North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Stephen Sadler" <Docshiva@Docshiva.org>]

Did I say hardwood before?  Densely grained spruce, rather, makes a good
sounding board for the body of an instrument.  Some cedar varieties are
good, and the hardwood maple, including quilted maple (the quilting fungus
is a suspected culprit in those fine 16th century Italian violins) is good.
These are harvested from northern climes and cold exposures.

I don't know why the porosity you mentioned would be favorable - you want no
sound damping; rather, a strong resonance with selectively emphasized
harmonics.   

~ Stephen

-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Donna &/or Kieran
Sent: Saturday, December 09, 2006 7:58 AM
To: North American Fruit Explorers
Subject: [NAFEX] Not really Off Topic--Stradivari's and Guarneri's
ViolinMysteries

....
    Concerning trees and lumber in general, it seems that if the special 
wood came from the Little Ice Age, that it would work almost as well to 
collect wood from the northern most reaches of a species range, especially 
from north facing slopes or drier areas of the range or from a very shaded 
place... unless it was something very weird that we can't duplicate, like 
wood that grew with almost no sunspots.     Donna