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Not to throw a severed head in anyone's lap but here is a great topic for discussion.

When I started building my motivation was great sounding and playing guitars, period. All of the this woodworking stuff was a necessary evil to me to get to the good part, voicing and playing. I've also believed and still believe that building a guitar is a woodworking project, building a great guitar is a Luthier project... No offense intended to anyone.

But you can see my spin on Lutherie - it'a all about building tools for musicians.

So sports fans, and the rest of ya... given the choice of building a very lightly braced, highly responsive instrument with in the confines of the conventional way to build a great guitar, let's call it Martin style with a D-18 in mind... what are your thoughts on the following:

1) Build to sound great today and maybe for several decades or build to last 100 years building heavier with longevity in mind?

2) Is number one above even a fair question - can't we do both?

3) I like a bit of a belly on any guitar that I am enjoying and it never bothered me. So long as bridge rotation is not excessive I see a bit of a belly as not unlike a bit of a belly on a happy beer drinker watching the game. Belly's - good or bad?

4) For folks who come at this with lots of woodworking experience (which have no doubt about it I respect greatly too) guitar building is often an exercise of building on the edge and likely foreign to say building a chair where on the edge is.... well not good (unless the mother in law is about to sit in it...). Do you ever struggle with unlearning the woodworking stuff and embracing what it seems to take to build a highly responsive guitar?

5) Rick Turner built a guitar that successfully went to Antarctica and was played and came home too and survived it all. Rick also knows how to build very light. For those who can build light or heavy at will when is heavier building advantageous?

Thoughts please?

Thanks

I tend to be a bit thicker on my tops and sides than most guys. Probably that "furniture" building past

I also prefer belly in the back of my guitar . cause when my belly is in the fron t I cant strum it cause my bellys in the way !

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I used John Arnolds excellent tracing of a 1937 Herringbone D-28, and my #3 is a very nice sounding D-18 (red spruce top, red spruce bracing, black locust bridge plate) top has belly and it sustains, bass and trebles ring like little bells, I did go with an adjustable truss rod and stainless fret wire. I probably could have gone a skosh lighter in the top and bracing but you can hammer this one and it just pins its ears back and growls at you, its not a bad finger style either but I'm really not into mediums on my finger style stuff. I have a 13 fret Gibson Nick Lucas for that. Right now I want to get as close to the prewar classics as I can before getting too far into the weeds

1) right away please. Better a short term of excellence than permanent mediocrity...

2) I reckon, but maybe not. Only time will tell.

3) I'm not against a bit of belly. Using Trevor Gore's suggestion, I now extend my bridge plates 15-20 mm past the edge of the bridge in a curve. Believe it or not, this greatly helps stop the bridge from rolling.

4) dunno. Woodworking is just all the annoying stuff I've had to learn just build guitars. You would not like my benches or cabinets.

5) low resonance stage guitars? Home defense? Paperweights?

What I have found is that you lose sonic integrity before structural integrity. It is certainly possible to build lighter that our pretty light guitars, but if you take it to the extreme, they become mushy with no headroom. Finding the balance to your preferences is the key, via note taking trial and error. And a good solid read of the Gore/Gilet books helped me endlessly.

1) Great today, because mediocre instruments are likely to wind up trashed before the hundred years is up anyway.

2) Hopefully can do both. More likely possible with nylon strings than steel.

3) No belly = too stiff. Trevor's 2 degree bridge rotation rule seems about right.

4) Starting as a luthier, I tend to build my furniture rather light as well... but have no trouble beefing things up if it seems like it will ever be necessary.

5) Thin plates respond quicker to humidity, but if something's going to survive 100 years, it needs to be able to survive in just about any humidity level anyway. Only the few most expensive guitars in the world are going to be diligently humidified all winter for every single year until then. Wider braces (more glue area) can hold on through harder impacts or greater humidity stress.

My definition of "lightly built" depends on the size of guitar... for small ones, soundboard mass is a non-issue, but stiffness must be as low as possible to get resonant frequencies down. For large ones, mass is the main issue, and stiffness should probably be a little higher than strictly necessary, to keep the resonant frequencies from being too low.

How is this even a question? What's the point of building a guitar that is going to sound crappy for 100 years or more on account of being over built when the person playing/enjoying it won't last near that long? Most of the folks that can buy and appreciate the instruments I build are in their forties or 50's.
I build them to sound good for the enjoyment of the buyer, not their late descendents.

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Am I building an instrument for myself or a good friend? Then I will try to make a lovely lightly built and responsive instrument - and I won't mind refashioning/adjusting or even rebuilding the thing over time.

Or, am I running a business where I am sending my product out into the world where it might be thrashed and flogged by an unknown buyer, who will then blame the builder when it falls apart? In that case I had better build it like a tank so that it can withstand anything. This is why all factory-built guitars tend to be overbuilt, but most punters and players don't know any better.

"light and tight" --- I believe Roger Siminoff's sound board flex test fixture is a wonderfully thought out device. Deflection can be "made to order" matching proposed string set tension. So of course this means I build for here and now.

Now it would seems that with prudent use of materials like carbon fiber, good/great sounding, stable, durable, long lasting guitars are well within the realm of possibility. I think some brands make such claims already.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Not to toss the severed head back at you Hesh, but there is, of course, a middle ground.
1. I built (better get used to that) to sound VG but tight, and a bit on the heavy side. Most folks that knew anything about instruments got that and knew my instruments would be rather good after 4-5 years. Those that didn't sold them and the next guy down the line that bought it would email me and say the original guy was nuts to sell it. I'd get emails 5-10 years along that said the instrument just keeps getting better and better. I've never been into "instant gratification" instruments because after a few years they don't improve much. Also, the more you take out of a wood, the less it sounds like that wood and the more it sounds like cardboard.
2. Yes you can build them to sound very good at the start, but they won't sound like your head is inside the guitar.
3. I guess my instruments have a bit of belly. The huge 12' radius makes it hard to determine.
4. I didn't build on the edge, never. When I started building mandolins I started on the heavy (not 2x4's) side and went thinner till I found the tone. I applied all that to my guitars too. Having been a cabinetmaker and furniture maker for years never lead me to a "too delicate" a chair. Rule is, build the chair strong enough to hold on the back two legs as folks always lean back on chairs.
5. Rick Turner is Rick Turner. Don't much care if his instrument went to Antarctica or Mars. Heavier built (let's stay within reason, folks) instruments will have a strong, FAT sound. No, they are not wispy. If you like wispy, build them light, sell them to any joe bloke that walks into the music store wanting a dread-not. Build them with cedar or redwood and they will say "Wow, that's loud!"
IMO folks, Hesh asked...still frisky as ever.

The very first guitar I built about 25 years ago was directly out of Sloans book however right away I began to develop my own way of doing things if I didn't think it looked right. That includes the bracing. I've always gone lighter in bracing then on any plans I have ever used including plans that I designed myself! I have consistently been pushing towards the edge of lightness and it's worked for me.

The crux in that biscuit for me was building a parlor guitar as a part of a challenge here a few years ago on the OLF. The theam for me was to build a guitar with wood I could scrounge up in the old barn in the back yard. The piece of pine I found was quarter sawn but after resawing it was ridiculously thin and floppy. I used it anyway to stay with the theme and it remains one of the best sounding guitars I've made. Super light, big fat belly, lots of bridge rotation but incredibly responsive.

Would I ever build a guitar like that to sell? Heck no I didn't even think it would last this long, I was just playing her last night. That guitar was a reductio ad absurdum of sorts. It was taken to the extreme end but I learned a lot from it and was quite surprised.

I also recall one guitar, a twelve stringer, that came in for a repair a few years back. I cannot remember the name of the Oregon luthier now but the bracing on that guitar was fantastically light. IT was going on 20 years old and was still well put together aside from needing a neck reset but oh my... what a great sounding guitar.

I think as luthiers we have to have this conversation with customers. Not only is string gauge important but so is inheritance! How long do you want the guitar for. I also remember reading that Segovia telling the luthier Fernandez ( I think ) that a guitar wears out in 20 years so why build one to last 75?

Great replies folks but to be clear I am not advocating any style of building what so ever and instead soliciting thoughts as to why folks are building as they are.

There are very good examples of very heavy instruments that perform fantastic such as the Smallman classicals.

So throw severed heads back at me all you want, I don't care, I spent time on match.com and am used to it....

I think it was Don MacRostie that came up with the flex tester. Siminoff may have one too. It is a great way to get another measurement.

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Siminoff's Luthier's handbook with the design was published 2002 -- Mac Rostie's GAL article was published in 2008

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

From a playing perspective I want a guitar that can go places: around the campfire, parties, et cetera. I'm hard on guitars, I play them like I'm beating them up. Sure those bedroom guitars sound great but can I really get down on it and not break it, I don't know?

One hundred years, that's a long time in dog years. Build for now, not what might be in one hundred years. A guitar is a gift that comes from nature and somehow life lead you to the gift to make one. Later a musician will combine his gift and make music that makes people feel happy, et cetera. It's the gift that keeps on giving. We may speculate on what will happen in one hundred years or the price of a paperclip, or the fires and pitfalls that can devour an instrument in such a time period but none of that matters. Be here now, make a guitar for now because you only have the now. Now is all that is real.

I'm feelin' very Bertrand Russell now.

I tend to think that design reflects the physical attributes of the maker. It sounds odd but I've witnessed it enough times to know there's something to it. The skinny woodworker tends to make things light, the portly makes things a bit beefier. People also buy cars and pets that resemble their physical attributes. There's some kind of subconscious psychology at work.

I come from a woodworking background, I see it as an incredible asset. I think it will make my guitar better, not worse. I'm used to planing perfectly square, blemish free surfaces, reducing stock to exactness, making dovetail joints by hand so tight that no glue is required d once they're put together they cannot be taken apart. I know how wood behaves and how to deal with outrageous figure (though I don't plan on using figured wood for guitars). I've made woodworking projects with moving parts without a plan, I've followed plans. I can saw a straight line, can sharpen to terrifying standards. Woodworking is an asset, at least the kind I've done. I've stuck with hand tools and I think that's the asset here that relates to guitars. Power tools are clunky, imprecise, or they take a lot of time to set up. Everyone I know who builds with power tools makes clunky looking stuff. There's no feeling the wood, getting to know and understand grain, knots, and all the things that a power tool just passes over. Hand tools connect me with what I'm doing intimately. There's a lot of knowledge to be gleaned and I've never seen a surface that compares to what I can do with good ol' blades. Woodworking an absolute asset. Without the experience I have I'd be bolting a kit guitar together. Frankly, the only parts of making a guitar that intimidate me are fretting and cutting bone.

-j

Oooh, this is a big one, I've thought about this sort of stuff a lot.
1. Good guitars get better with age but they have to start off good. Learning from great instruments of the past isn't incompatible with making guitars that sound great right now.
2. We can do both but we're up against any amount of mythologising about old instruments. This research on Strads is the kind of thing. Cumpiano wrote about it on his blog. I'm sure the same applies to guitars, indeed I believe we live in a golden age of guitar making.
3. Belly good.
4. My uncle was a cabinet maker and I loved his workshop and his tools - I still use some of them - from before I can remember. But I'm a player and a maker first, then a woodworker. Being an engineer by education helps.
5. This is the one. Assuming we're well into the ball park of building good acoustic guitars there is still a range of possibilities and I think it comes down to building guitars with intent, matching them to a purpose. "Tools for musicians", that sums it up. The Somogyi style puts responsiveness above all and very much connects that with light weight. I haven't had the pleasure of playing one of Somogyis instruments but IMHO very light guitars - and I've built some - can be fantastically responsive but by way of trade off will lack power and headroom. Not too many really high end US guitars get across to the UK but at a rather less stellar level I owned a Bourgeois Slope D for a number of years. 2.15 Kg (4.74lb - why do I prefer metric? because you can't do ounces on a calculator). The harder you hit it the louder it got BUT you did need those muscles. It was responsive alright but in a quite different way. I recently traded it and some cash for a 12 year old Lowden O-35. It's a little bit louder, a little bit lighter, definitely brighter high up the neck, it's certainly the best instrument I've ever owned, one of the best I've ever played. I bought it at The Acoustic Music Company in Brighton which is one of the few places in the UK to stock high end individual maker US built guitars and after spending most of a highly enjoyable day there with a friend we concluded it was the best thing under 10 grand. What I'm saying in a rambling round about way is that some weight is good if that's the kind of guitar you want. And it is! But there are many many players, the ones who use 011 or 010's, who are never going to hit an instrument that hard. If you're building an instrument for one of them different rules apply.
I think going to the Arctic is a red herring. If that's what you do, look after your instrument same as if it was going in an airplane hold.

But "building with intent" heads off in other directions. I think most maker here focus on making acoustic instruments for acoustic performance. That might sound obvious but actually it's not what most "acoustic" guitars are used for. Most performance use of acoustic steel strung instruments involves plugging them in and I do think a different set of compromises are relevant here. Perhaps out and out acoustic performance isn't top priority any more. But that's not what I do.

Ian

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Count me in for Lightly Braced.

As has been pointed out, it is surprising how lightly one can build a guitar (etc) without it blowing up. Up to a point, it helps the sound immensely. I do find trebles can get a little thin sounding if you go too light.

A little belly is no big deal. It does stretch the soundboard across the grain. On old guitars, cracks can form behind the bridge, as I'm sure most of us have seen.

The main problem of old guitars is the neck pushing the fretboard into the sound hole. IMO this is pretty easily solved without necessarily building heavier, but building smarter. I don't think the traditional lateral UTB is sufficient. Some simple triangulation can drastically stabilize the upper bout. Some options are: an A frame configuration, flying buttresses, a light X instead of a UTB, etc.

Sorry about that. I stand corrected. I haven't seen the Siminoff book. However the G A L article was from fall of 2003 and the device is described as one of Dons fixtures, giving the impression that he also devised it . I am sorry for posting incorrect information. I should have checked before posting. I do agree with you on your other comments as well. It is truly a handy device.

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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
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I have only built 4 guitars, so I am still in the learning curve here. I just finished rebuilding a 1933 Gibson L-00 that was trashed and I was amazed that the top braces were 3/16" plus a hair at the bottom. The guitar is loud, responsive, and I like it better than my 000-28. So I am a believer and will be lightening things up a hair. By the way, I don't bang on my guitars - finger picking mostly.

Ed

I'm about as new to this as you can get - one done, and three in progress.

1) If a guitar sounds great, it is much more likely to played, cherished and looked after - all of those should contribute positively to it being around a few more years than one that doesn't inspire anyone to play.

2)My aim to to learn to build right on that line between light and responsive, and too light.

3) From what I've seen a little belly is a good thing. I once stayed at a bed and breakfast in Holland owned by a 90 year old woman - above the bed was a little hand sewn sign that read "Never trust a man who doesn't drink." A little weakness at the right place/time is a good thing. To me, the idea of a belly indicates that the top is primed for movement - potentially setting up a more active relationship between the strings/bridge and the top. I of course have no technical foundation for this idea.

4) I grew up in my family's boat building shop, that also had a respectable machine shop. They built boats that must survive the Bering Sea without blinking - but I still measure everything to the .001". Woodworking for me is a process of learning to accept a little less precision, with the potential for more personal expression in what I build.

5) I'll build a heavier guitar if it will take me to Antarctica.


My first, and only one finished so far, a KMG based 00-12 has impressed enough people that two wanted me to build them guitars, and another wanted to keep it.
I sent an image to Ervin and, quite fairly, he commented that it was a very clean build, and noticeably over-braced:





My second top, for a KMG 12 fret Ditson, hopefully will have benefited from more careful consideration of how much brace material I can safely remove. We'll know once I finish it up.

Seems fairly true in my case Lightweight, but surprisingly durable. And I like cats, which are fast and quiet. And electric unicycles look like my ideal vehicle... so light I could just carry it around rather than having to park and hope nobody steals it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_-um9BU8Q4
Well, actually I'd prefer a flying saucer, but this will do for ground transportation...


Yeah, that's a totally separate issue from light/heavy bracing. I use a C shaped headblock, which is butted and glued to the upper transverse brace. And the UTB is quite beefy as well: 1/2" wide at the base, 3/4" tall, sort of wedge cross section, and left tall at the ends (supported by side braces, though they could be carved low enough to notch into linings instead). It's heavy (relative to the rest of the soundboard), but there's not much vibration in the upper bout anyway, especially if half of it is missing for a cutaway And actually, I don't want any movement up there, because the high frets need to provide a stable platform for the string to vibrate against.

This work in progress is an experiment in taking thin plate style to the extreme. Indian rosewood, .070" thick. Lots of braces so there are no big squishy unsupported areas, and all notched together so I can control the stiffness where the braces meet, rather than just having it go down to the stiffness to the plate itself, which is much lower than normal. Perimeter stiffness also needs more control by braces rather than carving down to zero like normal. I'll be carving on it more after I get the sides on. Still a little too stiff right now.

Even though this looks like brace madness, it can still be "lightly braced" as in stiffness low enough to allow 2 degree bridge rotation... but mass wise it will still be pretty high. Probably around 330g total soundboard weight including bridge, saddle and pins.

Stiffness can be had either by plate thickness or brace height. After my current crop of instruments is done, I'm going to go to the other extreme: Very thick plate, thinned at the perimeter, with minimal bracing. Probably 0 or 00 size, with cedar or redwood. And then there's a whole lot of middle ground between those extremes to explore after that...

Wow I am impressed! Dennis and Ed that is some really beautiful work!!!!

Good topic. I took Somogyi's course a few years ago and built three guitars in that style: very very light bracing. Interesting guitars. Very strong bass from an OM sized box. My clients love them but they left me wanting something. There seemed to be a lack of mid-range and note separation. Now I am building an OM with Gore and Gilet's book and I understand the issue with the Somogyi style better after testing them with frequency analysis. It is a monopole monster but does have a huge dip in the frequency chart throughout the mid range. My falcate guitar under construction is still lightweight but will definitely be stiffer than the Somogyi. I look forward to hearing it.

Wow -- Daniel pristine comes to mind!

Ed got any sound clips?

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

I have taken most of my tips from some of the great acoustic players in Minneapolis/St Paul that will test drive my stuff.

Early on I built lighter, that is, thinner tops, more aggressive voicing. The OM's had a lot of bass and mids, very lush, and that does give kind of an immediate satisfaction and many liked them. Kind of like music. A song with lots of major sevenths and other lush chords is great in small doses but gets old fast.

I did find that the main criticism from the really good players/pros was that they wanted to hear more clarity and tonal separation. Several of them had Goodalls that they loved and I noticed that they were more heavily built. Thicker tops and more sturdy bracing yet they sounded great.

I have gone to building a little heavier including double sides, and there has been a very positive response. They sound fine new but really do get better with age. For me it has been the way to go. The OM is my big seller and I'd say my tops are around .118 now to get the deflection I want. I use traditional Martin style bracing and scalloping and the low point of the X is never any lower than .35" and the tone bars .25-.30.

So yeah I am building a little heavier these days and I like what I am hearing initially and even more a few years later.

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That's a great description and just how I like my own guitars to sound... good fundamental bass with not much midrange, which the Somogyi bracing style really delivers. I've found it a bit of a tight rope though... without any mids at all the tone really seems mushy and lifeless.

To Hesh's questions: the past is gone and the future is an illusion. There is only now so I build for today. Longevity and serviceability are not ignored but definitely take a back seat to tone when necessary. That said, I don't believe a guitar needs to be on the verge of collapse to sound great, and my ideal of great sound is far from many others who play different styles. At the same time I never trust a guitar or a chef without a belly.