Official Luthiers Forum!

As I have said a few times on here (sorry if your getting tired of hearing it) I am a first time builder, extremely green in instrument making. I am still at the beginning stages of my first build. But I love the process and love woodworking therefore see myself making a few more guitars. I am always on the lookout for wood, instrument and furniture wood. I have a bit of an addiction, some are addicted to tools but I am in love with wood.

So my question is about Western Red Cedar as a steel string top. I don't see myself building classical's but am more interested in steel string guitars, but who knows. I have seen some lovely sets of WRC but always lay off buying them due to some advice I received elsewhere that there is no beating spruce when it comes to soundboards. But this was advice from a very highly regaurded luthier over on a different forum.

What are opinions about WRC cedar as a SS tonewood. And while I'm on this topic I would also like opinions on Redwood as a soundboard material, specifically sinker or curly sets of redwood.

I know this is a subjective question but I am always interested in the more experienced opinions of others.

WR Cedar is fine. It has one of the highest stiffness to weight ratios of any wood, so very responsive if done right. It dents easily, though.

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Many great guitars have been made with cedar tops. And redwood tops, and koa tops, and mahogany tops. Well you get the point. Each one of these materials is a little different and has to be handled differently. Cedar is usually softer than spruce so you have to be gentle so not to damage it and also is usually left thicker than a spruce soundboard because its not always as stiff. There are others here who will be able to tell you more about this. But yes cedar makes for a good soundboard and many people prefer the cedar sound to the spruce sound.

I prefer it. I love the look of it.

With that said, you look at it sideways, it WILL dent, scuff and scratch.

Handle with extreme care.

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-Marcus
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+1 for WRC Have 2 ss gtrs handmade 40 yrs ago using WRC, still sound as good as when I first bought them.

Spruce can't be beat? Maybe for his guitars, but I've had better results with redwood... the regular straight grained/minimal runout kind, although I suspect sinker wouldn't sound much different. Curly is more iffy since the waves tend to be very large scale, and thus you have sections of very short fibers, and redwood is rather brittle so it could develop cracks pretty easily. You'd probably need a bigger and therefore heavier bridge since you're gluing to a lot of endgrain, and the top itself would need to be thicker and therefore heavier as well, of course. But it certainly is pretty, so I have a couple tops in the stash to try building with sometime and make a proper judgment on it. Plenty of people seem to have had success with it before, although I've also heard several builders say they wouldn't use it.

I haven't built with WRC yet, but I certainly look forward to the day I have several really nice tops. It seems to be one of the cheapest woods to find in high quality, and I like the tap tone better than spruce anyway. Guessing I won't like it quite as much as redwood, but you never know until you try.

There are a few things to say about the different woods that are not subjective. In no particular order:

-WRC is generally not as stiff as spruce along the grain, but is less dense... so much so that a comparably stiff top, while thicker, is usually lighter than a spruce top. Because of this - all other things being equal - it makes a more responsive guitar with a quicker attack and decay.
-WRC is usually much less stiff across the grain than spruce. So is redwood generally, but in my experience redwood can be all over the place regarding cross grain stiffness. Come to think of it, so can spruces.
-I have found redwood and spruce to be very close in long grain stiffness and weight, making the two very similar in this regard. I have a lot less experience with redwood so my sample size is small and may not be true across the board.
-My experience with curly redwood is that it is great looking, but has a very poor stiffness to weight ratio and has very poor cross grain stiffness. Because of this its suitability as a top wood is suspect... if you're looking for a top that is stiff enough and light enough to sound like you expect a guitar to, look elsewhere. Oops, that was an opinion; I guess that means I've said enough.

I've been using Cedar for steel tops since 1977.
Each top has to be evaluated for the guitar, scale,tension; etc
I have some Cedar tops that are almost impossible to flex!
They're 4.5mm thick but were cut with no runout
& have been drying for 20+ years.

Make one for yourself then decide what you like
or what you'd change to make another.

Mike

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Mike Collins

One of my daily players is a WRC top guitar going on 20 years now. I like it a lot.

The guitar I've sold the most of is a SJ sapele with RWC. It has a nice sound.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Just about the only "standard" model I make is a WRC/EIR. Makes a fingerstyle guitar that's very hard to beat. In fact, the guy who bought the one on the left liked it so much he ordered the matching classical on the right! Gotta love customers like that!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

WRC tends to split more easily than most of the spruces: it's not as tough. You can run into 'flying bridge' problems with it: once the bridge starts to peel along the back edge, it will keep going. Making ther bridge wider (deeper along the direction of the string pull) really helps to reduce the stress at the back edge. I like to use walnut, or lighter woods such as Indian rosewood, to help keep the mass of the larger bridge down. Also, if you finish the top first, and then scribe around the bridge, make _certain_ that you don't cut into the wood of the top along the back edge. We had a Lowden in the shop that lost it's bridge for that reason once: there was 100% wood shear so the glue line didn't fail, but the break was clean all the way around the edge of the bridge.

Finally, don't put off installing the pick guard.

definitely give it a try. my latest has a wrc top and primavera b/s.

it'll split easier, it's more delicate, the dust bothers some people. but can look very nice and sound excellent if treated right. classical builder Fleta made his name with it.

The first serious acoustic guitar I found myself constantly gravitating towards was an EI RW/Cedar. IMO, WRC is a glorious material for soundboards. Redwood, too. I find redwood having just a bit more definition to the attack; IMO, cedar usuallypresents with a slightly darker sound.

Here's a decent YouTube recording of a Lowden with a redwood top. Has that mid/treble focus of a Lowden, but gives you enough of an idea. I think the recording probably has a lot to do with the lack of low-end.

That Lowden sounded incredible. The guitarist was very good. Inspires me to go with redwood on my next build.