• All Tops Hand Split / Sawn

• Aged naturally and air dried

• Moisture Content 6%

• All prices in Canadian Dollars

• Global Shipping

• Printable Pricelist

Sound Board Sizes

2 piece Book matched set. Otherwise marked ea.

Eastern  Spruce

Our Eastern Spruce tops are sawn from hand split billets, naturally seasoned to a moisture content of 6% and are ready to use. Our tops are extremely stiff and have excellent tap tone. Eastern Spruce grows in eastern Canada and the eastern United States. The strongest and stiffest of all the spruce species.
Eastern Spruce has a very high velocity of sound, and has the highest stiffness across and along the grain of all the top woods. Like Sitka, it has strong fundamentals, but it also exhibits a more complex overtone content. Tops made out of Eastern spruce have the highest volume ceiling of any species, yet they also have a rich fullness of tone that retains clarity at all dynamic levels. We are very fortunate to live in a part of eastern Canada where there has been very little commercial logging and there still remain large old growth spruce trees.

White Spruce

White Spruce grows almost across all of Canada. Very similar to European Spruce, light weight, very stiff, works extremely well, very white color. Very Straight Grain. Shares a number of characteristics with European Spruce, including color, lightness of weight, harmonic complexity, and fullness at the lower end of the dynamic range. White spruce differs from Engelmann and Sitka spruce in its potentially quicker response and greater headroom. White Spruce is considered second only to the Eastern Spruce in high velocity of sound, and the stiffness across and along the grain.

Sitka Spruce

Harvested in British Columbia, Sitka Spruce. Standard on most production guitars now, and for good reason. This topwood offers a punchy direct sound although it tends to have low overtone content. Many bluegrass players prefer Sitka Spruce for this reason.
The color of Sitka ranges from white to creamy to very light brown. It should be noted that some regions of Western Canada produce a very white Sitka Spruce in which discoloring is rare. We target this whiter Sitka Spruce in response to customers desiring a brighter, purer white soundboard similar to Engelmann Spruce and European Spruce.

This Sitka Spruce has been introduced to European Luthiers building high quality guitars. These Luthiers have traditionally used European Spruce. The response from these builders has been remarkable. Several well known Luthiers have reported attaining very high tonal quality with Sitka Spruce soundboards and are continuing to use Sitka Spruce for their hand built guitars.

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Engelmann Spruce

The primary choice for finger picking guitars. The lightest and lowest density of the spruces, Engelmann is also becoming very popular with violin makers. With is High overtone content and strong fundamental tone Engelmann Spruce delivers a warm mellow tone that is well suited for light-medium strumming and finger picking.

Western Red Cedar

Used for decades as a soundboard material on classical guitars, Cedar is also popular among steel-string enthusiasts. Cedar is a "soft" wood known for producing a "warm," mellow tone, one whose overtones are evenly distributed, rather than concentrated on the highs and lows, making it especially suitable for finger style playing. Cedar's light brown color also lends a guitar a visual warmth that many players find appealing. With a dark mellow tone is tends to be a great choice for fingerpicking and Celtic style guitars. Another benefit is that is sounds "open" almost immediately.

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Canadian Cypress/Yellow Cedar

Alaskan Yellow Cedar, aka Canadian cypress, is so closely related to the true cypresses that it has been classified with them by botanists in the past. It is an excellent carving wood, with fine even texture, and very close-grained. It is one of the most stable woods in terms of dimensional change due to moisture content change. It works easily and finishes well. Though YC/CDN Cypress is not a traditional wood, it is gaining popularity. Many custom builders use YC/CDN cypress for guitar tops, including archtops (jazz guitars and mandolins). It is also used for backs and sides of Flamenco guitars. It is a denser wood than Red Cedar, with a specific gravity very close to Sitka Spruce. It has a nice light yellow color and a pleasant aroma.

Backs / Sides /Necks

• Flamed Maple: (acer macrophyllum) Harvested British Columbia, Canada. Exhibition grade flaming.
• Quilted Maple:  (acer macrophyllum) Harvested British Columbia, Canada. Exhibition grade quilting.

Please Note: The following sizes are minimums. 2 pc. BMS = Book matched set. Otherwise marked ea.

Necks	Size (L x W x T)	Master	AAA
Flamed Maple	Guitar (30 x 4 x 2") ea.	$100.00	$80.00
	Mandolin (24 x 4 x 2") ea.	$80.00	$70.00
Quilted Maple	Guitar (30 x 4 x 2") ea.	$130.00	$110.00
	Mandolin (24 x 4 x 2") ea.	$110.00	$100.00
Birdseye Maple	(30 x 5 x 1-1/4") ea.	$90.00	$80.00
	(38 x 5 x 1-1/4") ea.	$100.00	$90.00

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SALVAGED VIRGIN FIRST GROWTH TONEWOOD
HARVESTED 100+ YEARS AGO

From the depths of the lakes and rivers of the Eastern Townships Region of Québec, salvaged virgin first growth (old growth) timber 300 to 1200 years old. Grown under a thick canopy of evergreen trees and competing for limited nutrients and sunlight in overgrown forests virgin hardwood species matured slowly accumulating up to 40 to 60 rings per inch. These environmental conditions contributed to the development of a finely grained, some being figured hardwoods of exceptional quality and beauty not found in today’s hardwoods.

Click on picture for larger image.

From the late 1700s through the early 1900s logging was a major export industry, second only to the fur trade throughout Upper and Lower Canada. Thick forests ranged from the waters edge, through the valleys and over the mountains awaiting the logger’s axe and cross cut saw. Thousands of lumberjacks chopped and sawed millions of trees into logs, hauled them to the shores of lakes and rivers to be dumped into the cold waters, boomed up and then floated to the many saw mills that were in the villages and towns that were on the water system. Many of these logs never reached their destination having sunk along the way or in their holding areas. It is estimated that as many as 20% settled to the bottom to be forgotten for over a century, untouched and perfectly preserved in the frigid waters of the region.

These unique woods that we salvage are reborn to be used for high end antique restorations and musical instruments. Every application becomes unique, as is the wood, bringing with it a part of history which can never be reproduced.

Neck woods SALVAGED VIRGIN FIRST GROWTH TONEWOOD HARVESTED 100+ YEARS AGO Custom Sizes & Volume Pricing Available Upon Request

Species	Size (L x W x T)	Master
Hard Maple	Guitar (30" x 4" x 1-1/4")	$80.00
	Mandolin (24" x 4" x 1-1/4")	$70.00
	Bass (38" x 4" x 1-1/4")	$100.00

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