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  #1  
Old 09-29-2020, 06:18 PM
jimdidier jimdidier is offline
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Default Bracing....

So this may have been talked to death already but I was not there for the conversation. What is the difference between ladder bracing and X or cross bracing and how will each effect tone and structural strength of a guitar ?
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Old 09-29-2020, 06:44 PM
bufflehead bufflehead is offline
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Every guitar I've played with ladder bracing sounds a bit boxy to me. Bluesy. X-braced guitars have a fuller sound, especially in terms of the lower end.

There are some great guitars out there with ladder bracing, but the X brace revolutionized the guitar, especially in pure acoustic terms.
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Old 09-29-2020, 07:20 PM
jimdidier jimdidier is offline
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Default bracing....

Let me rephrase.... does a ladder braced guitar suit your tonal needs or do you prefer X braced guitars or does it even matter.....
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Old 09-30-2020, 09:28 AM
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Mr. Jelly Mr. Jelly is offline
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Most of us have very little experience with ladder braced guitars. I only know of Waterloo guitars for a new ladder braced guitar. Maybe someone can put me on to some others. I have one and used to have two. I love the mid range sound of my guitar otherwise it doesn't have much depth. I can't say that is what allot of ladder braced guitars sound like. I like the ladder brace better than X brace and wish there were more ladder braced guitars to chose from. I have noticed when I look at old Gibson L-1 guitars for sale that the bracing isn't often mentioned. I find that old as I believe some were ladder braced and some were X braced.
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Old 09-30-2020, 09:45 AM
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I also posted on the other post. I don't believe there can be an apples to apples answer to this. I don't know of any quality build ladder braced guitar that isn't built to be marketed to "the blues sound". Hence almost everyone thinks the ladder braced sound always sounds like a blues guitars. I don't know of a ladder brace dread or jumbo built to go head to head with the big three guitar makers. Meaning built for a bigger sound with more depth. Obviously there is allot of variation in the different sounds of all the different X braced guitars. It stands to reason there would be the same variation if there were allot of different makers of ladder braced and V braced guitars. Face it the buying public is conditioned to buying X braced guitars. Taylor framed their marketing of the V brace as being modern and anti boomer X braced guitars. Like they invented the wheel or something. It's not your dad's guitar type of thing.
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Old 09-30-2020, 09:52 AM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimdidier View Post
Let me rephrase.... does a ladder braced guitar suit your tonal needs or do you prefer X braced guitars or does it even matter.....
Yeah, there's a tonal difference between the two bracing systems, but we're going to need to hear from a real blues player and blues box connoisseur to get precise about the descriptions. I don't have any personal experience with ladder braced guitars myself, other than picking up a few here and there in music stores and playing them a little bit.

But I've never owned one and, perhaps more importantly, I've never gigged out with a ladder braced guitar. My experience over the years has been that I never know all of the strengths and weaknesses of my instruments until I've gigged out with them a few times - there's nothing like literally being in the spotlight and having to depend on an instrument in front of a crowd of people to know what it can and cannot do.

Anyway, I know a couple of Collings dealers in the Midwest, and both of them have told me that they sell at least three times as many X braced Waterloo guitars as they do the ladder braced versions. The X braced Waterloos are definitely more musically versatile.

So the ladder braced versions are specialist instruments, in a sense.

Hopefully someone who actually knows what they're talking about when it comes to ladder braced guitars will show up and post in this thread, because I'm NOT that person and can't give you any more information than I already have.

One suggestion I can give you is to check out Neil Harpe's Stella Guitars website here:

https://stellaguitars.com/

Neil is a great musician, a commercial artist, and probably the leading expert on this style of guitar. He has a CD of him playing some fairly astonishing country blues and ragtime music on a succession of Stella guitars. He also put out a book, which is back in print for the first time in a while.

So check out Neil's website and maybe you'll learn some more there. Neil's also a very friendly guy, happy to share what he knows. I can't recommend him highly enough.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

PS: I'll be watching this thread in hopes that we can get some folks like zombywoof and the other people on the forum who are knowledgeable in this field to discuss these guitars in greater depth than I can.
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Old 09-30-2020, 11:02 AM
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There is certainly a place for ladder braced guitars, but they are a very specific tone. On this type of forum you’ll see many guitar enthusiasts. Guitar enthusiasts like guitars so I don’t know anyone who only has one ladder braced guitar. Most here that post daily have a collection of at least 2-5 guitars and the single guitar owners are a minority. Of those single guitar owners, I can’t imagine that there are more than a handful that only have a ladder braced guitar. But I started with one guitar. A ladder braced KG-11 was my 3rd guitar. I currently don’t have any.
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Old 09-30-2020, 12:18 PM
redir redir is offline
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Ladder braced guitars do tend to be described as blues guitars or boxed sounding and I tend to agree with that. Part of the reason why is because some of those beautiful old Blues recordings were done using Stella guitars and other ladder braced guitars of the day. Basically they were cheap guitars for poor blues artists.

Ladder braced guitars tend to be punchy and loud with a quick decay. Selmer/Mac type guitars use this type bracing for that reason.
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Old 09-30-2020, 01:34 PM
Conomor Conomor is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jimdidier View Post
Let me rephrase.... does a ladder braced guitar suit your tonal needs or do you prefer X braced guitars or does it even matter.....
I'm down to two guitars, an 2018 Eastman and a 1930's Oscar Schmidt. Both are 12-fret, small-bodied slothead 'parlours' with adirondack tops, ebony pyramid bridges etc. The Eastman is X-braced, the Oscar Schmidt is ladder-braced. They sound very different, but it's impossible for me to determine how much of that difference can be attributed solely to the bracing when there are other variables to consider, such as age.

I have owned other ladder-braced guitars, but they did not sound anything like this one. All I can say with certainty is that I strongly prefer the old OS for the sort of country blues fingerpicking that I spend 95% of my guitar time attempting to play. However, my teacher (a professional blues musician) plays a 50's LG-2. His guitar completely outclasses my old parlour and that one is X-braced.
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Old 09-30-2020, 03:35 PM
Talldad Talldad is offline
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When you strum a guitar the soundboard wobbles in many wild and wonderful ways. It pulses up and down, waves left to right, waves top to bottom. Different waves, modes, have different effects on the timbre of the sound.
An x-Brace guitar, done well, allows for more long-dipole motion, waving top to bottom, this can make sound project further, (I think)

The bracing ultimately dictates how the top reacts, the top is the part of the guitar making all the noises, so yes there will be a difference.
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