Torrefied AA Grade European Spruce Classical Guitar Soundboard

Description of Torrefied AA Grade European Spruce Classical Guitar Soundboard

European Spruce (Picea abies) is an evergreen tree and is considered one of the best tonewoods. By definition, a tonewood is any wood that is used for its properties to make a musical instrument. Spruce is highly prized as a tonewood for many and varied reasons. It has a very good stiffness to weight ratio, which means that although it is light and needs to be calibrated to the right thickness to make a soundboard, it is still very strong.

How are AA grade European spruce tops classified?

AA grade classical guitar tops have a combination of the following characteristics: straight grain, with fairly tight annual rings, although not as tight as the AAA category, with approximately 2.5 mm between average rings, getting wider as we move away from the center of the top. There are no knots or obvious defects in the part used for the top. If there were any defects, they would be in the outer areas of the piece and would be discarded during processing. When cutting, the grain in the radial cut should be at 90°. If this is not the case, the variation will be only a few degrees in any case.

Quality grading of our woods

What is the torrefaction process?

Torrefaction is a thermochemical treatment of the wood carried out in vacuum. During the torrefaction process, the water contained in the wood and other volatiles are eliminated, while the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin maintain their structure. The result is a solid, dry wood with an attractive toasted color.

During the process, the wood loses approximately 20% of its mass without an appreciable change in volume, so that more stable and suitable pieces are obtained for the construction of guitars than that offered by traditional kiln-drying or air-drying, giving a result similar to the oldest wood, much appreciated in the construction of instruments with vintage aesthetics.

Features

• Size: 550x200x4mm x2
• Botanical Name: Picea abies
• Origin: Europe
• Density: 440-470Kg/m³