MIMF

I am just about to start a guitar with Victoria island cedar (a.k.a Cupressus Nootkatensis/Alaskan Yellow Cedar) for the back and sides. I have also been vaguely toying with the idea of doing the top from the same material as well.

Any thoughts on this?

The material is quite low density (by feel - haven't weight it) and generally gives a good impression. I build a guitar in the general direction of the Santos Hermandez in the Courtnall book but with somewhat deeper body and set-up as a classical not a flamenco. Sometimes I wander off in the direction of the Segovia Ramirez (GAL) and put in closing bars.

For something called cedar it's surprisingly heavy wood, the pieces I have handled were about as heavy as red maple, acer rubrum. My wood dealer says the Japanese love it for building things like tea houses. I can imagine it would work for back and sides, but for the top of a classical guitar I would think it would be a little too heavy and unresponsive, compared to spruce or western red cedar. The billets, that I have tapped with my knuckle, did not ring very well. Do you have some that do ring?

Les Stansell makes flamenco guitars (backs, sides, tops, necks) from port orford cedar, which is also a cypress like AK yellow cedar. If your wood is dry it should have decent acoustic qualities.

Thanks for the comments.
In the end I decided to go with a spruce top. So far the wood is very nice to work with. Planing and sanding are easy although the smell is very aromatic and strong. Currently I am waiting for a "weather window" to assemble the box. We have been having a week of dull grey damp weather so the humidity is too high for assembly. I was very impressed with how dry and light the wood came from the supplier. I suspect that the stock was in their storage for a long while. It was a combination of the lightness and the nice pattern on the first set I thickessed that got me to thinking about doing a top from it as well. In the end I decided that one experiment on the guitar was enough.

I owned an AYC flamenco guitar that had a nice dry sound.

Post pics when you're done!