I love the grain on that top! I've always kind of preferred that sort of "thick" grain vs. the usual "white bread" grain that alot of tops have.

Well it’s not an expensive top... fairly wide grain and good bear claw. But it felt nice and stiff. At no17 I’m still using fairly budget priced materials


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Budget doesn't mean it'll be bad. Some of the best sounding acoustics I've heard were put together from what we'd consider pretty crappy materials. Case in point being a late wartime '40s J45 (we could never nail down the exact date) I had on my bench 3 years ago. Had a 4 piece mahogany top, grain runout al over on every piece, braces cut from pretty low quality spruce and kerfing from what looked like poplar, poplar neck and tailblock. But I can honestly tell you that it was one of the best sounding acoustics I ever had the pleasure of working on.

I think alot of us, myself incuded get caught up in the "timber obsession" thing. It looks like it's going to be a great acoustic honestly, I'm interested to see the final product.

That piece of ziricote you used for the fretboard is super cool and I like the color of the fretmarker dots. What are they made from?

Snow

How tall is your X brace at the center joint?

Ed

Snow

How tall is your X brace at the center joint?

Ed

You could have a real nice one there. Remember, tops are graded on cosmetics quite a bit. Bubinga is a highly under-rated back and side material. It would get a lot more respect if it was $650.00 a set. I heard a bubinga guitar made by Sergei De Yonge and it was amazing.

Brent

The lower tone bars do look a bit tall and I do wonder about that scalloped pattern with the peaks at the center seam like that. Are you hypothesizing something with that design?

The good thing about over bracing though is that you can always reach in and fix it It could sound killer as is and if not then make changes.

In fact if anything I like to err on the side of too big.

It's a great looking guitar. I have built one Bubinga guitar and have a few sets left, it's great stuff.

This may be a chance for me to correct some thinking
Perhaps I interpreted something wrong.
In Robbies video class he stated that he bings the peaks in 3” from the rims because of how the sound wave ripples (maybe not the right explanation).
So, those peaks are 3” apart
If I got that wrong help me understand please

Also teaching in would be easier than normal since it’s a deeper body OM


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Not sure what O'Brien was saying but 3in from the edge of the side sounds reasonable. But probably not 3in from the opposite side of the tone bars which is the X-Brace, IOW 3in from the X-Brace too. I am simply looking at it with traditional sunglasses on. IOW it's not the way Martin would do it, that sort of thing. But then, those designs are time tested and proven. Maybe you are on to something, if not then you can always adjust it.

The way I like to think about scalloped braces is, make the guitar a straight braced guitar first. So design it as though you had straight bracing in mind. Then weaken the the braces at the point where they will allow the top to have that speaker cone like vibration. So that's more in the middle of the lower bout and build the stress up towards but not all the way too the sides.