Spruce is THE most important part of your violin. Read on to find out why.

Spruce is one of your violins most important materials. Most violin tops are made of it and it is essential to your violin's tone.

Although it grows in many areas of the world - good musical Instrument tonewood comes from Alpine areas. The trees grow at high altitude, above 1400 up to 1800 meters. The vegetative time is only 100 days a year. The winters are long and cold, so the trees grow slowly and regularly.

The growth to obtain a violin is about 150 to 200 years - that is a long time! So you can see why commercial woodland, where trees are grown as fast as possible, is not good enough. Spruce is very stiff and light. Believe it or not it was used as aircraft frames and spars due to these two key facts!

It is the most important part of the violin as the grain structure of the timber resonates and carries the sound of the vibrating strings through the bridge into the spruce down the soundpost and into the air space of the violin body. Most sawmills usually give 2-3 different grades of timber and these would be sawn in to quarters from the original trunk of the tree.

Some sawmills will also provide it in split form rather than sawn. The advantage of this is that the quarter has been split as a wedge from the trunk. It is more wasteful but allows you to see that the natural split has no twist within the timber. You don’t necessarily see these imperfections with cut timber. Due to this you will be expected to pay a higher price for split wedges. Our advice would be to spend as much as you can on the spruce for the front as it is this timber that is the most important in the Violin manufacture.

Most sawmills will also supply matching timber for a bass bar usually included in the price. Because we live in Europe, we personally love spruce from the Fiemme Valley in the North Eastern Italian Alps and also from the French and German Alps. But wonderful tonewood can be found in other areas of the world where trees have grown in cold winter climates

What we look for in Spruce is the following points:-

• Nice clean timber quarter cut. The wedge will often be part cut through with the last bit still left holding the 2 halves together.
• I like to see the growth lines lying vertical and with the lines equally spaced at between 1.00 – 1.5mm apart. The growth lines will widen out towards the thinner edge as trees tend to grow quicker when young. Do avoid very widely spaced growth lines. It can make the timber more difficult to work and the resonance could be affected due the wider growth.
• There should be no cracks, knots, resin pockets and stains within the violin outline.
• Some timber may have “Bear claw” or “Hazel” within the timber. This like the figure in Sycamore and is highly prized by some luthiers. Another name for this is “ Maschiatura“.
• The wedge should be longer and wider than the actual size of the instrument to allow you some latitude as to where to cut out the shape. I also like to cut the bass bar from the same timber if possible. Most suppliers will throw in a bass bar within the price in any case.
• Most Violins are 15-16 mm thick so I like the wedges to have at least 20mm thickness in each wedge half to allow me to plane the back flat and work on the front.
• I like to see the colour of the timber a uniform colour. I don’t like to see yellow or orange lines of colour running through the timber though this will make no difference to the sound.

So now you know what to look for have fun looking at the wood your violin is made of or on hunting down some great spruce to make you instrument from. Return from Spruce to Violin tonewood

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