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That seems to be the case Anders. Do you think that the novice's fascination with bracing is due to the fact that it is the only part of a guitars construction that offers a tangible reason for one builders instruments being different from another's? The reality seems to be (and as you constructors have said) that the sound of a guitar is holistic and that the bracing is not really that important to the result. After reading this group's comments it seems that rather than the being indicative of the guitar's sound, the bracing probably shows more about the nature of the soundboard and what the builder thinks he can get out of it. So the builder maximises the virtues of the wood that he has selected for the top and then fine tunes it to sing in the way he wants. He/she would then select the nature of the bracing to ensure that it's properties are allowed to shine while keeping in mind the necessity of ongoing structural integrity through the years. Is there any constructor that has used a single type of bracing without deviation for their entire career? If so, would we find substantial variation in the size of the braces that they used?
Dark art indeed. We need to keep our trade secrets. What do you the think the old guild system was all about? Well not so much about keeping secrets, more like insuring that the craft prospered and the apprentices came up in the proper environment. Here is an answer to your post: It is an art, most artisans are creative and have ideas that they wish to try. The bracing is a very visual thing, but also sensual in every way. The way that you arrange the design, choose the materials, for strength, flexibility, resonace, and how you fasten the ensemble. Tension, no tension, light tension, angle, or bend the brace, how to carve it and voice the response. Rather complex. Like a true artist, the final result and goal must be in your spirit and you connect with the material, make it come alive.
The bracing system is the easyest part of guitar construction to talk about because its so visual and everyone can find pictures of bracing systems on the www. And for every year of the www. there seems to be more "experts" with an enormous need to express themselves on forums of all kinds. We live in a world where the easy acces to information makes us believe that we know a lot but there are a ton of signs saying that because of the poor quality of that information, we actually end up knowing less every day.
anders, I know that the water over there is very good. Take a good long drink and chill out a little bit. You are a very interesting person, with lots of well thought out ideas. Do not let yourself get upset by the trivial things. Look at the big picture. You do good work and people love your guitars. the most important thing that we can do in this day and age is to keep a good sense of humor. I love it when you talk funny to us. I will tell you about some of the crazy things that people try to get away with on musical instruments. Beyond belief. The more absurd the better, at least around here.
Amen Anders, sometimes I read people's comments on YouTube and it makes me wonder if schools are teaching the same as they used to. Or maybe I'm just getting old and don't have a grip on the kid's new lingo.... If you don't laugh you are gonna cry😚
So here is a story for you. This jazz genius comes to my shop and wants me to modify his fretboard. He needed to get more tones from his guitar. 12 tones to the octave were just not doing it for this player. So the solution was to add frets between every fret. In a stroke of brilliance, he opted for the brass color fret wire, so he would not get confused to easily. The job was pretty straight forward and turned out well, he was happy, but I never did get a chance to hear what kind of music that he wanted to make on that guitar.
Mmmenk, your comment about water brings to mind a bit of banter that an artist I know likes to use.
Quote:"You know what *insert name of town*? The bottled water here is much better than I remember!" He then proceeds to take a good long slug out of a bottle of wine😀
Tone bars and bracing patterns are the key to great sound, right? Honey, if it was that easy the shops in China would be cranking them out by the ton, and you would never have to pick up a chisel as long as you live. It is like an open chess board, and how and why you move the various parts of the puzzle around make all the difference in the end. Checkmate is not the goal with music, but the goal to make great instruments that inspire great players to make great music just keeps all of us coming back for more. Part of the great circle.
This jazz genius comes to my shop and wants me to modify his fretboard. He needed to get more tones from his guitar. 12 tones to the octave were just not doing it for this player. So the solution was to add frets between every fret.
Gee.. that sounds like truly cerebral Jazz dude. Maybe next time he will want a Shakti/Mclaughlin setup. Hollow out the fretboard betwwn the frets so that you can bend and be all over the place. Then add some free ringing sympathetic strings and you have a true monster guitar.
Or maybe he should just skip the frets and be free. Playing fretless is cool. I do it every day on a 327mm scale. This and having fun with the dogs I consider my best quality time. It always works.
So here is a story for you. This jazz genius comes to my shop and wants me to modify his fretboard. He needed to get more tones from his guitar. 12 tones to the octave were just not doing it for this player. So the solution was to add frets between every fret. In a stroke of brilliance, he opted for the brass color fret wire, so he would not get confused to easily. The job was pretty straight forward and turned out well, he was happy, but I never did get a chance to hear what kind of music that he wanted to make on that guitar.
So did you go for 24 tones to the octave then?
One of my favourite guitarists had a very strange means of having his frets arranged
17 frets to the octave, which a few instruments in Middle Eastern music/instruments use.
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ORIGINAL: Anders Eliasson Hollow out the fretboard betwwn the frets so that you can bend and be all over the place. Then add some free ringing sympathetic strings and you have a true monster guitar.
I've seen a few guitars like that, generally DIY mod projects.
The frets are as normal but not much else is for this instrument. It's a 23 string banjo!
There are an extra 4 strings on the headstock to make it 9. I can see 3 tuners on the neck and there are 11 more micro tuners on the frame of the banjo to bring it upto 23 strings!
Thanks for the help. I tried to reduce pixel size with a photo manipulation program, and was a bit surprised at what happened on the listing. Impossible to understand the original photo upload, surprised that it went thru. As a result of this snafu, it seems like you made some corrections to the up-loader. Did you set the list default software to automatically shrink incoming images? At any rate, the idea is to show that lots of design ideas are successful This design was a variation by the Selmer company on a design by Mario Maccaferri. They did plenty of experimental models and some of the most interesting work during their run with this line of guitars. They did some nylon/gut string variations, with various sound hole shapes, internal resonator structure, cranked tops(induced arch structure), both fixed and floating bridge systems and much more. The bodies were designed to be laminated construction. Many materials, string scales, and rosette and details are available on these styles, and they are still evolving, and perhaps more popular than ever before. Just hard for me to get my hands inside the small oval sound hole to do repairs and adjustments, so I have invented tools to help with those jobs.
ok, I am not going to post the images, just try to describe some of the designs that I have seen, and have worked on. There is a fellow who is trying every variation that he can envision, and some of them work. He is doing radial patterns, cross patterns, octagons, helicals, fractels, you name it. Do they work? sure. once you get the strings on there, they will make a sound. How do they respond, depends on how hard you hit them. What about the tone and response and the voicing? well, that is what takes a bit of time to adjust and perfect.
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This and having fun with the dogs I consider my best quality time. It always works. 
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