Martina,
I copied the text below from the website
www.dustystrings.com. I think it is interesting for you.
Jeanette van Nieulande
Soundboards
The laminated soundboards we use on the Allegro and Crescendo models are made of the highest quality birch plywood imported from Finland. In addition to being time efficient for us to use in building, this material provides a nice, even sound, an attractive look, and an inherent strength and stability.
Solid wood soundboards, which we use on all our other models, typically give more resonance, volume, and clarity than a laminated soundboard can. In addition, we do something unique with our solid wood soundboards to gain the sound were after.
Early in our development process, we conducted blind experiments with a panel of harp players and a series of test harps with different tone woods and soundboard thicknesses. The players chose Honduras mahogany for its resonance and clarity in the mid and treble ranges, but preferred spruce for its warm, fat sound in the bass. If we were bound by the tradition of using a single tone wood, this would have presented a dilemma. Re-thinking the traditional approach, we wondered why we couldnt simply use each wood where it produced the best results.
So we created a two-part soundboard, loved the results, and determined that for our larger harps we would use spruce in the bottom third of the range and mahogany in the top two thirds. We overlaid the tone wood with a thin veneer of book-matched figured hardwood for strength and beauty. We believe this approach has given us the best of both woods.
Wood choice
We make our harps out of five species of hardwoods: walnut, maple, lyptus, bubinga, and wenge. Because these woods cover a nice spectrum of tonal as well as visual color, deciding which one you want for your harp can be a challenge.
There are three basic factors to balance in choosing wood: look, cost, and sound. The first two are fairly straightforward, but sound can be harder to pin down if you arent in a position to play and compare the woods first-hand. They all sound good, but which is best is purely a matter of personal taste.
Each type of wood makes its own distinct contribution to the overall sound of the harp. In general, the following characteristics are associated with each wood:
· Walnuttypically described as soft and warm, and somewhat mellow.
· Maplecrisp and clean, very articulate and well defined, with lots of punch and projection.
· Bubingarich and full bodied, with complex, big, resonant bass tones and sparkly, bell-like treble and mid range.
· Wengea very pretty sound, full-bodied and crisp.
· Lyptusa sustainably-grown hardwood, a hybrid of two varieties of eucalyptus. It has a warm, rich tone and a smooth, cherry-like color.
) den Unterschied sehr deutlich hören.