Official Luthiers Forum!

How does the thickness of the back, sides,and top effect the sound of a resonator guitar. The wood of the squareneck I built was about 4mm thick, perhaps a little less. Is it as critical as with a regular guitar?
kgeraldj

You'll get different opinions about this. Mine is that only the top wood is significant - even then it's really the stiffness rather than the thickness that matters. In my experience if the top is built too lightly then it vibrates too much and takes volume and tone away from the cone, particularly in a spider bridge instrument.

I think they can stand to be heavily built all over, really. Don't forget you're using heavier strings than most regular acoustics, usually minimum .015 to .056 and maybe as much as .018 to .060 for a squareneck. And for squareneck dobro tuning you're tuning those bottom strings up from standard.

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Pete
http://www.petewoodmanguitars.com