Sitka Spruce

Family: Pinaceae - Order: Pinales - Class: Pinopsida

Scientific name: Picea sitchensis

Trade name: Sitka spruce

Also known as Sitka spruce

Origin: Northwestern North America

Instrumental uses:
Soundboards, sound bars, bracing and bindings.

Tonal properties:

Rich harmonic reproduction, great in tonal balance, reproduces all frequencies, very similar to European Spruce, but slightly more crisp sounding. Good presence and extraordinary sound projection. As with European Spruce, is great for fingerstyle guitarists. Can be used for sound bars and bracing building. The grain is straight and very consistent, and is often seen with the special grain pattern named “Bearclaw” with nice visual effect.  It produces great sounding tops on classical and acoustic guitars as well. Can be a great combination to guitar back and sides from mahoganies to rosewoods. Maybe be more appropriated to be used in louder musical ambiences.  Mostly is a soft wood but is very stiff, very consistent, with an average dried weight nearly of 27  lbs/ft3 or 425  kg/m3. 

Picea sitchensis It is by far the largest Pine specie of of the world. Is a very large three, growing to almost 100 m tall and with a trunk diameter that can exceed 5 m.

Its name “Sitka” is derived from the community of in southeast Alaska where this tree population is considerable high and very popular.

The bark is grayish red, is thin and scaly. The darker whitish cream to yellow sapwood is not  clearly demarcated from the heartwood , darker,  with few pinkish red subtle stripes.

CITES status is unrestricted. Is reported on the IUCN Red List as least concern.