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It seems that we are all walking a fine line when it comes to building guitars. Build them too strong, and you'll kill the tone a bit. Build them too weak..and they may sound great until the top becomes deformed.

Do you have any rules of thumb that allow you to tell if a guitar is not constructed sturdily enough? Can you tell by the appearance of the top, even on a newly made guitar?

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I would say that if you can see the bracing telegraph thru a new top ... look out .. it will likely ripple and belly at least, if not let go somewhere (ie a brace, the bridge) fairly soon. If the bridge starts rocking forward early on, that area is too thin/braced too lightly IMO.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Just out of curiosity, is there a standard solution for bellying behind the bridge? Always trying to learn...

If it is underbuilt, tone is lost.
My guitars do have some rippling and a bit of bellying at the bridge, but I expect some of this.

At Ervins class we purposely carved our braces too small to hear the change in tone
Both extremes

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Andy Z.
http://www.lazydogguitars.com

If it implodes it's too lightly built

I remember some of the guitar's we saw at Ervin's shop that had brace telegraphing and some bellying..... everyone seemed to be just fine with that, to each his own I guess.

Cheers,

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Gwaltney Guitars

Yes, I don't think telegraphing of braces is a sure sign of being underbuilt. Some of the best sounding guitars I have run across have telegraphing braces.

Greg (and others are right) the guitar just takes a nose dive in terms of tone and volume past a certain point. It is really quite dramatic.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

A few of our small factory type brethren are putting out guitars with bellies that would make Larry the Cable Guy proud. Doesn't seem to affect their tone, volume or following I guess. One in particular's guitars belly so bad it would scare me to death...and they're practically running out of the stores they're in...go figure.

For whatever reason my tops aren't bellying hardly any at all. And I think my tops are braced fairly lightly compared to some.

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"We might not be big but we sure are slow"

Telegraphing would not concern me as much as if my braces were text messaging.........

Andy bro great explanation!

What do you mean by the braces telegraphing?

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

I assume they mean that you can tell where the braces are under the top, just by looking at it from the top. In other words, the top is so thin that it is visibly deforming around the braces. Is this correct?

From an engineering standpoint, it seems that when we say a guitar is underbuilt, it really means that after creep has set in, the setup of the guitar has changed appreciably to the point where it is not functional. (Creep is the phenomenon whereby a loaded part continues to deform over a period of time). I've read that wood creeps up to approximately 150% of the initial deformation. I've never tested this...do any of you guys have any experience with this?

That's interesting that it is so accepted that some well known makers are building this lightly...while others (Collings springs to mind) seem to build more robustly without sacrificing structural integrity. I would have to expect that some of those lightly built guitars, even though they are built by folks at the top of their game, just aren't going to stand the test of time. Which leads us to another question: How long should a guitar be playable??

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Correct-o-mundo!

top so thin the braces or at least outline from the top.

Leave Larry alone! He's lost 4 bowling balls of weight. No longer has a belly!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Well, not to be a curmudgeon here, but...

I'm frankly concerned as much about the longevity of an instrument as I am about tone. To me, and this is not meant as any disrespect to any builders who are building ultra-light, but I have my doubts about how long some of those guitars will last. I would love to see (not that I'll ever know) my guitars last for a couple hundred years. I think about old Martins that stand the test of time, and how they are prized. That's great for a factory I suppose, as in the case of the Martin family, they have continued to run the business for generations. Most of us won't do that, but I'd hate to think people will look back 100 years from now and say "I got this old "_ _ _ _ _ _ " guitar my grandfather left to me. It cost him a small fortune when he bought it, but it only lasted fifteen years before it got a hole in the top, and another five years before it imploded.". I'd rather build one that is still able to be played in a hundred years.
Bearing that in mind, even though they often have very good tone and great response, I would be personally wary of building so lightly that you approach anywhere near the point of them losing their tone. Maybe I'm all wrong here and there's nothing to worry about, but I still have my concerns.
Also, if you're trying to build pre-war sounding instruments, you can't go the ultra-light method. It's not the same kind of tone. So one has to be aware of that as well. If you build it really light, don't expect to string it up with mediums and start crankin' bluegrass tunes on it. They are different beasts...like comparing a lion to a domestic cat. They just aren't the same.

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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."

Can I ask what happens when the braces are too small? Is it volume or richness or something else that's lost?

Don, I'm personally on the same page as you - stability and serviceability over time are priorities for me.

That said however, not all customers are looking for the same thing. I can probably count them on my fingers, but I do have customers who are fine with a short limited life span of a guitar in favor of a particular power and tone during it's life span. These are instruments that I service, a few of them built by members here, that when the customer brings them in for evaluation and fine tuning I often have to say that I would consider them disposable. They may sound great to them, and may last for 5, 10, (maybe 15 years with a neck reset), but would be surprised if they didn't need serious top work or perhaps a re-top by then. And though the builder may not have intended or advertised their instrument as this, you'd be surprised how often the players seem okay with that, already pretty much expecting this when they bought it.

Sometimes a player is older and retired, and just shrugs and says "well that's about as long as I expect to last, and really won't care much after then". Sometimes it's a player who looks at it as an investment more like a car that has to be replaced every few years, and not like heirloom furniture. $60,000 car or $6,000 guitar, use 'em while they last, and replace them when they start to wear out. When I was racing hydroplanes, we were lucky to get half a dozen 4 minute heats out of an engine before blowing it up or having to rebuild it. We weren't after a long haul Cummins diesel, we wanted to as much as we could get out of them for this race, and had to push them to the brink of failure to get there.

And it's probably no surprise that some some players (or perhaps buyers/owners is a better term) feel a certain sense of pride in this, that they want the best at any expense, even if it has to be pushed over the limit and made for a short life. Though I disagree strongly with the necessity of that approach, some of these guitars really can become cannons in a flat pickers hands. Personally though, the tone of an underbuilt guitar often turns me away before even considering the structural stability.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.