I was reading in the recent guitar afficianado magazine about Bruce and Matt Petros building a GC Dwende guitar for Paul Simon.
Here's a link to a photo
http://www.petrosguitars.com/
Photo Journal of the build for Paul Simon.
http://petrosguitars.zenfolio.com/p595525743
I thought this was cool that Mr. Simon ordered a guitar from them. I can attest that Petros guitars are 2nd to none.
Their arched top design is facinating to me when I look at mine. What ever they are doing it works their guitars sound incredible!! I recently had my GC in the shop at Gryphon to have a fret job done and the guys there said they had never seen a guitar with such a thin top and they were perplexed by how thin it was in fact.
Here's more info from their features section about their tops:
"The Pre-stressed arched top is responsible for the ringing, sustaining trebles as well as increased stability. The braces of a Petros guitar are shaped to a 30 foot radius and glued to the top that is placed on a concave work board in a vacuum press. Flexing a saw blade raises its pitch. This is the same principal with Petros guitar tops. The fundamental trebles sing clearly as well as the enhanced set of overtones over the full range of the instrument. You get the full potential of each string. Increased stability is another benefit of the arched top. Being pushed up with the arched braces prevents the top from going up any further. At the same time, this arch works just like a car bridge and resists going down. Flat tops have the latitude to go up and down with temperature and humidity changes ..... and they do! This arch is also designed to allow the fret board to go up that ramp at the body. No drop-off fret boards as seen on many flat tops.
The Graduated top makes for more bass. Petros Guitars meticulously thin the top around the edge which acts just like the soft surround on a speaker. This enables the top to move more easily as a whole creating big basses.
Symmetrical bracing makes for equal stress on the top. The bass strings don't have less tension on them to lower the pitch .... they just add more mass with the windings. The tension on each string is quite equal. Making one side of the top looser and the other tighter for bass and treble production is counterproductive. We believe asymmetric bracing creates undue tension and this is what we try to eliminate so the top is freer to vibrate. We see the guitar top as a speaker. Speakers are always symmetrical and produce a wide range of tones."
Anyway I just thought I'd share because their hasn't been a Petros thread in a while on here.