Soundboards

Engelmann, Sitka, red, Italian alpine spruces all make great guitars, as do western red cedar and redwood. Some of these species lend themselves toward certain types of guitars more than others. However, to get the perfect top to do the job on each guitar, the individual characteristics of every top must be taken into consideration and matched to the player's style and size of the instrument. How dense is the top? How flexible is the top? How loud will the top be? How capable is the top of responding to harmonic stimuli? Is the top subject to natural damping forces? We must know all of this about the top of the guitar to maximize the guitars sonic capabilities - and of course we want the top to be beautiful. 

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For these reasons, we keep stocks of only the best of all of these top woods to match with every player's style, as well as the species of back and sides, and the size of the model we are building to maximize the result. On average, only about 3% of each supplier's top rated stock can pass our rigorous inspection process for soundboards.