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I had the pleasure of playing and looking under the hood of a Morris guitar at LB's Jam. This is one of three guitars that really stood out to my ears. Pretty conventional X braced top with the addition of a lower X in place of the two lower tone bars. Then there were two short lower tone bars off of the second X. It was an EIRW/Engleman fingerstyle guitar. Typically Engleman has a lower headroom but this thing was very responsive to a light touch and I couldn't get it to fizzle with a hard flatpick either. Anyone ever built one of these double X's?

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

Tim, every guitar I build is a double x.

Got any questions I can answer?
p

Paul, it appears that none of your braces are let in to the kerfing. Is that correct?

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

[QUOTE=Pwoolson] Got any questions I can answer?
p[/QUOTE]

Why are red gummy bears meaner than the green ones?

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

[QUOTE=John Mayes]

Why are red gummy bears meaner than the green ones?[/QUOTE]

Because they were double crossed

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I have no experience with double x bracing, but I have read that some repair people refer to it as the "double cross" because it is so difficult to repair.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Yup, that's 100% correct. I tuck NO braces, top or back. If you look back in the arcives you'll probably find several discussions about why I do this.

Thanks, Paul,   and we're all waiting for your answer to John's question. Although, Dave's was pretty good.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Well, it stems from an age-old rivelry. The green have been associated with the same conotations as green M&Ms. Thus making them MUCH more popular. So in a sense, the red gummi bears are red with jealousy. Wait, that doesn't make sense.
I could go down the "red gummi bears vs red/blue state" idea. You know, the fact that they are red makes them republican which naturally makes them meaner... But I shouldn't go down that road.

I've played Paul's guitars and they are pretty loud and sound good, however I'm heading in the exact opposite direction with my new bracing, less = more... If you look at Cumpiano's latest work he is using less bracing because he's found that some things just aren't needed.

One reason I think Woolson's are so responsive is that since he's not letting into the kerfing he is allowing the top to move more at the edges, kind of like a speaker cone moves. I'm still letting in my braces but they are very thin at the kerfing point...

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

I'm with you on that Paul. I only let in the top brace under the soundhole, and I will stop doing that on this next guitar. Speaker cone philosophy.

I have seen double x braces in which none of the intersections interlock. One brace passes over the other without touching. Sort of a brace tunnel. The guitar sounded good.

John

I call that style Fourex. In the Dos Equis style (IMO), the lower X's upper
arms taper down and end at the upper X arms, rather than crossing them
with additional lap joints.

IMO, Paul, you have a lot of wood there, and the scallop of the upper X is
too far forward (toward the soundhole). But if it sounds good and the top
doesn't dip in front of the bridge (wait ten years?), then ignore me.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Paul, Is it an optical illusion, or is your bridgeplate dished-out in the center?

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DES - Shepherd, MI

This is my usual bracing pattern, which you could say is a form of double X but with one of the lower X legs shifted to each side. I don't do the interlocking of the lower X with the finger braces as an integral part but it follows the same lines:



Alan Carruth has written, I think, on this forum and elsewhere about his use of the double X brace system

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Though I'd love to take credit for that type of crazy workmanship, alas, it's an illusion.

...thus the reason this top was aborted. But it's all I have pics of.
Yes, too much meat and the scallop is too dramatic. Here's a design of what I've been doing with Quad Xs.

[QUOTE=Dave White] This is my usual bracing pattern, which you could say is a form of double X but with one of the lower X legs shifted to each side. [/QUOTE]

Dave, it looks like an X-Y pattern to me. That's right--it's a BOY guitar!!

I did a little test project a couple of years ago, comparing an almost-matched pair of guitars. They were Small Jumbos, maple with Sitka tops, and built for jazz. The customer wanted two that sounded almost alike, so I built one with 'standard' paralel tone bars, and one with a double-X pattern. Everytnig else on them was as close to 'identical' as I could make it, including acoustic measurements of the parts. I took them to the ASIA meeting in '03 and had a bunch of people try them out. I wrote up the whole thing for 'Guitarmaker' magazine a couple of issues ago.

Basically, in a noisy environement the two guitars were about equally well liked, but in a quite space most people liked the double-X. There did not seem to be any particular bias in terms of playing style. There were measureable differences between the two instruments that correlated well with the subjective judgements.

Since then I've pretty well switched to double-X.

Al... Do you have any pictures of your bracing and some dimensions?? I've been using a standard parabolic, thin and high but I'm back at the experimenting stage and maybe I'll build 3 identical with the bracing being the only difference and see what I get...

I was going to do something similar to what Bourgeois is doing in that the treble X would remain a parabolic and the Bass side would be scalloped like a traditional martin brace. I was intending on keeping my standard bracing dimensions and my CF laminate in the bracing and see what I get...

Could be an interesting exercise

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Al:
Do you have any Chaldni patterns of the two guitars? Which one had the larger or 9nearer to a) closed ring? I would assume the double would have more nodes than the standard pattern but this isn't always as bad as it sounds ;)

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com