estebanana -> RE: Pickup wire clips on brace? (Mar. 27 2017 0:05:53)
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Not advocating making tops with 'soft' bracing - citing some examples of how things work despite everyones best opinion. Here are the outliers - Some Hauser guitars have a fallen top between sound hole and bridge. Purposefully done, intended, or mistake that does not matter? Many guitars that work quite well have dished tops, maybe not good looking, and not a trait that you would want to see. Example guitarist Joe Bacon played a famous makers guitar for perhaps 30 or more years, the top was dished between sound hole and bridge I asked him if he was worried about it, he said it's been like that for more than 20 years. I won't name them, but I know of at least two established makers who did what I mentioned, which is to carve out the braces to see what will happen. Both reported the arch remained, and one gave a time line, at least two years. The other guy implied a long duration of time. And there have been makers who intentionally build a distortion into the top from day one, who comes to mind is Jim Redgate, who even calls it "the wave model". So to say " it will last for 20 years" is my hyperbole talking, but the fact is distortion exists in playing guitars. Most of us,myself included, don't want that to happen and build to make sure it does not happen. But if you take a straight edge to the arch of enough old guitars, in my opinion you don't get a consensus of perfectly arched tops, what you see is great variety in the condition of the arch on guitars that are still working. One of the first things I do with a guitar coming into the shop is put a wooden straight edge across the top to read what state the arch is in and make a mental note. And I daresay, in many lightly built flamenco guitars you can perceive bridge tilts toward the neck, or that the top dips below the rim line between the bridge and edge of lower bout. These distortions exist on many guitars that sound good. Guitars of all brands.
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