The Sound of Time, Captured in a Kiln
Craven Tenor Guitars Of Canada
The First Tenor Guitar Company to Torrefy Our Soundboards
There’s a reason vintage guitars from the 1930s sound the way they do. Decades of aging change spruce at a cellular level — softening it, opening it up, giving it that warm, resonant voice players chase for a lifetime.
Craven Tenor Guitars of Canada is proud to be the first tenor guitar company to bring torrefaction — the same process prized by the world’s finest acoustic guitar makers — to the tenor guitar. While the rest of the tenor guitar world has stayed content with traditional, untreated tops, we asked a simple question: why should six-string players get all the vintage tone?
What Is Torrefaction you ask?
Torrefaction — sometimes called “roasting” or “baking” — is a controlled heat treatment performed in an oxygen-free kiln. Our hand-selected Sitka spruce is heated to carefully managed high temperatures without any oxygen present, which crystallizes the wood’s natural resins and permanently changes its cellular structure.
The result: wood that behaves, sounds, and looks like it has already been played in for decades — before it ever leaves our workshop.
Here’s why It Matters: Tone, Look, and Strength
The Tone Torrefied Sitka spruce delivers the open, resonant voice of a well-loved vintage instrument right out of the case — a warmer midrange, a quicker, more responsive attack, and the dry, woody sustain that normally takes 50 years of playing to develop. Every Craven tenor built with a torrefied top starts its life already sounding “vintage.”
The Look Torrefaction is the only known process that ages wood’s appearance the same way time does — deepening the color into a rich, honey-amber tone that instantly reads as heirloom quality, not mass produced off-the-shelf.
The Strength & Stability Beyond tone and looks, torrefaction makes the top dimensionally stable — it resists swelling and shrinking with humidity and temperature changes far better than untreated wood. That means fewer cracks, less seasonal action drift, and an instrument built to travel and last, whether it’s headed to a stage, a studio, or your grandchildren.
We’re in Good Company!
Craven Tenor Guitars of Canada joins an elite group of acoustic guitar builders who trust torrefaction to build their finest instruments — names like Martin (Vintage Tone System), Taylor, Collings, Bourgeois, Santa Cruz Guitar Company, and Furch all use torrefied tops on their premium 6- and 12-string models. Craven Tenor Guitars is proud to bring this same premium-tier process to the tenor guitar for the first time — because tenor players deserve the same craftsmanship as everyone else.
Heirloom Quality, Built for the Player Who Knows the Difference
Every Craven Tenor Guitar is still hand-built in limited craftings, by artisans with decades of combined experience — now paired with a soundboard that sounds like it’s already lived a full life of music. This isn’t mass production. A Craven Tenor Guitar is a guitar meant to be handed down, not traded in.
Experience the Craven difference. Play one, and hear fifty years of aging — today.
Craven Tenor Guitars of Canada — Vernon, BC
