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Old 11-06-2006, 11:53 AM
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El Conquistador El Conquistador is offline
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Join Date: May 2006
Location: Central California
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[QUOTE=ljguitar;1041166][FONT=Lucida Console][size=2][color=darkslategray]Hi Dale...
No it won't have more or less volume either way...not discernible anyway. Just tap a non-cutaway guitar in the region the cutaway is cut away from and you'll see it's not a major volume producing area of the guitar's top contrasted with the area surrounding and below the bridge.
Most of us who play cutaways because we need cutaways take that into account and buy guitars which sound really good with the cutaway.

I don't think Volume is the issue. I suspect that what gets sacrificed for additional access to upper frets is tone.

While "most" of the volume does come from the area around the bridge, so too, most of the volume (energy) come from the woofers in a speaker. However, most of the highs (trebles) come from the tweeters, which may very well be the upper bouts. Notice I said bouts plural. If you strum a good full open E chord then lightly place you fingers over the top, while you will feel a great deal more movement below the bridge, you will also feel a significant amount of movement in the upper bouts. It seems to me, that if you eliminate one of the bouts, and you lose that added tweet. Since no 2 guitars are alike, it is impossible to A/B, however, my experience seems to be that non-cutaway guitars have more fully develped treble response.

So, if you have a 14 fret insturment and never get up to those dusty frets, I would always opt for a non-cutaway.
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