ACOUSTIC SOUNDBOARD
JEFF HUSS
Sprucing Up the Place
The view from the window over my work- other without touching the ground, hopping
bench looks out on our parking lot and across from stump to stump. The lumber yield was
the neighbor’s back yards. A few years back, said to be as high as 100,000 board-feet
that view was obstructed by a pile of some per acre. Almost all of the accessible lumber
fifty-six Red Spruce logs, an embarrassment was harvested in these years. A few small
of riches that practically fell into our laps. Red logging operations continued to harvest
Spruce (Picea rubens) is a tree that grows in Red Spruce on a smaller scale; I spoke with
eastern North America from Canada on down one logger and sawmill operator who told
through the Adirondacks and Appalachians me of his family operation that cut and pro-into North Carolina and east Tennessee. The cessed Red Spruce off of Cheat Mountain
strength-to-weight ratio of the lumber makes in Randolph County, West Virginia. You can
it ideal for building acoustic guitars tops and see his Red Spruce on display if you drive
bracing. Is it the Holy Grail of tone woods, Interstate 81 through western Virginia. Many
the be-all and end-all of soundboard materi- of the older poultry houses you see from the
als? I’ll leave that up to the internet forum road are sided with Red Spruce. Stop in at
discussions. I will say, however, that the guitar the Western Sizzlin in Harrisonburg, Virginia
I play has a Red Spruce top. and look up. The ceiling beams are Red
Spruce. His house is even sided with—you
guessed it—Red Spruce.
The challenge with Red Spruce (also referred
to as Adirondack by many), like the challenge with most traditional acoustic guitar
woods, is that it is hard to get. It used to
be plentiful, growing on mountain tops and
high valleys throughout the east, but the
logging industry in the post-Civil War era
through the early part of the twentieth century took its toll on the great forests. One
old logger told me that when his grandfather was a boy, he could practically climb
up one side of a mountain and down the
Although much of what remains is second-growth wood, just now becoming large enough
to be useful to guitar makers, there are some
impressive stands of virgin growth that still
survive. In the Gaudineer Scenic Area in the
Monongahela National Forest in Pocahontas
County, West Virginia, you can hike among
350-year-old Red Spruce trees that survive
because of a 140-year-old surveying error.
Most of the Red Spruce that ends up in
the hands of guitar makers today comes
from scattered stands in the Adirondacks
and Appalachians. Our own bounty came
by way of Whitetop Mountain in Southwest
Virginia. A bark beetle infestation had set
upon the Spruce stands that are part of the
Jefferson National Forest. Experts recommended that the afflicted trees be cut out,
as well as a swath of trees surrounding the
infested stand. The plan was to use horse
and mule teams to pull the logs out of the
forest to reduce the impact of the operation. My business partner, Mark Dalton, is a
member of the Virginia Draft Horse association and it was through this connection that
we learned about the available lumber. We
were offered several logs from the harvest
and when all was said and done, we were
standing on a pile of 56 logs in our parking
lot. The man who delivered the logs told us
of old records from the old logging companies showing purchases of Red Spruce made
by The White Star Lines for their new ship,
Titanic. There was also a record for sales of
several thousand board feet to Orville and
Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio. Maybe some
Whitetop Mountain Red Spruce made it into
that first heavier-than-air flying machine.
While most of the trees were not large
enough to yield guitar tops, we need brace
wood as much as top wood, and the logs
were perfect for that. It took a serious team
effort by our crew to process all of the wood,
but in the end we got it all cut, split, and
stored for drying. We are still using that
wood today for braces.
Guitar makers are always on the hunt for
hard-to-find woods, and I can only hope
that one day I’ll look out the window and
see another pile of Red Spruce waiting to
be turned into guitars.
Jeff Huss
Jeff Huss, co-owner of Huss & Dalton Guitar Co.,
Inc., hails from North Dakota and moved to Virginia in
the late eighties in pursuit of bluegrass music. Along
with the music came the opportunity to build acoustic
guitars and banjos. In 1995, he and business partner,
Mark Dalton formed their business and have established world-wide recognition for building high-end,
boutique style guitars and banjos.
