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I am building my first guitar. I'm planning on installing bracing and was wondering if I should go with a gobar and radius dishes. I was planning on doing it straight out of the Cumpiano/Natelson book by just radiusing some major braces and using clamps as this is more economical and will test my skills a bit more. Opinions please.

Pete Moore

Go bar decks are very useful. Radius dishes can be expensive especially for someone like me located in a place where no one makes them (so I would have to pay high costs for the dish, and the same cost for the shipping for that dish). It is worth it though, with clamps you need a huge set of various clamp, requiring something like 4 to 6 clamps (depending on the length of the brace) to clamp a single brace and its simply not a very good use of your time. By using a go bar deck you can glue on most or all of the braces at the same time, saving you a LOT of time and drastically reducing the time it takes for complication (such as humidity issues) to develop.

A go bar deck can simply be 2 pieces of thick plywood, with 4 legs screwed between them. It's crude but effective.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

If you plan on building a second (frequently the case, planned or not!) definitely gobar deck and dishes now.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Thanks for the advise. I made a gobar press and several rods out of wood strips. I read somewhere that you optimally want 5-7 lbs. of pressure per rod, is this correct? I haven't decided yet on the dishes but since I do plan on making more I'll probably get a couple.

You can't go wrong with the gobar deck. You'll be glad you did.

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Thanks,
Blain

http://www.ullrichguitar.com

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