How important is straight grain wood in soundboards?

[Steve Graves]

With all this movement towards fancy looking and rare woods in custom guitars is any wood pattern other than straight grained wood better for soundboards?

[Ron Belanger]

The most important thing to look for in a soundboard in perfectly quarter cut straight grained wood with little or no run-out.

[Michael Lewis]

Wood with other grain orientation has been successfully used for some quality instruments. Many older (teens - 20s) Gibson mandolins that regularly trade for $1500 or more have rift cut, run out, even mismatched tops, and often with very wide grain spacing, and they still sound and play great. There are many fine old Martin guitars that have significant run out and are still quite desirable vintage instruments. We have become an obsessive culture over minutia that doesn't make much effect on function of an instrument.

It is nice to have perfectly straight grain in a top when removing a bridge but it is still possible to get the bridge off if the top has run out, though an uninformed luthier might run his spatula through the top if he doesn't know how to read the grain direction. Having some run out in the top is not necessarily a detriment structurally or acoustically. The aircraft industry considers 1 in 10 run out to be structurally as strong as straight grain, though they prefer straighter grain if available because it's easier to work with and less likely to cause difficulties.

[Clay Schaeffer]

I don't think there is any wood grain orientation that is "better" than straight grain for structural considerations, but someone who falls in love with a curly redwood topped instrument might think it "better" from an aesthetic point of view. At one time "bear claw" in a top was not desirable, now they charge extra for it!
The "well informed" buyers often stress over small things that don't have much effect on the real quality of the instrument. The "dummies" that buy with their ears can often find a bargain in a "flawed" instrument. <g>

[Steve Graves]

I do not know what exactly I hear when I put a pencil in an old fashioned pencil sharpener but I can hear the difference between red cedar and fiberboard. What I call Western Red Cedar is just a wonderful soundboard and one of my favorites. It does seem to grow a bit fast which translates into larger growth rings. Spruce has a tighter grain due to the slower growth. Quarter sawn is better usually in my limited experience. I've always found mahogany to be dull and absorbing but I love it for sides,necks and backs. We throw away more beautiful wood daily due to the wasteful grading and cutting of industrial hardwoods. Hang around the mills in the northern west and east and you will find more great wood than you can use.