johnfgraham wrote:
Just curious, in the design & construction of the box -is there anything you can share about what made it your best sounding guitar?
Hell if I know! Besides, who knows what you'd think about it?
Seriously, I think it's just that I'm becoming more familiar with all the different parameters that you can use to shape the sound you are after. Lots of builders are much better than me at analyzing, measuring and figuring out what's what about shaping wooden boxes to sound this way or that. Nothing about the construction of my instruments are out of the ordinary, you've seen it all a million times, its all variations on the Martin style really. This one has a nice, stiff soundbaord, tapered in thickness from around 3.1 mm around the soundhole and up, down to about 2.5 -2.8 mm around the perimeter of the lower bout, "A"-brace pattern above the soundhole, slightly forward shifted x-bracing and tonebars, softly scalloped and feathered out before the linings, smallish maple bridge patch, what else? Oh, I put in a "musser brace" along the back of the bridge plate, but I shaved it almost all away as I didn't like what it did to the bottom end. My concave sanding dish for the top that I made long ago was supposed to have a 25' radius, but it is actually is a bit tighter, so that probably does something to the sound too.
I like ebony bridges as I think they help mellow out some of the harsh, metallic high frequencies that some steel string guitars get. The bridge is 8.5 mm at the highest and weighs in at 26 g. Unbleached cow bone nut and saddle, individually compensated for each string, projects about 4 mm over the bridge at the highest. I also think that the carbon fiber bars I'm adding to the neck helps the clarity of the notes, especially in the higher positions.
So there you have it, no secrets or groundbreaking discoveries. What I'm really looking forward to is hearing how it will develop when I hear it again in some time.
Thanks for all the nice comments, everybody!