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I have made a few falcate braced contemporary classical guitars. While they fall in the classical range for size, nut width, scale length and string spacing, they are contemporary looking with a cutaway and a slightly radiused fret board. In general the guitars have been well received, in fact my instructor commissioned me to build one and he switched from his mid 70 Kohno 30 guitar. There are some I find that can not get over the contemporary features. So I am making what will look like a Hauser style knock-off but with the falcate bracing pattern. I built it with a spanish heel using a solera.

The guitar has a Lutz spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides. I used ebony bindings with a maple purfling. Also I have a rosewood\maple\black\maple\rosewood purfling scheme for the top. I was going to match some of the rosette colors (green and red) but just could not go that far. I took a bit of a short cut and used a LMI classical neck (it still required a bit of shaping) and a classical rosette that I have.

I am just starting finish prep. I still need to make a bridge.

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Very nice John!
Why don't you extend the purflex theme from the end graft to the back strip?
I think it will look nice with the BRW.

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Sen CL Goh
http://senguitar.blogspot.com

Funny I/m working on a spanish style neck in soft maple for a future build .My first one, did you use a regular slot for the sides or a wider slot that uses glued wedges to hold the sides in . I made one with a wedged slot ?

That's really cool.

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

Thanks, A very good idea. I only had a small strip left over from another project. At this point I would be scared to make the channel on the radiused plates as I have a hard enough time on flat plates.



I started with an LMI neck on this guitar. It seemed to have >.080" slots. I had to sand the ends of the sides a bit to get them in and out. When I made my own neck I used wider slots and wedges. I have found it is really easy to crack woods like EIR along the grain taking a side in an out of a tight slot while fitting. I like the wider slots and wedges.

Thanks Terence,

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John,
I have been interested for some time in making a classical guitar with falcate bracing. What do you find to be the advantage(s) of such over a traditionally braced classical?

Thanks,
Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

I have built 4 of them so far. I have found that they all are loud with good projection, follow the player very well, even across all of the strings, maintains its voice at very quiet levels allowing for long decrescendos, the notes while playing are well separated, they has good sustain (to the point that damping technique is important).

I have found that I need to hit a top resonance taget between 190 and 200 Hz. Too low and the higher notes on the first E string are not as good as they can be. Too high and the lower bass notes strings start to loose their rich voice.

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Very late to the party but wanted to also compliment you on your build and ask two questions.

Is your soundboard, and solera, radiused in the lower bout and flat in the upper?

Do you have some pics of how you attach your outside form to the solera, if at all, and the way the opening of the mold works at the neck opening?

I'm in the process of building both solera and mold and like your ideas.

Thx

Jon

Thank you,

My solera is radiused (might be too precise of a word), dished out 2 mm in the lower bout centered around the bridge location and the upper bout is flat. I also have a slight downward angle on the neck support, calculated to provide a 2 mm drop from the top plane at the nut.

I looked for some good pictures for attaching the form to the solera, I description and previous posted picture might help. I took an outside mold that had the neck open to accommodate the neck and with proper alignment clamped it to the solera. Then I just drilled a bunch of holes through both the mold and the solera. I installed t-nut inserts on the bottom side of the solera.



My neck opening is larger than the neck and is not used as a reference. Rather after the neck is attached to the rims I use a straight edge to align the center line of the head stock and the center line of the heel to the center line of the end block. While aligned I place tape alongside of the neck on the solera to use as a guide win I glue the rims to the top. I do have an insert to pull the mold closed that fits above the neck. Sometimes I use the insert.

I have build blogs on all of my guitars on my http://www.harvestmoonguitars.com site, http://harvestmoonguitars.com/BlackwoodClassical1.htm has a lot of pictures with me working with the solera and the mold.

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I'm curious about the bracing logic... the braces appear to be much taller under the bridge than around the soundhole. Seems backward to me, since the soundhole is such a weak point. But obviously it works, so maybe I'm missing something in my theory of bracing design Can you provide any insight?

With any detailed discussion about the logic I think I would mostly be misrepresenting the logic that Trevor Gore used when he designed the falcate bracing pattern. To your point I can point out that the sound hole is supported by a set of carbon fiber reinforced braces surrounding the sound hole those braces are 5 mm tall and tied in to the main braces.

Once structural needs of the braces are met I like the idea of having all the braces losing height as they go away from the bridge. There is quite a bit of rotational force at the saddle so having the braces strong there really helps. The rotational force really falls off moving away from the bridge. There is a large single transverse tied into the rims helping to keep the neck from pulling forward.


I think there is a larger effective sound board area by removing the lower transverse brace in a classical guitar. If one squints at the two main falcate braces one can almost see an X brace. As a pair they do everything but cross. The design relies on a stiff bridge to deal with the lack of horizontal braces in the center of the lower bout.

I have some raw recordings on sound cloud of my first falcate classical and my first falcate steel string. http://soundcloud.com/johnparchem

For an indication of the ability of the bracing pattern to take the structural load. I offer this steel string 12 string falcate braced guitar. The main braces are only 1 mm taller than this classical guitar (the top is thicker for SS ). I have also used the bracing for a falcate 8 string classical.

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