Acoustic Guitar Construction

Cannot give any useful comment here. Cause I do not know anything for sure. But for some reason I never made any straight braces in my guitars. I used scalloped, small/high and parabolic shapes. All these guitars sound good in their own way. I keep telling myself that if I do somthing special to the braces, the guitar will sound special. hmmmm, who's fooling who?

Did anyone around here made guitars with just straight braces? Or do we want to avoid the verdict: "Ordinary"?

Herman

There's plenty of prized Martins and Gibsons that have simple straight braces -- Steve Klein once wrote that he felt that top braces were merely for structure and the weight rather than the pattern was the main concern.

Yep. I also played guitars in the 400 dollar range that sounded great and a D45 of 4000 euro that was nothing but dull.
Ken, what is your personal preference when it comes to tonebarshapes?

kencierp wrote:There's plenty of prized Martins and Gibsons that have simple straight braces -- Steve Klein once wrote that he felt that top braces were merely for structure and the weight rather than the pattern was the main concern.

That is a very interesting observation. On one of my last guitars after I put the braces on and tap tested it, it was ringing beautiful and I thought "Man, is this going to sound great after I'm done scalloping these braces." When I was done I thought it sounded worse, not bad mind you because the end product sounded great and had really nice sustain, but it has me wondering now about the next.

Maybe not need or a benefit but the scallops look so cool!

Herman in response to your question – Admittedly I am a “copy cat”. Not having the fortitude (or imagination) to say that I can hear the acoustic difference say, hide glue vs Titebond, or a Rosewood vs Maple Bridge plate etc. I’d rather try to mimic guitars that have been accepted by the players and owners. So I use scalloped braces and even straight braces on different models based on what’s been done in the passed. Being a “Best Practice Industrial Engineer” by trade this makes perfect sense to me.

I do some tap tuning and brace shaving (I always assemble the top to the rim first) seeking better response taking material off the peaks first -- to me its a matter of reducing weight. I believe that anyone can detect a tight sound-board, it goes from a thud to a tone that has sustain – no magic. Sometimes nothing is done. But bottom line is I’d rather have an under built guitar. As far as a top that can be over driven (bunk too me) that can be controlled by the player as well as string set selection.

To this whole idea I refer back to problems that Gibson had introducing Michael Kasha designed guitars (a huge failure) not only was there production problems, but to my understanding the under pinning notion of there being a bass and treble (sound-producing) side of the bridge and sound board was challenged by other scientists who concluded (right or wrong) that the top assembly will always function as a unit -- again going back to the weight issue. All interesting stuff but way beyond my comprehension or desire to explore.

Let's talk about a range going from unshaped, unscalloped braces to over scalloped braces - what would one reasonable expect as to the type of sound change over this range? (or is that another topic not related to the best location of the peaks?)