Lowden Brace pattern

[ken cierp]

I'll be making "Luthier Stencil" based off this pattern -- seems like the common design feature in the George Lowden line, of course the fully compensated pin-less bridge has something to do with the great sound quality of these guitars.

[Dave Bagwill]

Excellent!!

[Tim Benware]

That top "A" brace laps each other as in the X brace?

[ken cierp]

Yes there are lap joints with the shoulder brace and the tip of the "A" is let into the neck block. I am going to modify the "A" a little. The primary difference of this design over the traditional "X" patterns is the use of super light weight thin/tallish "Dolphin" bracing and the pin-less bridge.

Also and this is important, part of the magic of the "Lowden" sound is that much of the music we hear is played using some sort of open tuning -- mostly DADGAD

[Tim Benware]

Don't know what it is about DADGAD but the few songs I know with it makes a huge sound difference in my guitars.

[Herman]

In the 80's I had a Lowden 12 string. Beautiful guitar, but was sold because the 12 strings were not my cuppathea.
Always been a great fan of the pinless bridge, that is also used on my 1981 Ovation Balladeer.
The big advantage in my view is the freedom for other types of bracing you get in the area under the bridge. But to be honest, a bridge only holding on a tiny bit of glue scares me a bit off to use it. Yeah, I'll have to get over that.

Herman

[mike-p]

I imagine in dadgad the harmonics build up and interAct more musically as the guitar is, In a way, better in tune, do you find the same with open turnings?