Engelman spruce

[AZLiberty]

My Larrivee OM-03R has an Engelmann top.

It sounds a lot like Sitka, with slightly more overtones. So between Sitka and Cedar would be correct, but maybe 20% towards cedar, not halfway between.

[mercy]

Many people like dull sounding guitars so if you are one of those go Engleman and let your strings stay on all year.

[00-28]

Originally Posted by mercy

Many people like dull sounding guitars so if you are one of those go Engleman and let your strings stay on all year.

I guess I can interpret that as meaning you are not an Engelmann fan. ........Mike

[Transylvania]

Originally Posted by 00-28

I would put it in this order from warmest and most complex to clear and powerful.
Cedar - Sitka Spruce - Engelmann Spruce - Alpine Spruce - Red Spruce
I have a Martin D-18 with an Engelmann top. It is very responsive, open, like you can expect from guitars older than it is.
.........Mike

I would respectfully swap Sitka and Engelmann, but that's a good description, IMHO.

[mikealpine]

I've always felt Engelmann lacked a sparkle that I like. To me, at least on the guitars I've played, I always put the guitar down and quickly forgot about it. I didn't find them just to be mellow, but without anything really distinguishing them and making me take notice. Not putting down anyone that loves it, or loves building with it. And I'd be sure a better guitarist could make it sing. Caveats aside, it's just not a wood that draws my attention when I play it. I like a good, stiff redwood, or one of the more typically stiffer spruce guitars. Very happy with my Carpathian top. Not sure where that "typically" falls in among the others.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by mercy

Many people like dull sounding guitars so if you are one of those go Engleman and let your strings stay on all year.

Both my maple McPherson and rosewood Taylor have Englemann tops. Plug either into a Marshall stack turned up to 11, and then tell me you don't care for Englemann.

Just kidding (not about owning the guitars)...

Tony

[00-28]

There are so many different opinions and I think it says a lot about Engelmann. It can vary quite a bit. It can be like cedar or stiff examples can be like Alpine or even Red Spruce. Almost all of the Engelmann topped guitars I have played have been Martin guitars. They have pretty much been consistant in using very stiff Engelmann. Over at the UMGF, Engelmann has been well recieved on the many Limited Signature Models that have been issued with this top wood. Headroom and clear trebles have never been lacking, that is in my opinion and the opinions of the many others who have experienced these guitars. Bottom line, know your source and quality of the wood you are considering when choosing Engelmann.
.......Mike

[Wade Hampton]

Mike says it quite well: Engelmann spruce can vary a great deal. It's a terrific tonewood and I'm glad my walnut Larrivée OM is topped with it, but I'm not convinced that it's necessarily all that predictable or quantifiable.


whm

[Br1ck]

I put a microphone in front of my Pono rosewood engleman parlor today, and could not hear anything but clear clean tone. This guitar sustains forever, I am sure the top has something to do with it. Very clear highs, but it is a small guitar after all.

[Guitar Bro]

Originally Posted by 00-28

There are so many different opinions and I think it says a lot about Engelmann. It can vary quite a bit. It can be like cedar or stiff examples can be like Alpine or even Red Spruce. Almost all of the Engelmann topped guitars I have played have been Martin guitars. They have pretty much been consistant in using very stiff Engelmann. Over at the UMGF, Engelmann has been well recieved on the many Limited Signature Models that have been issued with this top wood. Headroom and clear trebles have never been lacking, that is in my opinion and the opinions of the many others who have experienced these guitars. Bottom line, know your source and quality of the wood you are considering when choosing Engelmann.
.......Mike

I have not encountered Englemann Spruce that has Red Spruce stiffness. They are very much apples and oranges. Englemann brings responsiveness to the tone and sacrifice a bit of headroom. Red spruce tends to have both the responsiveness and the headroom.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Guitar Bro

I have not encountered Englemann Spruce that has Red Spruce stiffness. They are very much apples and oranges. Englemann brings responsiveness to the tone and sacrifice a bit of headroom. Red spruce tends to have both the responsiveness and the headroom.

Generally speaking, perhaps. But all of the spruces can look, sound and act like all of the other spruces. It would be nice if there were clearly delineated boundaries between each species of spruce, but in the real world those boundaries can get blurred.

One of my best friends was president of LMI (Luthiers Mercantile International) for a few years, and there were some occasions when they got in shipments of spruce and quite literally could not tell which species it was. These instances were generally from suppliers who sourced their wood from regions where both Sitka and Engelmann spruce grow.

When the tonewood retailers at LMI were completely stumped by what they had, and the suppliers couldn't give them any more information, they would declare the wood to be whatever species it most resembled from a visual standpoint. If there were some reddish-brown grain lines in it, it was officially declared Sitka spruce. If it was mostly a creamy white, it would be labeled Engelmann.

Yet Engelmann can have those colored grain lines in it, and Sitka can be as white as the driven snow. I know that for a fact because I've seen well-documented wood from both species that completely fly in the face of the visual expectations many might have.

The same is true of density and stiffness. As I wrote earlier in this post, all of the spruces can look, sound and act like all of the other spruces. None of this is as absolute as you might believe. There is a great deal of variation within each species.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[SiliconValleySJ]

I frankly didn't care much for Englemann until I got my Langejans. Before I'd play a lot of Taylors with it (and luthiers too, but most of my experience with it was Taylors), and just didn't like the sound very much. Del got a very rich and complex tone out of Englemann, and at first I didn't like it, but it grew on me a *lot*.

That being said, it doesn't have the headroom that my Taylor sitka dread has. The sloped dread is larger and thicker than my Taylor, and has a bigger and more complex tone--such that I do feel like I can overload the top fairly easily. I wish it could handle a bit more punishment with a flatpick, but the beauty of the tone more than makes up for its shortfalls.

[efnef]

I agree with those who say it's tough to make generalizations, so I'll call my following experience anecdotal. I recently acquired one of the Shanghai Schoenberg Recording Kings with a very nice Engelmann top over solid African mahogany (Sapele?). It's a little 00 cutaway, and it has totally blown me away. It is crisp, balanced, highly responsive, with a lot of sparkle, and tons of sustain. I play it as much as I do my McIlroy (so much for having just one guitar ). It sounds as pleasing to my ear as any of the Martins I've ever owned. I don't know if it's just luck of the draw, but the Engelmann/Mahogany combo on this little guitar is superb. I've never played a Sitka/Mahogany combo that I've enjoyed more than this one.

[redir]

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

Having built about 60 guitars now, about 30 of which are the same model with various tops and mostly the same side and back woods I'd say from that limited experience that you have summed it up quite nicely. A great maker could probably make an Engelman top sound like Sitka and then your only argument would be the color of the wood but in general the trend follows your description well.

[Alan Carruth]

What Wade said:
"...all of the spruces can look, sound and act like all of the other spruces. None of this is as absolute as you might believe. There is a great deal of variation within each species."

We keep trying to tell folks that, and somehow...