[martinedwards]

There's a lot of smoke & mirrors about tuning tops.

personally I hold Siminoff's book in the same area as homeopathy.

scientifically I cna poke HUGE holes in it and I'm open to be proven wrong but there are a LOAD of luthiers who hold similar (if less forthright) views!!

when tuning a top..... and carving the braces........

you have a top that is bigger than the sides...... and is free to resonate (ie. not attached to the sides) so you carve and sand til it resonates at a D. then you glue it to the sides and cut an inch off all the way round......

you want to guess what it'll resonate at, because I haven't got a clue!!

Sam Irwin (one of Lowdens original team and now running a luthiers class in Belfast) says forget tuning to a NOTE, just go for a nice musicality of a resonance. if it sounds right then it prolly will be.

it IS good to experiment and repeated builds and meticulous note taking will mean that eventually you will be able to predict what a top will sound like once it's complete.