3 and 4 piece tops for classical and steel string guitars

[Kevin in California]

I wanted to open a discussion on the idea of using 3 or 4 pieced tops. I have done some looking on the web and see that it is not totally uncommon, and in fact Jose Romanillo's famous spanish classical guitar builder says it can make a better top.
The reason I'm asking all your opinions and experiences is; I love redwood tops. I've used them on both steel string and a classical guitar paired with EIR. I think it gives excellent tone and I really like the color/look.
Anyway, I have access to some awesome, perfectly quarter sawn totally clear, 100 year old redwood boards that are 5 1/2" wide, 1" thick and 9 feet long. The grain on this stuff is amazing, like 20 lines or more to the inch. I bought one board and tonight I'm going to cut a 2 ft piece, resaw it and glue up a 4 piece section.
In the morning I will clean it up and cut out a classical top and see how it looks. This will be a test to see how it turns out. I am guessing I should be able to do this with no joints showing. That is my hope. I use Titebond at this point for my plate joining.
I will let you all know how it goes and post some pictures of how it turns out.

So what do you guys think? Thanks.

[Herman]

Good plan Kevin, Multiple piece tops? Sure!, if you can make proper joints! In pianos, they use multiple piece soundboards every time. So why not in guitars? Go ahead and let us know.
Herman

[ken cierp]

If it has run-out the glue up will look like four stripes -- that would not appeal to me.

[Dave Bagwill]

For your consideration: a guitar made by James Dunn. 4 piece top? :-)

[Kevin in California]

So here is the first top I pieced together. It actually uses 3 slices of the 5 1/2" wide board. This was almost perfect 90 degree grain across the board, but as you can see quite a bit of dark streaks. I bookmatched in the center, then took the third slice, cut it down the middle and put each half on either side.


You can not see the seams, and the grains come together pretty well. I don't mind the streaky look, especially on a steel string guitar.
This top plate is very stiff and I think will make a very good sounding top.


I cut the rest of the board into tops and on the other end, there was almost no dark streaking so it should produce a much cleaner looking top. I also adjusted my saw to take a little thinner cut at about .170" and I was able to get 4 cuts, sanded down to about .150" ready to glue up.
I bought a few more boards that looked pretty good, but got them home and they are less quarter sawn, about 80 down to 50 degrees. I was sad about that but at $10 a board its okay. I'm going to rip some strips and see if how they will bend in my fox bender. If the bend fine, then I'm going to use what I can't use for tops for solid linings, and I'll be very happy.

[Dave Bagwill]

That looks just fine. Have you thought of using some small cleats along the joints?

[Kevin in California]

I would like to avoid cleating it, but if used for a steel string, the tone bar braces might cross the joint. Truely there is only about 1 to 1 1/2" of the pieced section at the lower bout and at the upper only about 1/4 to 1/2"; not enough to cleat there. This piece feels very strong and stiff at .150" thick. I would probably be taking it down to around .110 to .120 for a steel string top.