These are both among the great woods of the world. SS is an amazing wood, it is quite split resistant for a softwood. I'd rate it tougher. What bugs me about it is that the arrow stock I have received has been nothing like the quality of POC. I have soundboard wood for guitars in SS that is fabulous, but the stuff I have received for arrows was OK, but very run out, had obviously been sawn not split, or not sellected well. I didn't get it from 3 Rivers it was some guy in the back pages of TBM, the barreled shafts he sent me were nice, it's just the wood was runout.