Andy Culpepper -> RE: Guitar top tuning - what's the point? (Nov. 20 2011 14:58:11)
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I know both ways of building because I was taught by someone who takes a very scientific/theoretical approach to building. He believes that if you get the right numbers for the top, the right numbers for the back, and all the other resonating modes are not on top of each other, that = a good guitar. And guess what, he makes FANTASTIC guitars full of soul, I mean he is really talented. Personally, I have abandoned those techniques because I don't understand them, they were slowing me down, and I didn't see how they were helping me. My guitars have gotten better because I've trained my senses and my intuition. Most of my fine-tuning (and there needs to be a different word than tuning here because it's not about pitches), happens when the guitar is assembled before I glue the bridge on. And it's pretty much all in my thumbs, and to a lesser extent my ears now. I've built guitars that had very flexible, thin, light tops that achieved a low resonance, and the way that kind of top feels and flexes has been filed away in my memory, so I know how far I can go even if I may not necessarily go that far on a particular guitar. One of the things I love more than anything else about guitar making is that it truly is an expression of your personality, moreso than music in my case. Every builder does things differently according to what feels right, and that goes down to every detail of how you assemble the guitar and your working methods, all the way up to how you voice it. I do a lot of things differently than the way I learned, and sometimes I can't explain why, but I get so much joy out of doing things the way I want to. Gluing on a back center reinforcement in one piece and then notching out for the braces feels right. Hand planing a top and back to thickness feels right. Scraping a neck to adjust the shape instead of sanding feels right. You get my drift.
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