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Old 02-05-2020, 02:02 PM
redir redir is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Mountains of Virginia
Posts: 7,679
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Tolmex or Nomex? I built one with Nomex. It is essentially a laminate top, this is true, but it's not the same thing. Laminate top guitars are produced cheaply for lower budget guitars. They are typically 3 layers. Spruce/luan/Spruce or some such thing. As such you have a very heavy guitar top which is very bad for tone.

A double top guitar uses layers as well but they are often pieced together or routed out which was the method I used so that you have pockets of Nomex together with spruce or cedar and then capped off with spruce or cedar. The idea behind it is that Nomex is a very light weight material that is also very strong when laminated up. So with a DT guitar you are making a very light weight top.

The one I built sounded ok, not great. But it was also my first go of it. It's really not that bad just different. But I had a guitar come in for repairs last year, a double top built by a very respected luthier and it blew me away. I didn't like it at all at first. It almost felt liek there was something wrong with it. But it quickly grew on me. I was playing it in my shop when my wife walked in and said, "is there batteries in that thing or something?" It was so loud it really sounded like it had an amp in it.
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