[cugir321]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

I shopped for a dread and was able to compare sitka, cedar, and Engelmann from one manufacturer that all had rosewood sides and back. I was looking for a guitar that allowed me to play Neil Young flatpick style with all the hard driving, palm muting, and top compresion AND do fingerstyle easily. Here's what I found: The cedar was great for fingerstyle, being very responsive to light right-hand work, but didn't compress with a darn when strummed hard. Instead it developed the jangly, non-harmonic sound of top overload. The sitka predictably compressed very nicely when strummed and was extremely hard to overdrive at all. On balance it was far less responsive at the lighter playing force and required a whole lot more of right-hand force that made it fatiguing to play fingerstyle on. And Engelmann? Engelmann is an amazing middle ground. It can handle light fingerstyle and still has the ability to compress on the upper end.

Frequency response? Cedar rounds out the sound because it has less response in the upper midrange. Nevertheless, it still reproduces the high end. In fact, the dreads I tried with cedar tops sounded a bit thin to me by virtue of the upper-mid carve out. Stika? It reproduces fairly flatly but has a stronger upper mid than the others and with a bold lower end. And Engelmann: It fits between sitka and cedar, with a a bit more refined high end than sitka that fits well with fingerstyle but with a strong bass as well.

I ended up with a rosewood bodied, Engelmann topped guitar that is typically called a canon by other players but still allows me to play light fingerstyle.

Bob

That's pretty much how the "L" series yamaha's are with the negelmann tops