INSANE ANCIENT SITKA SPRUCE - 3000 YS OLD! - Picea Sichensis - Tommy's Tonewoods
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- Опубліковано 18 сер 2024
- Tommy's Tonewoods is BACK!
Today we're looking at some unbelievable Sitka Spruce, radio carbon dated to be close to 3000 yrs old! Mined from the Alaskan permafrost, this unbelievable jewel from the tonewood vault is brought to you by Alaskan Specialty Woods.
So happy to see this series back. Very enjoyable learning about the tonewoods used to create today's masterpiece acoustic guitars.
Glad to be back! Thanks for the kind words
It’s Great to see that Tommy’s Tonewoods is back! Brilliant! Perhaps Padauk should be considered for a future video! Cheers!
That’s a good one!
Great to see Tommy's Tonewoods is back! Really missed it, I've watched everyone. Particularly like the more unusual and seldom seen woods but also like the comparisons you make to EIR, Mahogany, maple etc
Thanks for your kind words of support!
Yeah my favorite show is back!
Yeahhhh buddy!!
Boy have I missed Tommy's Tonewoods. I am sooooo glad you are back. I love learning about all of the beautiful tonewoods. Welcome back and thanks again for your time making these wonderful videos. All the best and one day I will own one of your amazing guitars. The hard part will be deciding which tonewood to choose.
Thanks Hans! Certainly a few to choose from
I really appreciate your channel, Tommy. Above all,, I like your precise and scientific approach to tonewoods - for me, the Latin botanical name is absolutely essential. Speaking of all these ancient and "sinker" woods - you could start a new specialty - that of ancient guitars! I am not a guitar maker, but a flute maker (Native American style flutes, formerly Pan Flutes and Shakuhachis) and I'm always thinking to myself, "How would that sound in a flute?" One of the favorite flutes that I made was of Palo Escrito (Dalbergia Palo Escrito); a guitarist / musician friend of mine in Mexico was able to locate a lutheir who had a slab of it that was thick enough to make into a flute. The sound is really superb!!!
Would love some
It's been so long since the last Tommy's Tonewood, the top is now 3,000 years old.
Haha!
Speaking of your Sinker Cypress, Tommy - what usually goes by the name of Cypress in American lumberyards is not true Cypress (Cupressus spp.) but rather Taxodium dystachium, or Baldcypress, which grows in the swamps and bayous of the lower Mississippi and is the state tree of Louisiana. And so, part of it grows above water, and is unpickled or green, and part of it grows below water, and is pickled, usually turning a greyish color. Both woods are exclent tonewoods for Native flutes, and I suppose that they are for guitars as well. The unpickled portion has a sound that is crisper, whereas the pickeld portion can get quite soft and mellow, expecially pieces that have been pickled for a long time. Although Baldcypress is classified as a coniferous evergreen tree, it loses its leaves in the fall and winter, which is why they call it BALD Cypress. Are you using Baldcypress, or one of the true Cypresses?
Bald cypress 👍
Thank you and welcome back always love your tonewood segments.
Cheers homie!
i will always be a fan of your work Tom.. cheers to more tonewoods enjoying every tap test
Aww thank you brother
i wanted stratocaster that has a thick maple top on a mahogany back. fender had never made a body like that, still hasn't if im correct. they use a thin veneer that bends to the contours. not what im interested in. this was over 20 yrs ago and i couldn't find the right wood for a good price. what i ended up doing was re using wood from antique furniture. i got better wood than i could buy at any price for the cost of a broken mahogany vanity and a blanket chest that had a super cool flame-quilt maple lid. the vanity was made in the 1850s and the blanket chest was even older. i still play the final result to this day, its a way better guitar than i could ever afford to have bought! old wood is by far favorable to most newly cut these days!
Good to see you back!
🥳🕺
t's ts is back! Glad to see you again, mister.
Thanks brother
Looks amazing. Thanks for the lesson - always interesting
Welcome mate!
Would it be pathetic to admit I have checked at least once a week for new Tommy's Tonewoods videos since the last one dropped? I am hoping for an Osage orange /Bois d'arc review at some future date. Thanks again for the great content, and welcome back!
Sorry to keep you waiting so long my friend!
I really want to do Orange Osage! Make sure to hit the notification bell and you’ll get a ping every time a new TT episode drops.
So good to to see T’sTs, the sequel!
Tonewoods are back in town!
EXCELLENT vid brother! It took me a year to get my very last piece of this wood. I received it just about a year ago. Just enough of this wood to do a tenor uke.
Aw man thanks so much, that’s super kind. It’s amazing material, isn’t it!? Shame I didn’t cotton on to it sooner! Not that I could have afforded any until very recently. Good luck with the uke!!
Can't wait to hear the African blackwood combo. Keep the tonewoods videos in the making .
Me either!
Very interesting video, Tommy! Just from its color, you could use this wood for the back and sides, but it seems like you have this wood slated for the soundboard, because you drew half of the sound hole on that slab of it you showed us. Yeah - tap tones can tell a lot, but what I would really like to see is a video of a finished guitar with a soundboard of ancient Sitka Spruce - until you make such a video, all is pretty much speculation as to what the finished guitar would sound like. This would be a very interesting guitar to make: a soundboard of this ancient Sitka Spruce coupled with a back and sides of Bog Oak for a VERY ancient guitar! - how about it, mate?
Thank you! I’m actually making a guitar right now from 2000yr old sinker cypress which is quite similar and 5000yr old bog oak. Will be fascinating to see how it turns out. I have a Sitka guitar on the books but not for a little while. Thanks for watching
@@TomSandsGuitars So - the term, "Sinker Redwood" actually refers to a log of Redwood that has been similarly submerged, pickled and aged like Bog Oak or your ancient Sitka Spruce? Please advise.
@@naiman4535 correct, usually at the bottom of a river.
we missed you! I want/need to see you pick your top 3 tops and top 3 back/side sets… and then pair them up. 🤯
Great idea
Man back on track
😎
I accidentally removed your reply, but thank you brother!
Fantastic!!!! So cool man!!
More tonewoods!!
They’re a comin’!
Stiffened? Is that a good thing? My Yamaha spruce top vibrates like crazy - I thought was a good thing? Didn't the newer board ring more?
Hard to compare the two as they’re very different dimensions. Stiffness to weight ratio is the important factor
@@TomSandsGuitars - would the 3000 year old wood be petrified, almost like slate? No give. Surely, a new piece of artificially aged spruce is gorgeous, it resonates like a boss, ravishing your solar plexus, making your amygdala tingle..
@@tadpoleinnit2643 that sentence surely did.
Really curious what that spalted 'the tree' mahogany looks like
It’s a beauty, only light spalting but really gorgeous dark chestnut in colour
@@TomSandsGuitars How did the spalting manifest in these pieces (wood bleaching, pigmentation, zone lines)? Whatever happened must look _fantastic_ against the grain from The Tree.
@@abydosianchulac2 a little bit of all of the above.
pernambuco I am curious about, and of course the tiger back and sides.
The tiger Myrtle is recorded and ready to release! 🐯 I have some pernambuco too!
@@TomSandsGuitars nice….. put a reservation on it 🤤😜
@@floriskaspers6006 🕺
06/13/2022: Hello, I just bought a Guild Acoustic D-150ce off the internet from the store. The internet store photos show the top has one shade color. It is an all-solid wood guitar, and I love this guitar. But, when I got mine delivered vid mail service, I did notice that the top wood has one-half darker than the other side. If this piece of wood was cut to be book-matched, then why two different shades? Should I be concerned, and why?
Hi, this isn’t unusual and is a function of the way in which the alternating grain orientation refracts light. If the grain isn’t perfectly parallel with the surface of the wood, a book matched top will show as two slightly different shades, if you change the angle of the light source you may notice the effect flip, ie the side that previously looked lighter, now looks darker. The effect is know as ‘chatoyancy’. A good analogy is the appearance of stripes in a freshly mown lawn. The grass doesn’t change colour but the nap does, the grass lies in alternative directions causing the light to refract in opposing directions. Same thing happens when you run your hand over velvet. You guitar top may have a tiny bit of run out, ie the grain fibres aren’t perfectly parallel to the surface of the soundboard. If you like the guitar and it’s performing as it should, then the issue is purely cosmetic - a trick of the light.
I wonder if the 10 routers on the shelf behind Tommy are all different or the same.
Same brand, different setups. Dedicated tasks
I’m curious why you have 10 routers ?
Dedicated to specific tasks. Cuts out setup time. One of the best things I’ve done from a productivity/sanity point of view
I'd like to see you build that 8,000 year old guitar, and hear the tone.
All in good time my friend
Did he mention oak? You never see oak. I guess balsa wood is too flimsy, yet they made Mosquito planes out of them
Yes! Check out my video on fenland black oak 👍
Oak has never been considered a tonewood. What makes this black oak different? Most oak I've seen just gives a dull thud tap tone, then again I've never believed that the back and sides make a big difference to the ultimate sound of the guitar. "They" say maple is gives a bright trebley sound but I've built maple guitars that have huge bass.
A liberal coat of snake oil my friend. Check out my videos on fenland black oak 🕺
@@Felipe_de_Oliveira are you okay mate?
@@Felipe_de_Oliveira Felipe if you insist on behaving in a disrespectful manner, I have no problem blocking you. On the other hand, if you’d like to participate thoughtfully with the community, you’d be most welcome. Just don’t be a bellend, okay?