SPRUCE
Red Spruce Picea rubens is the hardest of its species and a good choice for soundboards where clarity is important when playing with other loud instruments. Needing a little more time to play-in than softer spruces, it has the potential of developing into the clearest most powerful tone with strong mid-range projection, particularly when combined with "parallel" tonebars.
Italian Spruce Picea abies is a little softer and lighter in weight than red spruce with similar properties to engelmann spruce. Trees with harder "compression" growth rings have an excellent strength to weight ratio and produce many of the same qualities of red spruce and is a good alternative, particularly for larger instruments such as guitars where wider billets with even growth rings are harder to source in red spruce.
Engelmann Spruce Picea engelmannii is the softer of the spruces and can produce a more immediate bass response, particularly when combined with the "X" bracing pattern and a red maple back. The characteristic tone is typically warmer and thicker than the harder spruces that produce a stronger mid-range response.
BRACING
Whether on a mandolin or a guitar, the type of wood used and the effect of the bracing patterns work the same in changing the flexibility of the soundboard. Braces running parallel with the grain have the greatest effect of stiffening and increasing the mid-range response, producing a brighter clearer tone. The more the braces are angled from the grain the more flexible the top becomes, producing a warmer bass response. I like to think of it as a spectrum where, at one end of the scale, the softer wood and X brace emphasises more bass frequencies. At the other end is the harder species and parallel tone-bars that help boost midrange and projection, with subtle variations in between. All bracing red spruce.
ES = engelmann
RM = red maple
X braced
Example #128
RS = red spruce
HM = sugar maple
/ / tone-bars
Example #536
MAPLE
Sugar Maple Acer saccharum is my preferred material for backs, sides and necks because of its tonal clarity, unequaled beauty under varnish and with figure that is typically more tangled looking than red maple. All models are stained with water based aniline dye directly to the wood, which deepens and enhances the light reaction of the natural figure of the grain. Maple also has very fine pores that don't need to be filled before finishing, simplifying the process and contributing to its satin sheen.
Red Maple Acer rubrum is similar in appearance to sugar maple but not as dense. Generally it has a figured pattern that is broader and more regular than sugar maple. It works well in combination with the softer spruces and the X bracing pattern where the maximum bass response is preferred.
Maple backs are available as two piece or one piece (when quality stock permits). The figured grain pattern of maple appears different depending on how the board is cut from the tree. When it is cut parallel to the outside surface of the tree (slab cut) it produces a softer cloud-like appearance. When it is cut 90 degrees to the surface of the tree (quarter cut) the figure appears as straight lines and the pattern will appear bolder looking compared to the same piece cut on the slab. Angled cuts (spiral/rift) can produce subtle variations between slab and quarter.
Two Piece Back
As each half of a two piece back only needs to be half the width of a one piece, two piece backs can be cut either on the slab, spiral or quarter. Also, they can be either book-matched (mirror image from a narrower board) or slip-matched from a narrow board folded in half longways. Apart from the obvious visual difference, any subtle tonal difference between one piece/slab or two piece/quartered can be attributed to the little extra stiffness of quartered wood compared to slab from the same tree.
One Piece Back
As most of the figure in a maple tree is in the often narrower outer layer of light coloured sapwood, and is strongest just under the bark, one piece backs are usually only available as slab or spiral-cut. It is less common to find quarter-cut maple with good figure wide enough for a one piece back, especially for larger instruments.
spiral
slab
STAIN OPTION
CREMONA
Hard Maple 2 pc spiral
TOBACCO
Hard Maple 1 pc spiral
MAHOGANY
Red Maple 1 pc slab
AMBER
Hard Maple 2 pc quarter
STRUT BRACE
A simple horizontal brace that reinforces the open grain area behind the soundhole.
WOOD
Because of their fundamental design, oval hole models have a natural abundance of bass frequencies in the tone. To help boost the midrange response, the hard species combination of red spruce and sugar maple is only used for these models. The option of "thickening" the tone with the softer species, as available for f hole models, is not offered for the oval hole models as increasing the midrange response with the harder wood is a real benefit to overall projection and power in an oval hole instrument.