en:vok:klangholz:fichte

LEXIS


スプルース
唐檜(とうひ)

Picea spp

Spruce is a soft tonewood. It is used for most violins and the top of acoustic guitars or ukuleles. Its sound changes with time.

088.jpg
Sitka spruce

Appraisal

Spruce has been used for centuries as wood for tops and I find nothing bad about it. Its strength are a wide range of tone color, a very good modulation ability and a singing treble.

Sebastian Stenzel: Tonhölzer

Ukulele makers also use spruce and western (or red) cedar, both popular as tonewoods for acoustic guitars. Sitka spruce is the common choice, although custom builders may select Engelmann, European or the rare Adirondack spruce. Spruce is considered by many luthiers as having the optimum elasticity for sound reproduction.
Spruce gives a bright, loud sound, while cedar is less bright but with more sustain and mid-to-lower-end tones. These two are used for the top (soundboard) but not the back or sides. Spruce may, however, make a uke overly bright.

Ian Chadwick

Adirondack spruce (Picea rubens) has a 'megaphonic' quality, with a great deal of headroom and can easily handle a hard attack. The string gauge makes a difference … I find Sitka Spruce typically has an 'in your face' kind of sound, with less of the fundamental.

Laurence Juber

European spruce makes a beautiful sound rich in overtones – a sound that is limpid, focused and full of nuance and tone color. Fingerpickers tend to like this sound, which is a little like having a choir of singing voices inside your guitar, or like listening to the clear fundamental and harmonics of a church bell. In comparison American spruce is supple and springy (in a ropy way) rather than brittle, as a function of its cellular structure. Because of these qualities, when it is made into guitar tops, it makes a sound that is not so much in focus as the European spruce is. Its sound is heard as not being so cleanly defined but, instead, as warmer, more fundamental, and largely free of overtones. It’s a good, solid sound and bluegrass flatpickers and folk-musicians tend to like it a lot.

Ervin Somogyi