Great work Dan
I too think a lot about voicing a soundboard. It is a physical fact that the response you get from a free board will bears no resemblance to the response you get from a board bound by the sides and that closed into a box. But I really want to think that there is a secret sauce.
I try to go for a musical tone with some variation in frequency and hope for the best.
Somogyi's book is excellent, but there is a book that is equal but completely opposite written by the Australian Trevor Gore, his book is a masterpiece of physics and equations and recordable, repeatable experiments and analysis.
Interestingly Trevor Gore's work doesn't place a great deal of importance on fine tuning X bracing at all. He puts a lot more emphasis on getting the soundboard the correct thickness for the sound you want to produce. As a last resort he will adjust the bracing once the instrument is completed over time if required.
I have spent time bracing guitars, shaving them down to virtually nothing and recording the results, I find that big shavings off bracing don't equal big changes to tone, but they do make big changes to deflection tests. My heart wants to believe in the dark art of voicing, my heads thinks that Gore might just have a point!
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