European Spruce - the Sound of Wood.

German spruce and Alpine spruce are the same species (picea abies), the Alpine spruce may be a little finer lined, but both produce a very resonant and vibrating tap tone. There is no major or minor origin, both can make high end guitars and are first choice.
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1.  German Moonspruce (picea abies)

Our German spruce is Moonspruce, according explanations about the selecting and cutting process you can find here.

All sets measure at least steel string guitar size, mostly jumbo size. Please check the measuring tape on every pic. For best identification we have drawn an oversized OM/CL guitar template on most sets.

Instead of an explanation about our grading system we ask you to have a look at the pics as reference - all grades are excellent tonewood, the differences are aestetically. Each set is numbered individually, when ordering please name this number. Most pics are high resolution and look at the beginning out of focus; after the data have been downloaded completely the pics become sharp. You can use the magnified view (lense icon in the upper right corner): right-click on image and move over the magnified pic for a very detailed view.

Grades + Prices for GERMAN SPRUCE:

This is old stock MoonSpruce and airdried for at least 3 years before selling, mostly airdried for 4-6 years.

AAA+     99  EURO/set
AAA       79  EURO/set
AA/AAA  59 EURO/set
AA+       49  EURO/set
A+         29  EURO/set

MOONSPRUCE, master grade and bearclaw sets are listed in the webshop, too, click here.

German spruce bracewood logs abailable for 14.50 EURO/log, click here.

For German MoonSpruce ARCHTOP wedges (cut from old cello tops), click here.

High flamed Bosnian maple archtop b+s sets available, ask.

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All prices are in EURO - CURRENCY CONVERTER here (opens in new window)

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Some (more) infos on German Spruce:

Searching some internet forums I recently found specific "informations" about German spruce that we want to correct - and add a few points about European spruce in general:

@ origin of European spruce
There are some websites that name spruce to be found in Europe mainly in the northern part of Europe, mostly Scandinavia. There is a lot of spruce (apart from pine), but this has no connexion to tonewood, as this part of Europe is flat (sorrounded by the Baltic Sea), and one cannot find places that are of interest for logging tonewood  (like high mountains) .
Looking on a Europe-map easily shows the places that are of interest: Bavarian Forrest/Bavarian Mountains, Alps, Carpathian Mountains and the Caucasian Mountains (from last you get another species: picea orientalis; all others are picea abies). It´s like a line of mountains through Europe from west to east: the Alps are the border between France, Switzerland, Italy and Austira (on German territory just a neglectable part of the Alps are located). Going on to the east the Carpathian mountains comes next, followed by the Caucasian Mountains (very much simplified).  

European spruce for lutherie comes (mainly) from these origins:
German spruce -> from Bavarian Mountains/Bavarian Forrest
Alpine spruce -> from Switzerland, Italy, Austria, France (accordingly: Swiss spruce, Italian spruce, etc.)
Carpathian spruce -> mainly from Romania (the Carpathian Mountains are the border between Czech Republic/Slowakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Serbia).
Caucasian spruce -> the Caucasian mountains are next and end the line at the Black Sea (going through Russia, Georgia, Armenia and a bit Turkey). Here comes another and esp. stiff species from: Caucasian spruce is picea orientalis.


@ general availability of German spruce
At some places you can find the information that German spruce is almost extinguished and no longer available in sizes that are usable for instrument making. These infos are followed up with pics from quite small trees. THIS IS NOT TRUE! True is, that it is hard to get promising trees for tonewood production as there was a change in the administration system: all public owned land is now commercially managed by a department of the ministry and in fact it is not possible to search for a special tree and get it (in the former days you could buy this one from the local forrest ranger, now they have to care just for the botanical aspects). But there is a lot of privately owned land with large forrests, here you can get individual trees if agreed with the (private) land owner. You simply have to know these people and make business with them.


@ "The way from imported wood to German spruce."
Several sources say that re-selling is quite common and therefore you cannot be sure what origin a piece of wood is from. That is true. The reason is simple: all is the same species and the wood from East Europe is (a bit) more economically than from other sources. And: the demand for Master- and AAA-grades is in general higher than what is locally available ... so it might happen that excellent tonewood is imorted - and later sold as spruce from another origin ... When buying German Moonspruce from us you can be absolutely sure that this is real German spruce from the Bavarian Forrest/Bavarian Mountains, coming from private owned land. We attend the whole process incl. selecting and cutting.