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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2014 6:00:35 GMT -5
The atttached PDF is an interesting bit of data from a known luthier. Coupled with the bracing, the top thickness are among the top factors that determine an acoustic guitar's tone, volume, and sustain. www.esomogyi.com/top_thickness.pdf
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Post by dadfad on Apr 14, 2014 16:45:05 GMT -5
Interesting article, Jim. "...As for steel string guitars, we have no published accounts of whether there is a top-thickiness limit that’s below 3/32”; if anyone one has tried to push that envelope they haven’t written about it." I have a 1930 Gibson L-1 which is a small-bodied guitar. It's top is .080" thick. It projects as much volume as any larger dreadnaught or jumbo-size guitar I have (with the exception of a 1934 Gibson "The Jumbo"). I was told Gibson soon after added a little more thickness as they were so thin the steel-strings of that day (the equivelent of a "heavy" today) caused the tops to belly and come back under the lifetime warranty. Most of those 1930 L's still around today either have a belly or had the top replaced or removed and re-glued. Most just "self-destructed" with time. I was lucky enough to have gotten one that had been bought in 1940 by a GI stationed in San Antonio from a pawn-shop with no strings on it. He shipped out in early 1942 and took his guitar. In Italy while changing his strings once in camp there was an artillery barrage and he lost several of his bridge-pins. Not long after while in a bombed-out villa he found a smashed arch-top guitar and took the trapeze-bridge with him when he returned to camp. He mounted and used that bridge to hold the strings down on his L-1, and that's what was still on the guitar when I bought it from him in the early 1980s. Using the trapeze-bridge, the string pressure was actually downwards against the top instead of pulling upwards. That kept the top in virtually perfect condition (except for two very small little marrs where the bridge touched the top, very easily touched up and virtually invisible now). Tremendous guitar, everyone who plays it can't believe the sound it puts out. (I've loaned it to a couple of guys who wanted to borrow it for studio work.) When I'm not using it I keep the string tension tuned down quite a bit. It was one of my luckiest "finds" over the years. Me and my L-1 playing a duet with Mary Flower and her 1932 L-1 (Mary has finished in the top three several times at the International Finger Style Guitar Championships in Winfield, Kansas. She can play circles around me!)
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