I wouldn't get too caught up in the hype.
Italian Spruce (same species as "Europan spruce", "German Spruce". "Alpine spruce", "Bosnian Spruce", "Swiss Spruce"...Picea abies) will sound like....a spruce;
http://www.lutherie.net/eurospruce.html
Depending on the set of wood your builder uses, it can tend to have certain tonal qualities..but again, that's dependant on the set of wood and, much more importantly, your builder.
And then there is the whole issue of..is it really "Italian Spruce"...or maybe some other species?;
http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Musi...onewoods1.html
"Various species of spruce have been used for steel string guitar tops over the years, and each have their devotees. I'm not going to get into speculating about predicting the sound of individual species, partly because of the extreme difficulty in making a positive identification.
Time for an anecdote:
I attended the A.S.I.A. Symposium in 1995 and saw a number of vendors selling guitar tops in the exhibition hall. At dinner that evening I sat at a large table with Tom Humphrey, the well known classical guitar builder. Tom was talking to one of the spruce suppliers and describing how he had selected the Adirondack spruce (also known as red spruce) tops he'd bought earlier.
I asked the vendor about his spruce, "Do you know why it's called 'red' and how can you distinguish it from other spruce." He told me," I really don't know. I can't tell it apart from other species. I just have to take the word of the man who brings me the logs. He says it's red spruce." "
and...
"German spruce sold to the lutherie world is often spruce sold by German dealers, and whatever species of spruce it actually is tends to come from a variety of sources, including a certain amount historically imported from the US and Canada. Engelmann spruce, for example, is very popular among luthiers and for decades has been exported to Europe where it has been sold back to Americans (among others) as, you guessed it, German spruce. And because of the lutherie trade, spruce from anywhere in Europe is pretty much identified now as German spruce.
Unless you cut the tree yourself or can be absolutely certain where that tree was harvested, it is probably safest to just call it spruce. If you're certain it grew and was harvested in Europe, there's no point in getting your turban in a twist over common names. If someone says German spruce, just think, "OK, Picea abies, orEuropean spruce."