I am surprised to learn that swamp cypress trees turn up in Europe. Perhaps a landscaping import from long ago?

Swamp cypress (taxodium distichum) mostly grows in the American southwest. The wood might make a decent soundboard, though you have to be on the lookout for pieces where the hard grain, when cut on the slab, wants to delaminate from the softer matrix. I don’t think that it would make a soundboard that resembled in any particular manner the acoustical traits of the real thing (cupressus sempervirens).

Here’s a good discussion:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxodium_distichum

That said, as a cosmetic substitute for real mediterranean cypress, some pieces of swamp cypress are very useful and pleasing instead. I think that they are a very distant relative to real cypress. I use swamp cypress, if the pieces are very carefully chosen, for example, for the inner veneering, moldings and cheek scrolls and the like in my false inner-outer Italians, and find it a perfectly good substitute.

It is a pity that real cypress is so very difficult to get in north america, and that even when one can get a lead on it the prices are jacked up to ridiculous levels simply because vendors know they can get makers to spring for it. In general, unless you are making an instrument that depends upon the unique qualities of a true-cypress soundboard, it is probably not worth the trouble and expense.

But it is very important that we know what we are using and don’t try to “blend” woods with similar names, or say that something is made of cypress when it isn’t.

owen


____________________________________


Owen Daly Early Keyboard Instruments
557 Statesman St. NE
Salem, OR 97301
http://www.dalyharpsichords.com
(503)-362-9396

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