I Wonder If It Is The Top Wood

[William2]

I recently purchased a new Eastman E-20DL. I wanted an Adi top. The instrument is amazingly powerful and for a fingerstyle player I find I can exert less effort for the equivalent amount of sound than on a spruce top instrument. I find that my classical pieces really sound great on this instrument due to its volume. I have a bigger dynamic pallet and the sustain is unreal. That said, I don't find this instrument ideal for my arrangements of standard chord melody arrangements. They work, but something is missing. There is a lack of warmth or something that I can get with my Larrivee guitars regardless of the tone wood (rosewood or mahogany). I will add that I used to own an Eastman E-10DL. This guitar was also very powerful and had an incredible sustain. This Adi / mahogany instrument lacked that sound you get with that wood combination. Maybe an Adi top is best for just some sorts of music. I'm keeping the Eastman for classical and the Larrivee for my chord melody tunes.

[B0WIE]

 Having had several guitars with both tops, I think the differences get overblown. Remember that woods don't fall on a scale of Sitka/Engelman/Adi/etc. There's a great variability within a tree and some Sitka will sound more like what we think Adi should sound like and vice versa.

 If anything, I have found that Adi needs to be driven harder and has more headroom on the top end. In other words, I can flat pick hard and it keeps getting louder when Sitka starts to hit a ceiling. But, this really comes down to the guitar, the individual pieces of wood, how they are braced and thicknessed, etc.

[BlueBowman]

William, what's the "DL" mean in that Eastman model number?

[William2]

Dreadnought / Left Hand.

[nobodeuno]

I have to agree...I played a bunch of Eastmans with Adi tops side by side in a store in Nashville...it was hard to tell if they were Adi or backed sitka...I'm sure the old growth Adi tops are different sounding than those we find on new factory guitars using young fast grown Adi trees.  While 4A old growth Adi wood is rare, expensive and reserved.

Picea rubens aka red spruce, Adirondack spruce, yellow spruce, West Virginia spruce, eastern spruce, etc. It grows from the Canada (Quebec) down through the Adirondack mountains in New York/Vermont, continuing down through the Appalachians into Carolina.

[William2]

I've never played a baked Sitka top instrument, but I can sure notice the difference between a Sitka top and an Adirondack top when I play. My point was that I don't notice that woody sound I get from my Larrivee D-40 when I compare it with an Eastman E-10D. It sounds very much like an Eastman E-20D (rosewood back and sides). So maybe one Adi top is enough for me LOL. I wouldn't mind having a mahogany top instrument in my collection. I've listened to Cedar and while I like it on classical guitars, it doesn't do it for me on a steel string instrument.