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I am building J45 style for someone who picked out the wood just because it looked nice. They did not like the Lutz spruce top because it was too bland. Those tops are really tight grained and would be wonderful to build with. Didn't like any Sitka either. They did like the looks of the sinker top on my daughter's guitar I built for her. They really seem to only interested in how it looks and not how it sounds. I feel like I should over build it just to protect against abuse by someone who doesn't know how to play and just cares about the looks. Anybody have this dilemma at some point in time?

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Wisdom is justified by her children

I wouldn't overbuild it (it's gonna have your name on it remember) but I certainly would build it/brace it to offset any inherent lack of stiffness (for example) that might be present in the wood you offered & he selected. As a builder, you always have to adjust based on the individual pieces of tonewood involved, right? I think you'll always find people selecting woods they feel look nice, subject to your guidance.... eg a piece might be ok for a small body but iffy on something bigger. I guess the trick is weed out the wood you wouldn't want to build with & be prepared to build accordingly with the rest.

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Dave
Milton, ON

Mark: Just my opinion but I think you should build to get the best guitar you can out of the woods selected. History will not remember why you over built is you decide to go in the direction. You will most likely be judged as someone who was not quite up to snuff so to speak. This is not to say that all guitars that at first appear to be a bit over built are doomed to failure because they are not. Some of these will nicely come into their own over time. One must decide how close to the edge one will venture. Again just my opinion.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Mark,
I simply wouldn't recommend anything but spruce for bigger guitars. Tonally, I don't think they are well suited and Redwood is simply far more crack prone. I think you are just asking for trouble by not using Spruce.

As builders, it is important that we never let the customer compromise our vision for our instruments.

Best Regards,
Simon

I see nothing wrong with choosing by looks, among a selection of tops that are all bound to sound great.

I assume you've already ruled out a sunburst to make it look more interesting?

If you're worried about impact resistance, then cedar/redwood might be too soft. Perhaps you could interest him in a black limba, or curly koa or mahogany top? Honestly I don't care much for the look of spruce either, unless there's a really elaborate rosette for it to be not distracting from Nor is it my favorite sound.

If you're worried about humidity cracks from lack of OCD humidifying, then building with redwood in low humidity is the best you can do, IMO. Redwood splits easier, but doesn't change size as much, so you can build in 30-35% to tolerate down to at least 20%, and even at 80% it doesn't swell up that much.

In any case, I wouldn't over-build. What's the point in buying a hand built if you're not going to do anything the factories can't?

Is the point of overbuilding to "get back" at the customer for not letting you choose the woods?
You're only hurting yourself at that point.

However, I completely agree with Simon.
I had a customer order a guitar, we spec'ed it out and I started building it.

He then talked to someone else, a player, who sold him on the benefits of cedar, and he commanded me to build it with cedar, so I started looking for a top.

A little while later, he actually asked my opinion, so I told him.

I can't stand cedar and would be perfectly happy if I never made an acoustic steel string out of it. It doesn't automatically sound warm just because it's cedar, it has a poorer stiffness to weight ratio, and it had shorter useable lifespan in comparison to spruce, I've even heard cedar guitars flub out after just five years. I really wasn't looking forward to building with it as I knew I could make a perfectly warm sounding instrument with good bass response with spruce, and it would sound better longer and be less prone to top distortion because of the higher stiffness to weight ratio.

He then admitted that he really didn't know what he was looking for and decided that he'd let me decide how to build it the rest of the way out.

So, yes, you're the luthier.

Now, if you think you can build a satisfying instrument out of the top he picked out, build it good but don't overbuild it out of spite.

But if you have other reasons for not wanting to use that top, tell him, and let him select a more interesting spruce top.

I have some pure white lutz tops, and other more colorful and/or stripey Lutz tops on hand to select from, some VERY colorful, almost brown like cedar.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

The main reason for "over building" is to make it harder for them to end up with problems down the road. Similar to what Martin did for warranty reasons. What I would do is leave the top a little thicker, the bracing a little wilder and taller. Just not take things to the point needed for a lightly built guitar.

There is no spite intended, Im just not too sure they understand what it means to take care of an instrument. I will be giving out specific instructions to them though.

I would build spruce and mahogany guitars exclusively if it was up to me.

Just had reservations about this customer.

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Wisdom is justified by her children

. Well, maybe aluminum

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Wisdom is justified by her children

I have come across many guitarist that simply don't understand that some woods can sound better then others. They assume they are all the same. And to be honest when you show them an assortment of woods in your shop they assume since your doing so they must all sound good. Why would anyone have crappy sounding woods laying around? Sometimes guitarist need to have these little things like the various type of woods and the sounds they offer explained to them. if they have played factory made guitars their whole lives and this is their first custom they probably just don't know....Mike

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Another day, another dollar.

First: Western red cedar does _not_ have a lower stiffness to weight ratio than spruce. In fact, if anything, it's usually the other way around. Cedar is lower in _density_, on average, than most of the spruces, and the Young's modulus along the grain tracks the density very closely on the average. What this means is you will usually need to leave a cedar top a bit thicker than a spruce one to have the same bending stiffness along the grain, which is mostly what keeps the top from folding up. The thing is that stiffness goes as the _cube_ of the thickness, all else equal, so making the top 10% thicker will make it 25% stiffer. The way it usually works out a cedar top will tend to be thicker than a spruce one, but not weigh as much, at a given stiffness. I think a lot of the problems people have is from not making their cedar tops thicker.

Cedar _is_ usually much softer than spruce: more prone to dents. It's also much easier to split. You have to take both of those tings into account when you're building a guitar with a cedar top, but there's no reason why it should have a shorter service life, or sound worse.

Please note that I've been saying 'on the average' and 'usually' all through this. I have a relatively light Red spruce top in my stash that has the same density, and stiffness both along and across the grain, as a Red Cedar top I have. There's a lot of variation in all woods, and the only way to know for sure is to _measure_.

'Overbuilding' is a relative term, I think. All of my steel string guitars are 'overbuilt' for Classicals, and the Classicals are 'way underbuilt for steel strings. If the customer commonly plays in the sort of venue where they put chicken wire between you and the audience, or is a 'windmill' flat picker, I'll tend to over build a bit, just to be on the safe side. You can still get a good sound, there will just be less of it for a given input: the guitar won't be as 'responsive' perhaps, but it will probably have more 'headroom'.

I built a guitar for a guy who's guitar collection looked like Pete Townsend had his way with it. I overbuilt it to a reasonable point and he was aware of it. I'd be afraid to see what that guitar looks like today

In fact in my case it was a nylon string guitar and I made him promise he would not put steel strings on it. A couple years later I saw the guitar and he had steel strings on it. I knew he was going to do it and of course it voids the warranty. So yes it makes sense sometimes.