Does anyone know what they mean when they say that their guitar is made with a "select spruce top." I feel like this is rather dodgy. I mean, is it a way of saying "our tops are laminated, but they are laminated with the best laminate wood!" Can anyone answer this?
thanks!
yes, if the top is solid they will always say so.
if it does not state that it is solid then you can bet that it's not.
#4491....
Yes, I'd be sure a "select spruce top" is laminated. That's not necessarily a bad thing, of course.
Lots of guitars with laminated tops sound quite good. They don't change much with playing, so you know from the beginning what it's going to sound like. There's much less variation from piece to piece with the laminates than with solid wood, as the different layers tend to cancel out the differences. They're relatively insensitive to changes in humidity, unlikely to crack. You don't have to baby them as you do one with a solid top. I think of them as the everyday dinnerware, the solid tops are the fine china you keep in the cabinet and get out for special occasions.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
on some very high end guitars they assume you know it's solid, so they might just describe it as select. But if you are looking at a low end if it doesn't say solid it isn't.
'Select' is the dodgy term, IMO. It just means somebody picked it out - there aren't standard grades for tonewood billets, so different lumber supply companies make up their own. Oh, there are standard <i>labels</i> for grades, like AA, but no agreement on what makes a top fit that grade. One guy's 'select' might be '4A' (or 2A!) for somebody else.
To make things worse, there's a lot of 'grade inflation' going on.
Somebody who sold AAA tops a few years ago discovers he's losing market to the 'special select' of his competitor, so last year's 3A are suddenly so much better, some of them become 5A tops in the new light of competition. Or they make up entirely new terms - 'museum' grade, 'exhibition' grade, 'master' grade, and 'reserve' tops have all made their appearance.
To make things even worse, some folks use letters to indicate the way the wood was cut, not as a grading criteria. 'AA' might mean quarter-sawn (which is really the only kind of cutting most luthiers will touch), while 'A' is slab cut. So a guy selling 5A tops using that method has wood that may not even make a decent guitar!
You're <u>never</u> looking at apples to apples... just look through their catalogs for total confusion:
Alaska Specialty Woods AA: <i>can have even texture but some subtle color or even color with uneven texture</i>
Northern Tonewoods AA: <i>Variations in tightest of grain, straight grain lines, NO color variation</i>
Does that mean Northern Tonewoods grades 'tighter' than Alaska Specialty? Maybe... maybe not. It's all highly subjective, and seasoned by marketing.
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