The Big Secret revealed

[Dave Bagwill]

Remember I borrowed a friend's new Goodall, so I could look for the 'secret sauce' that makes a $7500 guitar? And I stuck a mirror in it and it looked like everyone else's guitar. X-brace, nothing special.

So I've been intrigued with the Collings Waterloo ladder-braced guitars and wondered what made THEM special. I finally got a picture of the bracing from a guy at Collings.

Older, less well made and cheap instruments looked like this:

lb1.jpg (45.23 KiB) Viewed 2054 times

Well the new Waterloo instruments - played by Julian Lage and other notables - are way different:

[Dave Bagwill]

By that I meant - not really any difference at all as to bracing style. On both the Goodall and the Waterloo, the 'pattern' is not what makes the guitar great.

BTW the tech at Collings wanted me to explain this was a top from a stack that was covered in dust. The arrow is what he used to point to the slanted brace that is there on purpose.

John Arnold said that the really good sounding laddder-braced guitars had that slanted brace. It doesn't appear to be doing much, and it's right there under another brace, but John Arnold and Bill Collings are pretty good judges.

[Kevin in California]

It seems like we could just brace the top the same as the back and end up with a fantastic sounding instrument worth thousands.

[Dave Bagwill]

Well, I think we know for certain that all kinds of bracing systems can work when handled by a good luthier. Good wood, good gluing, attention to detail and - maybe - voicing are the ticket, I guess.

We here know what it takes to make a good guitar. I've made one or two that sounded and played pretty darned good, and others here have as well - and more than one or two. The high end guitars I've been lucky enough to play just don't sound any better than our successful ones.
$5K? Why? $500 for parts if you buy in scale like the Martin factory. There are other costs, but pretty minimal. I think people are buying an image most of the time, when it comes to boutiques.

[Herman]

And on these prized instruments the woods and exercise of the work aren't impressive either.

Last years I played a Martin D28 1938 20K. Well,..... good guitar, but nothing special.
And a Selmer 4 string 12K .....deformed and unplayable.
Herman