There is a really nice interview with luthier Daniel Friederich over at the GSI Blog. Go check it out. Here’s a small excerpt:
AT: Maestro, I can’t help but ask you to comment on the technical questions regarding wood, dimensions and how these interact.
DF: After years of building cedar-top instruments, I have now for the last three years (Mr. Friederich was referring to 1994, as the original interview was made around 1997) gone back to making guitars also in spruce, progressively and carefully, being careful to avoid going back thirty years in time, preserving, that is, the “modern” character of my current work, while re-visiting this wood of my earlier guitars. You can change everything – the bars below the soundhole, the thickness of the neck and heel, the back bars. These will affect certain aspects of the sound, such as sustain, beauty and strength. The playability of an instrument is also an important element of the construction process. Between cedar and spruce, I find that guitars built with cedar are more flexible and lighter, they’re deeper and easier to play. When using spruce, I find that drastically diminishing the thickness of the soundboard around the bridge and the dimensions of the internal structure, the sound can begin to approach that of cedar. Vice versa, I have some cedar with a specific gravity of 400kg/mc, similar to a lightweight piece of spruce, which I don’t use willingly – the sound produced is a bit too “light”, I’ve got to reflect on this some more… Anyway you can’t change anything in the guitar without having an effect on the sound.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW via Andrea Tacchi Interviews Daniel Friederich – Blog – Guitar Salon International.
