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It seems like so many things have been tried and being new to the craft I don't know what has been tried and what hasn't but has anyone seen or built a true 1 piece top/brace/bridge system?

Starting from 1" plus thick top/tone wood and CNC machining all the thicknesses, braces, compund curves and an integral bridge/plate into the top?

Of course you would burn a very nice piece of wood that could be used for many more tops but I guess at the very least it would end the discussion on which glue to use for the bridge.

Just curious.

Larry

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Larry, you are plowing new ground here. Interesting concept. I know some violin family instruments do that with the bassbar, carving it into the top rather than carving the top then adding a bassbar. Normally a top is coniferous while bridges and bridgeplates are hardwoods.

As Bruce said, it sounds like an interesting concept. I see two downfalls:
1) as you said, you are wasting a lot of wood.
2) you wouldn't be able to control the grain directions for various braces. For example, let's assume you would carve a typical x/finger braced top. Most of the grain of the x brace would be in the 45? range rather than straight with the length of the brace. Come to think of it, this would be the case with all but the upper transverse brace, and the grain on that would be 90? to where you want it. That alone would make be bag the idea. But maybe you are thinking something I'm not. I always applaud the inovative thinker. Hey, I'm sure most of Edison's ideas were flops. But the few he got right made it all worthwhile.

You are right; most things have been tried, including this. Well, at least the integral bracing part, I have never heard about a spruce bridge. The main problem with the integral braces are that they will have short grain depending on how much they cross the soundboard, if you had braces running more or less the length of the soundboard (like in a violin) this would be less of a problem. One advantage would be that it makes fitting the brace easier in an archtop instrument, but it would make graduating the plates very difficult. I understand braces like this are sometimes found on really cheap "screech box" violins.   On a guitar, a spruce bridge would likely not hold up very long, a bridgplate would definitely not hold up very long unless it was a pinless bridge.

<edit> I see a couple of people had posted as I was slowly typing...Arnt38727.3816087963

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Interesting responses as usual and I hadn't thought of all the angles (get it?) I can see how one might end up with an integrated but perhaps weaker diaphram - and one that might actually deaden instead of liven the sound. It's not that I'll try it anytime soon either, but was just wondering about the possibillities.

Larry

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Thank You and Best To All