Top Bracing or top quality?

[inadu ridge]

Simple question....Is a deep resonant tone due more to the top bracing or more to the resonant quality of the top wood itself? I understand both are important.

Thanks

IR

[Tony Burns]

Originally Posted by inadu ridge

Simple question....Is a deep resonant tone due more to the top bracing or more to the resonant quality of the top wood itself? I understand both are important.

Thanks

IR

Hard answer to give -so here goes
actually both and depends on the actual guitar ,where the braces are ( location ) how thick or numerous they are
and the actual piece of top wood ( quality of top or grades ) and species -ex-Sitka and red spruce and others.
sorry about the answer not being definative -dont think it can be.

[redir]

My take on it is this. I measure the engendering properties of ANY top wood to try an achieve the goal I am after. This is done many ways, deflection testing, chaladni, old school flex and feel and other more modern computer acoustic tests to determine the optimal thickness for any top whether it's cedar, Red Spruce, Sitka, Carpathian etc... And furthermore it is irregardless of the 'grade' of that top wood material.

A luthier can find the inherent properties of any top (within reason of course) and do some very simple testing to determine how best to use it.

Then after that, bracing is just a matter of style. So IOW do you like a nice bass boomy Bluegrass picker or perhaps something that has more ping in the higher registers? You can scallop braces, keep them straight or taper them. Each has an affect on the top that you already determined is suitable for any guitar.

So it's not so much a factor of top quality (again, within reason) but more so the top properties and how they are used. The bracing then adds a bit of flavor to that.

[varve]

There are recent data that partially address this topic, from the current issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.5129395

I have some opinions on this, as I am the third author of the paper. Whether those opinions are well formed or not are for others to decide .

However, I CAN say that the peer review process for this journal was the most rigorous I have ever been thru. I am confident of the findings.

Cheers,
Dave Olson

[Wolfram]

Originally Posted by varve

There are recent data that partially address this topic, from the current issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.5129395

I have some opinions on this, as I am the third author of the paper. Whether those opinions are well formed or not are for others to decide .

However, I CAN say that the peer review process for this journal was the most rigorous I have ever been thru. I am confident of the findings.

Cheers,
Dave Olson

Thanks for sharing, but this paper costs $30 to download, so we can't all read the findings. I am very interested in the results, but am confused - I gather from the Abstract that all tested guitars were Taylor 814ce GA models, with different top wood and bracing wood, but the exact same thicknessing/carve - or is this not the case? Surely this difference in Young's modulus is only valid if every top wood and brace wood is carved to the exact same dimensions by CNC - if there is any variance, as all luthiers and even most manufacturers apply, then how valid are these results?

Cheers,
David

[dwalton]

Both. Next question?

[mcduffnw]

Originally Posted by varve

There are recent data that partially address this topic, from the current issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.5129395

I have some opinions on this, as I am the third author of the paper. Whether those opinions are well formed or not are for others to decide .

However, I CAN say that the peer review process for this journal was the most rigorous I have ever been thru. I am confident of the findings.

Cheers,
Dave Olson

So Dave...what are YOUR PERSONAL OPINIONS on this subject...aside from your joint work on this study. What is your sense of the OP's query?

duff
Be A Player...Not A Polisher

[zombywoof]

I don't build them, I just play them but I think more than anything else it is the bracing which gives a guitar its voice - the carve, footprint and angle all come into play.

When you hear references to the "quality" of the top wood the evaluation is based on aesthetics. What comes into play more is say the thickness. All things being equal (body size and wood, bracing, bridge plate, and such) a guitar with an .080" thick top will generally be more responsive than an instruments with .105" thick top. Survival though is a whole other issue.

[redir]

I'd like to see that paper too or at least the conclusion of it.

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by inadu ridge

Simple question....Is a deep resonant tone due more to the top bracing or more to the resonant quality of the top wood itself? I understand both are important.

Thanks

IR

The answer is yes, or either.
You could say that the bracing can be made to optimize the top but, a top isn't usually made to optimize the braces. You can build any arbitrary hierarchy of importance you'd like from that

[J Patrick]

...I have only built two guitars...I concentrated a lot of attention on the top and bracing and found it to be the most intriguing and rewarding step of the process...

...my take is that the bracing and top combine in such a way that separating and grading the two as independent factors is pretty much impossible....

..sure you can take a beautiful top and apply crappy bracing and achieve poor results...and you can take a crappy top and add some fine bracing and get the same poor results...but that kind of illustrates my point...

[tadol]

A deep and resonant tone is probably more a question of top size and bracing more than anything else - but that probably also depends on how you define deep, and what you expect from resonant -

[guitar george]

Originally Posted by inadu ridge

Simple question....Is a deep resonant tone due more to the top bracing or more to the resonant quality of the top wood itself? I understand both are important.

To answer that question, specifically, I would say that hard wood for the top will contribute more to a deep resonant tone. "Hard" is resonant and "soft" is sound deadening. Drums are stiff and resonant. Sound rooms have soft materials on the walls to deaden the sound. Both heavy bracing and hard wood combined would be the best to produce deep resonant sound.

[redir]

Hopefully to add a bit to what Mark said above, bracing is part of the guitars top system for the sole purpose of having a guitar that doesn't destroy itself in short time. Bracing is a structural element of the top. It does however have secondary impact on the tone and again that is typically in how they are manipulated. Straight, tapered or scalloped are the 3 common features of bracing and each has some impact on tone and is pretty well defined over the many years that the guitar has been around.

[PAPADON]

Some knowledge is beyond our grasp.