Solid Top??

[Komodo]

How do you check to see if an Acoustic has a solid top?? I would love to see that my Valeta has a solid top. Also how to check between Ceder and Spruce.

[PerianArdocyl]

What do you mean by 'solid'?

[Gibson075]

I think by "solid" they mean that the guitar is completely made out of thick, solid top wood, which is much more expensive and is higher quality than a laminated acoustic, which is having layers of cheap wood pressed together them laminated

[Slipstream]

Cedar tops are usually thicker, and spruce tops are brighter sounding. I've heard of laminated tops, but never seen one. The best tops, or I should say the ones I like the most, are the one-piece spruce tops. A lot of guitars have the two piece tops that you can tell by the line down the middle where the grain shows that it's two pieces. The better two piece tops are "book-ended". That's where they split a piece of wood in half and flop one piece over to look like a mirror image of the first side.

[pagodas_fiesta]

The guitar I might be buyin soon isn't even laminated, it's just "wood". Lol, it's like Sprucite or some BS but it has a fake Koa laminate that looks really nice. This is just a travel guitar so I'm not concerned about sound, and it probably makes it more durable and stable as well.

Isn't cedar a darker shade of brown than spruce?

[Slipstream]

Cedar can look different in different areas. If it's darker it more than likely be cedar, but cedar can be very pale too. I've seen cedar boards that were white as pine on one side and red as redwood on the other (left and right not back and front). It just depends on which part of which tree the wood is cut from. It's a pretty wood though. The inconsistancy in its color is part of its charm.

[mishmannah]

How do you check to see if an Acoustic has a solid top?? I would love to see that my Valeta has a solid top. Also how to check between Ceder and Spruce.



here goes...

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/mishmannah/8.jpg

[seekir]

Great photos.

High-end acoustics generally have solid tops, and less expensive models are usually laminated. Old growth Sitka spruce (now quite scarce) is highly favored because of the close-grained wood that comes from trees grown in cooler climes where the summers are short and the "summer" wood layer remains thin so that the lines between the growth rings are not very far apart. This close-grained type of wood is thought to produce superior and stronger tops than wood grown in warm climates, so a quality you should look for in a softwood-topped acoustic is closenes of grain or growth rings.

However, laminated tops are usually more stable, and because the direction of the grain in the layers alternates, laminated tops are very flat and strong. Solid tops often develop ridges or rolling wave-like distortions paralell to the grain, and an S-curve centered at the bridge, while laminated tops generally appear flatter. I've played some production guitars with laminated tops that sounded, felt, and looked great, and there are many which are good buys.

[mishmannah]

Thanks, Seekir! I just found a site with the photos, captured them and here they are!

I am chuffed too- becuase I have been wondering about the quality of my guitar tops, and now I know what they are made of... :( :(