Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm likely on the wrong forum here, but this seemed like a good place to start. I've been building some ukes again recently and I've been re-looking at details of ukes that I own to see if there is anything interesting about my favorites. I have an early sixties Martin 51 Baritone that I really like a lot. The top bracing consists of a cross brace above and below the soundhole, a bridge pad, and a single, very light, scalloped diagonal brace in the lower bout (peak very close to the edge of the treble side and tapering off very quickly). At 50 years old or so, the top is still quite flat, and it sounds great.

I had always been under the assumption that the Martin baritones were braced like the Martin tenors I've had, with a sort of fan bracing in the lower bout. Is my baritone an anomaly, or is this a common bracing pattern for the style 51? I know that other uke makers like Favilla frequently used no bracing at all in the lower bout (like a soprano), but with the heavier bracing you usually see in Martin tenors, I just wonder. Does anyone have any idea of history of top bracing on Martin baritones? I want to build some baritones, and will undoubtedly try this type of bracing, but just wondered about the history.

Any input would be appreciated--sorry if I posted this in the wrong place!

Dave

Dave:
I can't help you on the Martin bracing history but I have built baritones using Kasha bracing and using falcate bracing. My choice at present is falcate bracing (Trevor Gore's website).
My latest uses a 3/4 guitar box strung as a baritone ukulele (22" scale). It sounds very "guitary" when strug with Aquila baritone strings. I am guessing that I am approaching the parlor guitar zone.

Check the Fleamarket music website. They have a vintage ukulele section there.

Bob

For tops using 3 fan brace with either mahog or spruce bridge patch plus 1 upper transverse brace. 2or 3 mini braces to reinforce soundhole.3 vy thin back transverse braces. or 2 across the upper half an a diagonal across the lower half of back. Basically a modification of the baritone uke plan from MIMF , don/t know if it/s a martin plan ??, but a popular uke website is ukulele underground.

Seems like they have used the ladder bracing of period Romantic guitars - usually consisting of 2 harmonic Bars either side of the Rosette and a diagonal bar just above the bridge position. Occasionally one sees another Bar placed just below the Bridge position. I've even tried this on a modern Classical Guitar:

Thanks for the input everybody--sounds like mine is about like Todd's. Pretty much like the picture Michael put out there on the classic guitar, but with a bridge pad in place of the ladder brace that goes more-or-less under the bridge in his picture. The lower brace on my uke is very very thin, and scalloped with the peak very close to the treble side.

On my archtop ukes, I tend to think of them more as 4 string treble guitars--typically set up with steel strings and built more or less as shrunken guitars rather than ukes per se. But on traditional ukes, I really do believe that less is more. The lighter you can get by with on construction, the better they seem to sound. Guess Martin found that out early on (and the earlier uke makers already knew this). I was just surprised to see the super light construction of the baritone--much lighter build than the Martin tenors I've had.

At any rate, it sounds like mine is a typical early 60's build.

On a side note, it's interesting to see the evolution of Martin's tiple bracing over time. The earlier Martin tiples I've had used more of a tenor uke type bracing (ladder braces and fan), while the later ones are X braced. To my ear, the earlier ones sound better, but with 10 steel strings the tops do tend to distort pretty bad.

Dave