H575 - spruce or maple top?

[LH575]

What are your thoughts on this?

[Dick Seacup]

I think I'd go for spruce.

[Heritage525]

It depends on what type of music you play.  If you are doing jazz, go for the spruce top.  If you rock a little, a maple top will suite you better.  I have owned both spruce and maple.  I found that my spruce top 575 would feedback extremely easy at medium volume, especiall playing with my band, I had to sell the spruce top because of the feedback issue.  It was beautiful for softer jazz stuff.

[Dick Seacup]

Do they make the spruce top thinner, thicker or the same as the maple tops?  As to jazz...I fell asleep last night with nothing but Johnny Smith on my iPod (well, that particular playlist selected).  There's a guy that will make you want to sell your gear.  :-

[soybean]

The spruce top is better for acoustic playing. The maple has more sustain and less feedback through an amp. My personal preference is  maple on this guitar. By the way, maple is standard on the 575. That's how the guitar was designed. Spruce is a custom order.

 

Another way to look at your question is to compare an ES-175 and an L4.

[JohnCovach]

I've got the maple on 57 Custom, and if the spruce feeds back more than that, I'm all for the maple.

[groovin]

Firstly, the spruce will  generally give a  more mellow (warmer) sound than the maple.  My maple 575 tends to sound brighter than one would expect although that has something to do with metal tunomatic bridge as well.

 

Secondly, because spruce is a denser wood than maple, it is possible to carve the arch more and make the guitar more resonant.  The penalty is a greater tendency to feedback which is already an issue with the maple.  A similarly carved maple top  would tend to split during the carving under the same conditions.

 

So I concur with the above comments.  If you are looking for  a strict jazz box then go with the spruce.  If you want a more versitile  sound for different genres then go with the maple.  Either way you will get a great guitar.

 

Hope that helps.  ;D     

[LH575]

Well,  I have a H575 with a spruce top on order.  It's going to be mostly a jazz guitar.  Clean to lightly distorted blues on occasion, but mostly jazz.  I wonder about maple but I have a few others that I can rock out on.

 

I think Spruce is the way to go.

 

decisions, decisions....