Questions: Guitar Top Grain Orientation

by Alain Bieber

Originally published in American Lutherie #83, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015

Alain Bieber from Paris, France asks:

Did a serious luthier of the past ever consider building with any other option than a strict classical “longitudinal” spruce grain orientation? A French patent of 1829 by a luthier named Lacoux is about a “guitare perfectionnée” whose main point is to have an “harp like” orientation of the soundboard, tilted 90° from the classical one. I never have seen that oddity, but Joël Dugot at the Musée de la musique (Paris) told me he thinks he saw it. Such old patents are stored in an old attic.