Help ! My Engelmann soundboard is too soft !!!!

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mounirben

Posts: 43
Joined: Sep. 12 2013

Help ! My Engelmann soundboard is to...

Hello Guys,

I'm working on a new blanca project, the problem is when i arrived at 2.3 - 2.4 mm i noticed that my Engelmann soundboard is too soft, supple and easy to bend ? What do you recommend me ? Getting a new top ? Keep this thickness or go to 2.1 - 2.2 mm ?

Please help guys

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 3 2015 20:40:17

mounirben

Posts: 43
Joined: Sep. 12 2013

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

The wiehgt of this top is 142 grams.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 3 2015 21:01:17

jshelton5040

Posts: 1500
Joined: Jan. 17 2005

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

What do you mean it's too soft? How many guitars have you built that you can arrive at this masterful assessment? Making the top is a balance between the stiffness of the top and height of the fan braces. Each piece of wood is different and you need to adjust to the variations to arrive at the desired result.

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John Shelton - www.sheltonfarrettaguitars.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 3 2015 23:15:32

mounirben

Posts: 43
Joined: Sep. 12 2013

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

thanks John,

I built 5 guitars with euro spruce, but the tops were stiffer at 2.1mm than this one (Englmn). Maybe i misexplained, the top is not soft but it's not making resistance when i bend it (too flex)

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2015 9:11:16

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

Brace it with tall parabolic braces. It will work. I made a hot guitar with five braces 3mm wide and 6 mm tall shaped like airfoils from a top that was really flexible. And add a thin contra puente. Some Englemann can be like that when thin. Sometimes punky wood makes nice sound as long as density is not great.

Make sure you support the middle with a nice lateral brace at the waist, and softer tops like that are good candidates for a treble side slanted lateral brace. This tightens them up quite a lot. So you have options.

You never know. Also you can save that top for a person al experiment guitar and use another top if you are not ready to trust your judgment about bracing. No one is holding a gun to your head to make you use that top.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2015 9:53:28

mounirben

Posts: 43
Joined: Sep. 12 2013

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

Thank you Stephen, I appreciate

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2015 10:21:58

jshelton5040

Posts: 1500
Joined: Jan. 17 2005

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

Stephen's advice is good. At one time I had a lot of Engelmann tops since I was cutting the trees and resawing tops. In general I found the tops to be more flexible than euro spruce so they needed to be a little more thick. Of course trees from a different area (I was cutting in northern Idaho) might exhibit different characteristics.

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John Shelton - www.sheltonfarrettaguitars.com

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 4 2015 14:00:22

Echi

Posts: 1132
Joined: Jan. 11 2013

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

To me the best way is to put a quite long "cuentrapuente" ( 2mm flat strut under the bridge ) as many Granada luthiers do.
I could measure some Reyes guitars in the past years: I noticed that Reyes used different leghts for the cuentrapuentes being standard the rest of the bracing.
My opinion is that through the cuentrapuente (and maybe the small 4 closing struts reported in the plan sold by Gal) he added some lateral stiffness to compensate some week tops.
Alternatively you can work with the inclination of the 2 closing bars.
BTW my best guitar came out of from a red spruce top (from the italian alps) apparently to floppy laterally. I had bought it from the same company that sells spruce to Steinway company for the pianos

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 7 2015 8:56:23

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 19 2015 7:22:58

Ruphus

Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to Echi)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Echi

BTW my best guitar came out of from a red spruce top (from the italian alps) apparently to floppy laterally. I had bought it from the same company that sells spruce to Steinway company for the pianos

A couple of days ago on German TV there was once again mentioning of spruce from Austrian mountains in Tyrol (which is the same area as Italian Alp region), how it was sought after as tone wood and that Stradivari used it for his violine tops.

It was said that it was so well suited because of the cold weather there and that the temperatures resulted in narrow grain.

On the one hand the matter of coldness / density sounds so plausible, on the other hand the relevance of grain shape appears like myth, seeing that there exist finest guitars with tops of wide grain. Making it appear as if corresponding processing / scaling of individual material was what matters in the first instance.

Ruphus

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 19 2015 9:36:10

Echi

Posts: 1132
Joined: Jan. 11 2013

RE: Help ! My Engelmann soundboard i... (in reply to mounirben)

I know quite well those mountains as the area at the border from Italy and Austria has been my holiday place since I was child. Stradivari and many violin makers from Cremona buy their top wood in a different place though as different factors like the altitude of the mountains, the grade of the sun rays etc. make a big difference on the final result.
They mostly buy spruce grown in the area of “Val di Fiemme” in Italy: the resulting spruce is often more homogeneous than the so called “German Spruce” but less stiff longitudinally.
It’s the very same red spruce variety (called hasselfichte by someone ) but grown in a different valley.
Back to the TV show you mentioned, there are many generalizations.
The brown stripes (which are the tree rings) are usually stiffer than the white wood “in the same top”, but this doesn’t entail that a top with more veining will be stiffer than another top with good spacing among the veins.
It could be actually the opposite depending on the tree.
What really matters is the stiffness (or density or Module of Young) longitudinally and perpendicularly to the grain direction of each top wholly considered. Some luthiers (like Andrea Tacchi for instance) have a small machine called "Lucchimetro" to test the speed of the wave through the wood and this is the most reliable way to understand how good can be a top.
BTW a top with a good spacing among the grain means that the brown stripes are thicker and consequently stiffer than a top where the veins are many but small.

Again, there are other factors really influential you cannot detect with a glance like no run out (the tree makes a swirl while growing up) and a perfect quarter sawn cut.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 19 2015 11:46:03