Wood Grading

[CSLL]

Anyone can advise me on the grade of wood ( top and back )used in LV-03R and LV-09?
Eg. is it Grade A or AA or AAA???

God Bless!!!!

C.S

[thomgs1]

Similarly (my apologies for interjecting this similar question) is there a difference in the quality of woods used for, say, a more expensive Larrivee guitar?  For instance, does a D-05 have better wood than a D-03?

[dreamsinger]

There are no real indusrty standards for the grades that are applied to tonewoods. It's pretty subjective and, to an extent, a lot of hype especially when you start seeing more than 2 letters in the grade. Be very skeptical when you see "AAAAAA el deluxo reserve". Larrivee tops are fairly uniformly excellent throughout the line. My D-02 has a lovely fine grained, highly silked top that wouldn't be out of place on my Custom Shop guitar. I've heard rumor that Larrivee sells a lot of top wood to "other major manufacturers". Once at the factory I saw a D-03 with a fingerboard that had a white stripe like a lightning bolt down the length of it. This might have been considered less than perfect to some people but I'd have loved to have had it on my OMV-09K.  

[dreamsinger]

Similarly (my apologies for interjecting this similar question) is there a difference in the quality of woods used for, say, a more expensive Larrivee guitar?  For instance, does a D-05 have better wood than a D-03?

The mechanical properties (quarter sawn, runout, voids and such) are usually pretty close and may even overlap at times. The mahogany between the -03 and -05 may differ only slightly in some very subjective cosmetic way while the koa in an -03 (on those rare occasions that they have any mediocre koa left over for -03's) will be pretty pedestrian with no flame or figure compared to what goes on an -09 or -10.  They all sound good.

[rockstar_not]

Quote:They all sound good.

Yes they do!!!!

My L-03-E sounds fantastic when somebody that knows how to play actually plays it.  I was lucky enough to have John Standefer play my L-03-E right alongside the LV that he won for the National Fingerstyle championship.

The sound was amazingly close.  What I heard was a difference more in strings and string height (his had just a slight more buzz than mine, as his action was set ever so slightly lower than mine).  I had on Elixirs, and I can't remember if he was using Elixirs or not.

-Scott

[mjvincent]

Quote:They all sound good.

Yes they do!!!!

My L-03-E sounds fantastic when somebody that knows how to play actually plays it.  I was lucky enough to have John Standefer play my L-03-E right alongside the LV that he won for the National Fingerstyle championship.

The sound was amazingly close.  What I heard was a difference more in strings and string height (his had just a slight more buzz than mine, as his action was set ever so slightly lower than mine).  I had on Elixirs, and I can't remember if he was using Elixirs or not.

-Scott

He doesn't use coated strings... But I don't remember which strings he uses either... He brought a Gretsch Rancher to my workshop which sounded pretty good too...