Attended an interesting concert last night in Charlevoix put on by Boyne City's own master guitar builder Bob Howard.  Bob has a small shop here in town and makes beautiful acoustic instruments from scratch. http://www.howardguitars.com/
Bob told me he has two guitars in production at any given time and construction time is three to four months.  He invited me to go over and talk some more which I will certainly do. It seems that most of Bob's instruments are built with sides and back of African mahogany and tops of sitka spruce although other materials are available. The star of the show for me was J B Davies whose guitar "Dreamcatcher" is a small jumbo with cutaway using red cedar for the top and (really beautiful) padauk for the back and sides. This guitar was made to JB's highly exacting specifications to suit his (for me at least) highly unique fingerstyle/tapping playing.

According to Taylor Guitars "Cedar is less dense than spruce, and that softness typically translates into a sense of sonic warmth. If Sitka has a full dynamic range, cedar makes quieter tones louder, but it also imposes more of a ceiling on high volume levels driven by an aggressive attack. If one tries to drive a cedar top hard, at a certain point it will reach a volume limit. Typically, players with a lighter touch sound wonderful on a cedar-top guitar, fingerstyle players especially — that lighter touch will be amplified a little more, and one's attack never reaches the ceiling. Flatpickers are likely to hit the ceiling fast, and might be frustrated by an inability to get the tonal output to match their attack."  

In my opinion, the tone of JB's guitar was head and shoulders above the other three and seemed ideally suited to his aggressive tapping/hammering/pull-off/drumming style.
JB told me he he has been playing on and off for about 25 years; he divides his time between Detroit and a place on Walloon Lake.  His  style was quite intriguing and I shall dig deeper into his work and that of his Canadian guitar hero Don Ross.

JB http://jbdavies.com/cgi-bin/p/awtp-home.cgi?d=jbdaviescom
Don Ross http://www.gobyfish.com/Home.html

Other musicians playing were Bill Wilson, traditional finger-stylist on a small jumbo with rosewood and Sitca spruce top; Darrin Brown with a 00 size guitar suited to his eclectic, bluesy style - narrow body, short scale with larger fret wire making for easier hammer-ons and pull-offs; Michael Arp gospel/bluegrass singer/songwriter.