Tight Grain vs. Wide grain

[Kevin Briggs]

Hello, revered luthiers.

First, thanks for being the people that make dreams come true. Yours is not an easy trade, but one that brings an infinite amount of enjoyment to the people who purchase your mandolins, and to the people who listen to them being played.

Now, onto the business at hand....

I have heard people say tight-grained spruce is more conducive to getting good tone, and I've heard wide-grained spruce is more conducive to getting good tone. My F style mandolin has wide-grained red (adirondack, lol) spruce, as opposed to the tight kind I've seen on some other mandolins.

What's the skinny?

Thanks in advance.

[Rod_Neep]

Bottom line (ask John Arnold) is that it is down to the stiffness of the board.

I spent thelast 50 years thinking that the finer the grain the better the instrument and its tone, but that turns out not to be necessarily the case.

For a second opinion ask Stradivarius.

Rod

[Chris Biorkman]

I have both and both are excellent.

[Dale Ludewig]

It's largely up to the builder. Every piece of wood has potential. Well, almost any piece.

[Kevin Briggs]

Dale!

How the heck are ya?

[Rick Turner]

One of the floppiest guitar tops I ever saw had incredibly tight grain. So much for one theory...

[Chuck Naill]

My F style mandolin has wide-grained red (adirondack, lol) spruce, as opposed to the tight kind I've seen on some other mandolins.

How wide, Rick? The top on my '04 Martin is 15-22 gpi (grains per inch) and consistent with many prewar Martins. In 2005 Martin began making the "Authentic" D-18 spec'd to have the wide grained Red spruce. I have seen examples with 3-4 gpi. You mandolin might not be as wide as you think.

chuck naill

[Rick Turner]

The top I'm referring to was one rejected at Santa Cruz Guitars. It had about 26 lines per inch and was about as stiff as shirt cardboard. The point being that you can't grade spruce properly just by looking at the grain; you have to flex it, tap it, measure it, scratch and sniff it...whatever...but the visual-only test is simply worthless.

[Kevin Briggs]

I' say mine, on guesstimate without having it right in front of me, is about 5 - 7 per inch. Some spots seem pretty wide, and other spots are not as pronounced.

I'm bringing it up because my local setup guy commented on the wide grain, and said that he was surprised at how nice he thinks my mandolin sounds, because he usually likes tight grain on a mandolin, not wide like mine. I should also add that he is a violin luthier, however that may or may not factor in.

[Chuck Naill]

The top I'm referring to was one rejected at Santa Cruz Guitars. It had about 26 lines per inch

That's pretty tight, Rick.

I' say mine, on guesstimate without having it right in front of me, is about 5 - 7 per inch.

That's about right for todays tops, Kevin. What you are seeing sourced is second growth trees or trees were others trees where taken out of the way allowing for more sunlight exposure.

Sounds like you have a winner, so enjoy.

[Rick Turner]

Chuck, that's my point. Tight grain does not aways mean stiff.

[Chuck Naill]

Chuck, that's my point. Tight grain does not aways mean stiff.

If I did, I did not mean to imply that I thought tight equals stiff, Rick.

I have invited John Arnold to join the MC, hopefully he will post his experiences soon.

chuck

[Paul Hostetter]

Sez Rick:

Tight grain does not aways mean stiff.

I don't think it ever means stiff. It's at best a coincidence. I can understand how people simply look at wood and intuit that more lignin = more stiffness, but simply noting experience with a great many instruments and seeing which sing and which don't, you eventually realize there is no correlation whatsoever between physical appearance and actual sound output. Many of those golden era Martin guitars had grain that was 1/4" at the narrowest, and had extreme runout as well - they shouldn't have worked. And yet they provide a high water mark for many people.

[Gail Hester]

When I first started building I looked for spruce with tight an even grain because that’s what I was told was best. I have come to realize that grain count alone does not correlate to stiffness. Pictured is a top with about 5 lines per inch and it made a great mandolin. Many of the old Gibson’s had similar and irregular wide grained tops.

[Paul Hostetter]

Isn't it interesting that the term 'stiffness' has such currency, considering you can't check stiffness in a mandolin or violin top? You can check a nice thin flattop guitar top, and stiffness does indeed seem to be a good indicator of eventual sound, but checking stiffness in a piece of wood that's 3/4" thick just isn't possible. Yet it's still the reference. Without a Lucchi, many makers are flying blind (who knows, they may be flying blind even with one!) with nothing but tap and instinct to rely on.

[D.E.Williams]

So there's no way to do any sort of deflection testing on a mando top? I realize it's a dome, but it must deflect somewhat??

There's certainly no way to do Chladni pattern testing.

[Chuck Naill]

When I first started building I looked for spruce with tight an even grain because that’s what I was told was best. I have come to realize that grain count alone does not correlate to stiffness. Pictured is a top with about 5 lines per inch and it made a great mandolin. Many of the old Gibson’s had similar and irregular wide grained tops.

That is a beautiful mandolin you pictured, Gail. What changed your mind and why are you now considering sourcing the wide grain material?

My own standards as a consumer is for the instrument to have tight grain 15-30 + gpi because I like the way that grain pattern looks the best. In the tight grained pieces, I have come to like the subtle and not so subtle imperfections such as wavey grains produced by an ancient limb or a stain the old timers called Red Horse.

Some of the Red spruce that Martin is using on its Authentic and GE versions are both wide and uneven. I never have cared for the looks of those finished products, but Martin and now other did accomplish something by using those tops, they changed consumer and builder paradigms and allowed them to use tops that they would have once rejected and that sold for $10. In other words, for Martin et al, it increased their profit margin in a high end product. Now you see Collins and other using the same wood and still selling their products. IMHO, that is marketing genius.

For you custom builders, when a customer commissions a build do you discuss grain pattern options? It would surprise me if I were expecting tradition grain widths and to get something in the 5 gpi range as a finished product.

[Hans]

I've used tight, wide, soft, stiff, you name it. My red is pretty wide generally, German very tight, and Italian somewhere in between. Some of the spruce varies from nearly invisible to count to 1/4" wide at the edges. It's not what the grain count is but what you do with that plank of wood. They all can potentially make a great mandolin.

[Rolfe]

Don,
You can test stiffness, or, at least, deflection, which is not quite the same thing but helpful. Don McRostie made a deflection testing device and shows it in his video.

[Chuck Naill]

I've used tight, wide, soft, stiff, you name it. My red is pretty wide generally, German very tight, and Italian somewhere in between.

Hans,

I am been told the the Europeans manage their forests differently which results in more narrow grain patterns, do you agree/know?

Also, why you are sourcing your Red spruce, are you having to take what you can get or do you specify a particular grain pattern?

[buddyellis]

Pretty much, unless you come across an old growth, very high altitude tree somewhere, or find a stack of 100 year old beam laying around, sourcing red spruce with a 30gpi count is for all intents and purposes impossible these days -- the wood just doesn't exist on the open market that much, especially in guitar widths. That's not to say there aren't people who don't have it, but generally, the reality is that, like Brazilian rosewood, that wood passed into history back many years ago, much of it, sadly, turned into paper pulp (or Chanel #5 perfume, in the case of brazilian).

[woodwiz]

Isn't it interesting that the term 'stiffness' has such currency, considering you can't check stiffness in a mandolin or violin top? You can check a nice thin flattop guitar top, and stiffness does indeed seem to be a good indicator of eventual sound, but checking stiffness in a piece of wood that's 3/4" thick just isn't possible. Yet it's still the reference. Without a Lucchi, many makers are flying blind (who knows, they may be flying blind even with one!) with nothing but tap and instinct to rely on.

I can't speak for mandolin makers, but many violin makers adjust their final graduation by flexing the plates in different areas. Sam Zygmuntowics has a video that shows him flexing plates, and it's standard practice for the luthiers I work with. They use flex only as a gauge. As a group, they have tried everything else from tap tones to oscilloscopes to Chladni patterns, but flex seems to be the most reliable indicator. Knowing how much flex, and where, is where the art and experience come in. Could this apply to mandos? I dunno. I could tell you after I built about 50 of them - maybe.........

[Hans]

Chuck, Europe is a micro climate (sorta like western Washington) and the climate changes can also be vertical (mountains). I would suppose that trees grow more slowly higher up and in more northern climates.
Red spruce is hard to get in wide chunks. Try getting D size guitar...much easier to get classical or 00 size. Much of the time D size is not as good as smaller sizes because of flaws. Granted mandolin is easier to find as 5-1/2" wide is all you need, but the trees are just smaller as a rule. I try to get 5-10/inch, but sometimes you just take what you get. It really doesn't matter to me anyway except I like to use wide for A4's, A5's and F5C's for looks.
As I'm not into the reductionist style of building, I take the wood I have and make the best of it. Have I said this before? "It's all about the grads (and arching)."

[Dfyngravity]

No expertise, but just a thought.

When talking about wood grain, you are looking at the growth of a tree. Typically speaking, a wide ring results when there is plenty of water and the growing season is fairly long. The lighter color (inner part of the ring) is the early growth (spring) and the darker is the late season growth (summer). So tighter rings result when the growing season is short. Rings also become tighter together as the tree becomes older because of the size or diameter of the tree.

The only thing I know about the actual structure of a tree reguarding the rings it that a tighter ringer pattern, or grain, will result in a piece of lumber that is more wear resistant. But that does not have much to do with flexiblity.

When it comes to the flexiblity, I believe you have to look at the actual cellular structure of the wood.

[Chuck Naill]

As I'm not into the reductionist style of building, I take the wood I have and make the best of it. Have I said this before? "It's all about the grads (and arching)."

That is something that Charles Horner would say. He told me once that it the instrument does not turn out well, it's not the woods fault.