Red Spruce

[Ragpicker]

This may sound strange, but I've had two guitar repair guys check out my Red JF30 and comment on how they both thought It has a Red Spruce top.
The center of the top by the bridge has beautiful silking and nice tight grain, and as it goes outward, the grain gets wider. The outside edge on both the upper and lower bout has grain thats almost a quarter inch wide.
They took a mirror and checked out the inside too, they said the bracing appears really light and almost white suggesting that it too may be Red spruce. I don't care one way or the other, just wondered if anyone else ever heard of a Guild Jumbo being made out of this material?

 

[Kap'n]

I don't know specifically about Guilds, but red spruce has little/no cross grain silking (as opposed to Sitka, which has a lot) and unless it's from the 50's or earlier, has a fairly wide grain pattern.

 

[sitka_spruce]

It would seem most traditional series instruments now are made with so called Red Spruce or Adirondack spruce which is the name of the species. The Red shows no or little medular rays, the way Sitka does and more so than either Sitka or Engelmann it has a rather wide grain structure.

Now we all have learned the closer the structure the stronger the integrity of the spruce, but Adirondack doesn't grow closer than this and still is a denser wood than Sitka; hence the top can be made thinner and the tone more responsive.

Yes, I read somewhere the Adirondack has a creamy pale shade to it cosmetically.

 

[grantgsc]

Red Spruce/Adirondack

I have seen Adi that is creamy white, Adi that has bearclaw, Adi that has darker stripes, wide or tight grained...All of them sound great. I have acouple of Guilds right now that represent bearclaw, and striped. Some folks claim that the wider grained Adirondack sounds better...
Tone is totally a matter of opinion, but the volume and power of a good top made from Red Spruce is pretty much unquestioned. You should sit down with a D40 Blugrass Jubilee and you will see what I mean.