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After finishing #2 as a ladder-braced parlor, I discovered the top was too thin...live and learn, and every disaster is an opportunity, right?

Conveniently, I scored some sinker redwood that washed up on a friend's property a few years ago, beautiful stuff with nice, purple mineral staining. So the obvious solution is to rebuild it with an x-braced redwood top and see how that sounds. Looking at my Antes plans, the x is at 90 degrees, and the x just catches the front edge of the bridge. Would narrowing the x angle to catch more of the bridge have some sort of catastrophic effect on sound? I think I see a couple of structural advantages to it, but was curious if there is some sort of common wisdom on how it might affect sound.

Yes, I will be rifling through the stack of milled redwood in the barn for another QS piece...

Interestingly, after spending a couple of evenings working the top down to thickness, the purple, mineral stained sections are noticeably denser/stiffer than the rest of the top, to the point that I really had to pay attention when sanding. There apparently are advantages to newbies starting with lots of hand work.

Lengthen the bridge, that's what I do on those.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I'm building one too, and just went through the same thing. What I decided to do was slide the X and the finger braces down about 1/2 inch. All other braces remain in the same spot. After adding soundhole braces - a good idea I think - this becomes very close to traditional Martin X bracing for this size guitar. There's a drawing in this thread that makes it clear http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=37978&p=497899&hilit=antes+parlor#p497899

Terence's suggestion seems to work great also, you can't argue with success. There's some links sound files in that thread somewhere. I guess I'll know how my alternate approach worked in a couple months. I braced much more lightly than the plans specified.

Bad cell phone picture:

(ignore my non traditional upper bout bracing... )

Thanks all, and thanks for the link, Greg. How I missed that in my search I have no idea. Rosette installed last night, laying braces out and gluing today, since I'm home with a sick child. Going with 90 degrees shifted slightly forward, 3 3/8 soundhole (for no other reason than it works for me aesthetically), and the tone bar shifted slightly forward so that it clips the corner of the bridge plate and theoretically helps reinforce the back corner of the bridge. Will be a box again soon. I'll post some photos; it's a really nice, imperfect piece of redwood and I really enjoyed turning it into a top by hand. Unfortunately, I wasted its two brothers while learning to thickness and join... There will be a small knot (inclusion??) just in front of the bridge, I was hoping to put the bridge on top of it, but no dice. I'm calling it a feature

x just catches the front edge of the bridge
Isn't that enough?

3 3/8" sound hole? You must have very small hands.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Thanks for the help, guys. Here's what I ended up with. Some cleaning, very minor carving and finish sanding left to do, but on the whole I'm happy with it. My first shot at scalloped braces, sort of went with intuition, and I think it came out OK. Taps nicely. LMI white makes a heckuva mess on redwood!

Top is .120 prior to the final round of sanding, braces are 1/4 in, .5 tall at the X. HRW plate, .09 thick.




Need to clean that bench before I show it to the public....

I like it. Go for it.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.