Adirondack Spruce: Picea Rubens
Harvested in Northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes, Adirondack spruce is the most sought after wood for fine acoustic guitars these days. Known for its stiffness, it is loud and clear and produces gorgeous warm overtones. Tops made out of red 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.
Depending on the philosophy of the builder, the Adirondack spruce used in guitars can vary widely in appearance. For example, at Froggy Bottom Guitars, Michael Millard cuts much of the red spruce that he uses and bases his selection of tops on sound rather than appearance. His wood varies in appearance, sometimes with lots of red annular rings, the occasional cosmetic imperfection and irregular grain, but oh the sound! At the other extreme, Collings, uses only cosmetically perfect sets; they are hard to find and are in much demand. Our other luthiers fall somewhere between these two parameters in the appearance of their wood. Red spruce is today the Holy Grail of topwoods for the steel-string guitar. If players and builders were able to overcome phobias about unevenness of color, grain irregularity, minor knots, and four-piece tops, many more great-sounding guitars could be produced while the supply of potentially usable red spruce is still available. The small size of most logs and a shortage of wood conforming to market preference for even color and regularity of grain conspire to keep the price of red spruce extremely high.