Official Luthiers Forum!

We've all seen postings from folks who want to 'improve the tone' of their guitar by scalloping the soundboard braces and are unshakably certain that this will automatically do that. And there's no engaging them in a conversation as to why they're so certain of what they want to do. Marching to the same music is the kit vendor who supplies a set of pre-scalloped braces.

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Peter Havriluk

My father in law loved to tell the story of a friend buying a late 50’s Martin that had straight bracing. He showed it to an old timer who reached into his pocket, pulled out an old pocket knife, and whittled scallops into the braces.

“That was the sweetest playing guitar we ever heard”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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I'll stick my neck out here and say I've found scalloped / straight bracing is a choice, and the sound/tone/response whatever of each tends to be a bit different, rather than good/bad, perhaps more appropriate for different styles of playing, e.g. fingerstyle vs bluegrass, vs accompaniment.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I totally agree. Straight braces does NOT mean the guitar is overbuilt if the entire design was to incorporate straight braces. They offer a different tonality to the guitar to suit a specific player. I build both and I love both for what they are. Some of those old Martin's though and especially some of those old Guilds could use a shave though.

I tried the iPhone angle finder when I took off the strings yesterday. Couldn't find how to change the resolution, and a small thing like Trevor uses would be far more stable. Even trying to keep the guitar steady while turning the tuners is an exercise in futility! It seemed like it only moved 1degree just before tension got pretty low. But this guitar has the strings at 4 degrees or so, so I wouldn't expect a lot of rotation. I did make the ladder bracing much lighter than the plan, lower, beveled, and curved the entire length going to nothing at the sides.
My ears say it isn't a terrible guitar.
1 degree of rotation work for this one.

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Why be normal?

After the fact tinkering is great to fix things, but it's even better to avoid problems in the first place. That has always been my focus, if only because I have so much trouble getting my hand in the sound hole!

I once tracked Dana Bourgeois through his after-assembly tap tuning adjustments on a Dreadnought steel string. What I found was that he was 'tuning' various top resonant modes to couple effectively with back and 'air' modes on the assembled box. He did this very quickly, by feel and intuition, built up over decades of practice working on a high-end line of Martin guitars. He pointed out that he had to start with very high grade, stiff tops, and even then sometimes his adjustments didn't work out right. He was working by thinning the top in different areas from the outside, and, of course, if, for some reason, the stiffness/weight ratio of the wood or the braces was not as high as it 'should' have been, those resonant pitches could start out too low in pitch, and would only drop further with trimming. The ability to objectively test wood properties, and assembled mode pitches, would have eliminated that issue. Sadly, the planned article on the experience never came about because the top of the guitar cracked before he could get it finished.

Dana can 'tap tune' a top off the guitar in about 15 minutes. It takes me considerably longer using Chladni patterns. Tracking results in another workshop with Dana a few years ago confirmed that we are, in fact, doing the same things using different methods. I can record mode shapes and pitches more easily and exactly than he can, and share it more easily with other makers, or simply refer to it later when I want. Both approaches can work well, and each has certain advantages. "You pay your money and take your choice".