteso, kept outsourcing it. Conde had no reasons to pass to polyurethane considering that nitro finish is thinner and more appropriate. Also this could help them with their famous orange finish which they started using around 1965. Already in the seventies some luthiers (in Madrid and Granada for instance) specialised just in the varnishing stage for other luthiers, and so it became a common practice to outsource the finishing stage as it happens even nowadays in Spain. In the eighties nitro became of rare usage in Europe, due to many restrictions for heath and safety reasons (the stuff is poisonous, highly inflammable and even explosive). Some old nitro finish topically crack in a very recognisable way.
An interesting history! I like naranja color finish but I don't know it is coverd by polyurethane. Some guitar players in China don't like polyurethane and they prefer shellac. They think polyurethane destroy the sound of the wood.
The original Conde orange finish (through a very Ruch nitrate mixture of cellulose) took "inspiration" form the tint used by Ramirez (done with 2 component polyurethane). The reasons behind the colour choice of Ramirez were both to give a more "classical look" to the guitar reminding the bows in the orchestra (Segovia had a certain influence here) and to cover the unusual look of cedar: at the time people were still visually accustomed to the yellow tint of spruce. Somehow orange became very fancy at the time.
I’d just like to point out that having handled a great deal of cedar with my own hands, it’s variable. And vice versa, spruce is variable also. One cedar can be very very stiff along the grain and across the grain. So can spruce, and spruce can be weak as wet spaghetti along the grain.
It’s not Spruce vs. Cedar, it’s which set of either kind of wood is stiff along the grain vs. across the grain, and then how you interpret that with thicknessing your top with the right amount of bracing. Then reevaluate the bracing and flex along the grain and across the grain- then adjust the braces, leaving in a little meat in the top for a light sanding.
It doesn’t matter which wood you choose for a top, once the finish has dried enough, they both work. And cedar guitars play in, they obviously change over time. Spruce is tougher material, it just takes longer.
Polyurethane chrysalises and degrades over time, so yeah 50 year old poly is less dense and has degraded into a lighter film. The fatty part of the finish escapes, molecules leave the matrix, leaving a thinner layer.
There is a plasticizer in the polymer finishes, it’s the same as a plastic car dashboard. Poly varnishes have a smaller amount of plastisizer than a soft dashboard ( or relatively softer) but over years the exposure to UV light drives the plasticizer molecules out and the material becomes less pliable and shrinks. When the polyurethane film get old it’s gets more stiff and brittle.
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