soundboard shopping

[peter havriluk]

Folks,

I'm gathering up the materials for a scratchbuilt guitar, and materials being unavailable in person, I'm going to need to rely on mail order to get soundboards. So... pricing varies immensely, following the grading of the wood. I've seen wood vendors offering 'student grade' soundboards and the prices sure are right. What makes the wood 'student grade', and is there an order of preference, i.e., do certain species generally work out better at the lower end of the price spectrum for that species than others? What characteristics are used to define the various quality levels. What's 'quality', evenness of grain, number of rings per inch, overall color? And what do we need to shop for to get wood that's better, for example, an ordinary D-18 hanging in a retail store? If I'm buying sight unseen, are some varieties subject to less variation and thus be more foolproof to buy?

Thanks very much.

[ken cierp]

Truth is you really won't know a sound-board's potential until it is thinned and also the sound hole is cut. The stiffness across the grain is a good indicator -- holding a thinned sound board on the very edge, ideally, I want less then a 1/2 inch of bend on the opposite side.

You can expect a lot of hype about grain line count -- but if you go to the Martin factory you'll see fairly new $50,000 plus guitars with very wide grain spacing as well as sound boards with the wider grain glue toward the center. On average wide grain red spruce is very stiff.

The vanity woods are much over priced -- in fact years ago all us old timers simply tossed that stuff in the scrap bin because, for instance, so called bear claw has many "defect" features we simply wanted to avoid in tone-wood -- especially sound-boards.

Lastly, by holding the thinned blank by a corner and rapping it with your knucle near the bridge location should produce a bright tone with decay and resonance ---- if it sounds like tapping on a table top or a piece of cardboard (too flabby) it may not sound very good -- but then again proper bracing on a flabby top can yield a good sounding guitar.

Bottom line buy from a reputable seller.

[ken cierp]

And here's Frank Ford's concise view of vanity wood sound-boards:

http://frets.com/FretsPages/General/Glo ... rclaw.html

[Dave Bagwill]

Some of the vanity woods are drop-dead gorgeous, and would make someone looking at a wall of guitars look twice for sure, but then the $300 + upgrade price - would make me look again, maybe at a beautiful traditional tonewood guitar that costs less but is in every particular just as good.

Some of the vanity woods make great appointments, however - I just used some gorgeous ziricote for a headplate.
$10.

[peter havriluk]

Thanks for all the insight and comments. A lot of the discussions in lutherie seem like replays of the emperor's new clothes. An instrument that is made carefully and which optimizes the materials in it stands a good chance of being acoustically very nice, it seems. The materials seem to get a lot of credit that ought to go to its builder whose judgement and skill got good performance out of the materials.

And I certainly agree that a transaction that needs trust is best done with a vendor who can be trusted.

[Robert Hosmer]

Since you're talking about trusted suppliers, runout is also a consideration.
The more reputable suppliers will tell you if the wood was sourced from split billets.
Just keep in mind that this type of processing usually means a higher-priced piece.

[ken cierp]

Not disagreeing with Robert --- just an observation however, take a look at some of the newest McPherson advertising ($6000 +) and other brands. There seems to be no worries regarding run-out, they have models with very attractive center joint "Vee" grain convergence. Another example of what is perhaps convensional wisdom vesus real science? ---- Just saying