Red Spruce for Musical Instrument?

[Ga_Boy]

A customer called this weekend looking for Red Spruce. Said he was buinding some sort of musical instrument; a string instrument I think.

Anybody got any ideas on Red Spruce for use as musicalinstruments.




Mark

[Phorester]

Spruce is the top-of-the-line preferred wood for guitar tops, mandolin tops, fiddles.  Don't know about red spruce, but I expect since it is in the same genus, I would think it  would have similiar good acoustic properties.

[beenthere]

The key to its use in musical instruments, would likely be if the grain in the wood is straight, at least for use in the sounding-board portion of the instrument.

[Tillaway]

Instrument Spruce, Sitka Spruce is used for all of the above, in fact the biggest purchaser of instrument quality spruce from Alaska is Yamaha for use in piano's.  I have no idea of what characteristics are need for instrument spruce but I do know that it is makes up only a small percentage of spruce logs contain any.  They comand a very high price, above Red Cedar shake bolts.  

[SwampDonkey]

Ditto to what Tillaway says. I've seen some websites with instruments made of sitka spruce. Your buyer may be interested in red spruce because of his location. Red spruce grows in the blue ridge mountains and the smokeys and elsewhere in higher elevations and ridge tops, usually dry sites. We have it in different regions up this way also, but it often hybridizes with black spruce.

[woodbeard]

Sitka and engelmann spruce are the most widely used species for stringed instrument tops, but almost every softwood has been used at one time or another. Sitka in particular has a very high strength to weight ratio. Wood for instrument tops should be straight grained, tight ringed, and quartersawn with as little grain runout as possible. The better tops are actually resawn from split billets (like shingle bolts) to ensure true grain orientation. You really need at least a 24"dia. log to get a good quality guitar top out of.

[Dan_Shade]

Mark, I've got a bit of know-how in the instrument area, I've built a few guitars and read almost every book on the subject I could find.

Instrument builders want 1/4 sawn, straight grained wood for soundboards (tops), and the more rings per inch, the better.  The guys are right, it's better from split billets too.

That said, if he's a budget tinkerer, many fine instruments have been built from almost every type of wood.  as long as it's 1/4 sawn it will be fine (strength is a huge issue for instruments).