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Old 01-22-2020, 02:27 PM
Halcyon/Tinker Halcyon/Tinker is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2013
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FWIW...

I've built close to 30 guitars with torrefied tops so far.

I dropped torrefied bracing long before that because I did not like how it carved. And while bracing is absolutely critical to the final result, the downside difference in strength compared to the relatively minor upside difference in mass of torrefied vs non torrefied was not enough to to compel me to get over the hinkiness of the feel of torrefied bracing. It carved like driftwood and raised my hackles, which, despite being very math oriented in my work, is something I still trust, at least until proven wrong.

When you consider that the majority of the top assemby's mass (excluding bridge) is the top itself, the mass of the bracing takes a backseat. And the small savings of mass with torrefied bracing, for me, failed the risk/reward test, so I returned to regular bracing for torrefied tops. And there was no hearable difference between torrefied/non for bracing, unlike the top itself which is dramatically different in tone.

That being said, none of my torrefied braced guitars have failed, at least to my knowledge, and they've been out there for quite some time now, 5-8 years or such? So there's that too.

I would like to add one more thing.

I read sometimes that torrefied wood is stiffer. I don't believe that. It's been a long time since I've hit my notes, which have been lost to the Safe Place, but, to the best of my recollection...

I sent off a batch of tops to be torrefied with careful before/after note taking. They all came back with larger deflection numbers than they were sent with. So the process made them less stiff. But they also came back less dense, moreso than the difference in deflection,

So, while you can get the very same piece of wood to have less mass at the same stiffness, torrefaction does not stiffen the wood

Hope that makes sense...
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