I’m currently trying to choose the type of wood that I’ll use for the lute’s soundboard. Based on what I’ve read in Robert Lundberg’s book Historical Lute Construction, I should be using spruce but I’ve also read that Swiss pine is preferable by someone who knows what they’re about. It’s also difficult to decide because the wood names seem regional at times, so I’m just researching the differences and similarities between picea abies, picea excelsa, and picea engelmannii. Sitka spruce (picea sitchensis) seems like it’s commonly used for ukele, mandolin, and classical guitar soundboards but I haven’t found evidence that it’s a good wood for lutes.
Also, I’ve read something here from lutherie.net that suggests that picea abies or picea excelsa are actually the same species!
This paper was interesting and I encourage you to read it if science isn’t off-putting to you:
Resonance wood [Picea abies (L.) Karst.] – evaluation and prediction of violin makers’ quality-grading
As you can see in the abstract if you’re not able to read the paper in full, after rigorous material and acoustical testing, it’s been determined that it’s not possible to predict how wood will sound based solely on what the wood looks like. In most cases, with most woods, it’s the skill and knowledge of the luthier that makes the instrument sound beautiful and not the type of wood. When you think about it, it seems pretty common sense right? Let’s compare, for example, a complete novice woodworker such as myself and a mentor of mine who has worked with wood for many years. Given the same samples of an “easy” to work with wood, I might have a chance of turning out something reasonable where my mentor would not have any issue. But if we were each given a sample of a more “difficult” to work with type of wood, I would likely be unsuccessful, whereas my mentor would have the experience and practice needed to turn out a well constructed instrument.
Sometimes, you just need a lot of repeated testing to objectively prove something that we already knew beforehand. Yet the sites selling rare or exclusive wood where the tree was harvested only under a full moon sounds so enticing, doesn’t it?