en:vok:klangholz:zeder

LEXIS

Soft and elastic tonewood with a warm sound that is attuned relatively quickly. A particularly popular species is the North American Western Red Cedar.

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Cedar
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Western Red Cedar

Appraisal

Cedar impresses with its concise approach and the good balance in all frequency ranges. However, many guitars with cedar sound a bit bass-heavy and characterless despite a very brilliant overtones, which is probably due to a too low sound level or too short a [en:vok:sustain]] in medium frequencies. Remarkable is the sound behavior of a (good) cedar guitar in big rooms: the sound seems to grow almost with the room size! In general, the listener may feel that the sound of cedar spreads out in the room, while the sound of spruce seems to radiate more out of the guitar.

Sebastian Stenzel: Tonhölzer

Ukulele makers also use spruce and western (or red) cedar, both popular as tonewoods for acoustic guitars. (…) 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 but not the back or sides.

Ian Chadwick

Cedar can be warm and rich, but with steel strings it tends to have fairly low headroom and can get 'crunchy' when attacked.

Laurence Juber

Scars fairly easily and braces can shear off if bumped. My personal opinion is it's better suited to classical building than steel string … Light gauge strings only. Powerful fingerstyle tone with lots of brilliance and sustain, exceptional clarity, and focused bass (with a dry, woody sound). Less sensitive to humidity variations, and dampens the string noise less than the spruces. Some small question about long term tone quality.

James Godall

Cedars, as a vibrating material, sometimes have a better stiffness-to-weight ratio than spruce. Accordingly, the sound these can make is more quick and loud and, because it is so immediate, brighter and sharper than a spruce sound – but without the European spruce overtone component. Because of its inner structure cedar is also a somewhat weaker wood than spruce, and it is more subject to cracking and fracturing.

Ervin Somogyi