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I was just looking at Borders Books' website and it says that Cumpiano's "Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology" is out of print. Whats up with that! I'm glad I have a copy.

By-the-way, In Cumpiano's book it says that the bridge patch should not touch the X brace and should be about 1 mm away. It appear that most folks have the bridge patch touching the X brace. I did on my first two builds and was pleased with the sound. On my current build, I followed Cumpiano's advise and positioned the patch with about 1 mm of space between it and the X brace... I hope that was good idea... Any comments or feed-back?

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

I think that you are fine Steve buddy.

Some folks even inlet the plate into the X but that creates a nightmare repair/replace situation so I don't do that. I bevel all of my plate edges to 45 degree much like feathering away a brace end and for the same reasons, to avoid stress risers. I also butt the beveled edge to the X legs but I think that what Cumpiano advices is clearly not a bad way to go either.

Regarding being out of print...... that would really suck. I have never been the biggest fan on Cumpiano and Natelson's book mostly because even Cumpiano has updated his methods many times now but it is a landmark work and pretty much priceless to folks like us.

The other school of thought is that if it is touching, then there is better sound transmission from the patch to the X-braces. So what is right? You decide....what matters is if it works for you.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

The publisher is still selling the book. $40.00 - in stock. I found 40+ hits for the book on http://www.AbeBooks.com, ranging from $18.95 to $125.00. The $125 one was an original hardback, still in it's shrink wrap. There were actually some used hardbacks in the 40.00 - 50.00 range too. the Publisher version is a softcover. That's what I have. I don't love the book, but it has some good information in it.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

It wouldn't surprise me at all if the book has gone out of print; virtually every enquiry into luthiery on internet forums is answered partly referring to acquiring the Cumpiano and Natelson volume.

I am sure that William Cumpiano will reprint in the future, as the book I have is the second edition, and I would find it fascinating if he and Jonathon Natelson (if he's still around?) added the amendments in the third edition that are on William's website, such as the barrel bolt design for the mortise & tenon neck joint.

Time is a funny thing. You cannot imagine the enthusiasm it received when even its section on carving the heal appeared in draft form in an early LMI catalog in 1985. It would be two years later that Bill would get it published after being adrift in publishing house management transitions. There was no source that came close to it when it was published, and I'll argue since. It is a case study in technical writing. It is as close as someone has come to writing the guitarmaking version of John Muir's fantastic, How to keep your Volkswagon Alive, A Step by Step Guide for the Complete IdiotAnd while the advent of sanding dishes and readily available tooling has made some of it obsolete, its general approach is still sound. The internet has made some of it irrelevent, but you have to put it in the absolute vacuum in which it arrived -- no books on guitarmaking had been published since Irving Sloane and David Russel Young, both of which explained generally what needed to be done, but didn't come close to explaining how to do it.

Perhaps there will be a worthy successor to it in the future, but it really was a revolution in the availability of published methodology on acoustic guitar construction.

Very well said David!

You know that Bill Cumpiano is active and has his own forum on Mario DeCosta's very fine http://www.luthierforum.com