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Hello friends
i just recieved 10 sets of caucasian spruce from russia
i have never used it before
want to build one acoustic guitar out of it
can anyone tell me the final thickness to be used on this spruce?
how is it different from engelman spruce?
anyone used it before?
if possible post some soundclips
waiting for ur reply

I'm not sure exactly what species that is, but that doesn't make much difference anyway. There's more variation in density/stiffness within a species than the difference between the averages of each species.
The thickness should be between 0.100" and 0.125", depending on the stiffness and the size of the soundboard.
That's too wide a range to help much, but it's the best I can do with the information provided.

I recommend the Gore/Gillet book, it provides procedures for measuring the stiffness and determining the necessary thickness for soundboards. It is what I consider a little expensive, but is worth it for serious students of the craft.

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A man hears what he wants to hear, and disreguards the rest. Paul Simon

Thanks for ur reply
its picea orientalis

Work it like any Spruce.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

More importantly, how is the runout? I had spruce soundboard that was sawn from billet and it had terrible runout... a pain to plane and probably cause more issue if the top needed to be repaired. If it had been split like they should then it wouldn't really matter so much as far as sound goes... as long as it's spruce.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I use P. orientalis a lot, the best of it is as good as any spruce you can get, it has been used in Europe as an instrument topwood for centuries. It is thought that many of the Southern European guitars of the 19th Century used Caucasian Spruce (they just used what they called good 'pine', they didn't care what its parentage was!), as it was shipped out of Turkey, where I get mine, by ship to the Southern European ports, with cargoes of goods from the near and far east. Transport by sea, into Spain particularly, was much easier than bringing goods into Spain from Northern Europe by the roads over the Pyrenees. I have used about 20 sets, mainly on classicals but also on steel strings as well.

As has been said you just have to treat it like any other spruce, but it is closer to P. abies then any of the N. American species. If it was the only spruce available to me, I'd be quite happy.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

i only have one top but it seems rather nice. tight grain, well quartered across its width and a nice tap. it has a slight pink hue that may or may not suit your taste. can´t remember its density out of the blue, but IIRC it is around 400 g/cm3 - maybe a tad above.

now that i think of it, it would be nice grabbing some more of those. Collin, if i may ask, what´s your source for it? i got mine from Octopus, transaction was OK and not expensive but it took quite a while to get it here after payment was done, and then there´s the pao ferro they were selling for BRW that got me a little wary...

thanks,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

Thanks friends for ur replies
what shhould be thickness for classical and acoustic guitars
if anyone wants then i can supply this spruce