Euphonon back bracing

[Dave Bagwill]

This is a picture of a builder's work, an accomplished luthier, who has taken measurement of one of the great old Euphonon guitars and is replicating it.

Look at all them braces on the back! This is a 00 instrument. I might use 4 braces and would most likely use 3. But as I look more closely at some of the good old ones, and some of the good new ones, I see lots of braces, though still lightly built. I've got some learning to do.

Anyway, what do you think of the bracing here? The flat braces were designed to allow the money area of the back to flex a bit more easily. How tall do you think those flat ones are? How tall do you think the other braces are at their highest?

I'm also attaching a view of the top bracing.

edited to make it read 'them braces on the back'

[John Link]

This many back braces, laddered up, would tend to raise the frequency response of the back. That might be desirable in a soft wood, such as hog, but over the top with a vitreous wood, like EIR. Smaller bodied gits tend to have higher frequency backs due to the intrinsic shorter amplitudes of their parts in the first place.

If you were using a laminated back this many ladder braces might make sense. At least I find the two laminated backs I have gotten from Michael Collins to be very soft and low in their response to tapping. Ladder bracing strengthens the long dipoles, the more the merrier.

On the other hand, going all the way into a lattice arrangement, such as Ray Kraut (who lives in Eugene) does, should strengthen the monopole of the back, and hence have more to do with bass, because it unifies the back rather than divide it into wide areas of short amplitude movement. At least, that is what it looks like to me. You can see one of Kraut's backs at 0:26 in the video below. (He is a young guy who has already made seriously good guitars, to my ear.)

[Dave Bagwill]

That's some nice work. Man, does he have a lot of equipment, too. Envy.