I make most of my guitars with european spruce for the top mostly because my clients seem to like it. I have used sitka spruce a few times with good results and of course lots of canadian cedar for classicals. I like cedar tops a lot but I don’t tend to use them on flamenco guitars that I make even though the two that I did make turned out great. I wonder if I should try another and break my prejudice about cedar. Maybe part of what I don’t like is cedar with cypress – because I tend to prefer cypress for flamenco guitars.
Here are some reasons to use cedar: The availability is good given that trees are large and grow quite straight. It can be very stiff and light. You don’t need to worry about colouring the finish (if you worry about that sort of thing). I do, I like a bit of colour on a top. Again because of the size of the trees it is quite easy to find a top with uniform grain. I don’ think that is very important but more and more often buyers are looking at aesthetic qualities of the top wood because they wrongly believe that this affects the sound. The world would be a happier place if people trusted us to do the best we can and then trusted their ears and fingers when searching for a guitar.
