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Run fast Greg....

I did read that at least two places back in the day. So it's likely from some outdated text from the old days when little was available for toilet reading....

I'm not sure that this is a myth though when you think about it. We see all manner of cracks in our repair world and the notion that rosettes also serve the purpose of being not unlike a topside, visible cross grain cleat in the weakened area of the sound hole it does make sense. I know, I know I must have been smoking the drapes again. By the way Michigan is a legal medical drape smoking state....

I have never seen a crack transitioning though the rosette either come to think about it. I'm sure it can happen with say an end grain or radial rosette (now I'm ducking and running too...).

Be sure though to only sand the rosette and guitar top with 80 grit or it won't sound good....

If you only sand the backs of the guitar with say 60 grit and wear a sweater no need for a strap....

Who knows, they do look cool... rosettes that is.

I know this one is gonna trash off several folks , but then again Im Wud

There is enough wood from " The Tree" to supply luthiers till H3!! freezes over .

Ok bring it on I have broad shoulders

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The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
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Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
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The dead certain belief that a particular component of a guitar has an impact on overall tone that is all out of proportion to its actual contribution to the overall tone. This happens a lot in both the electric and acoustic worlds. If you listen to enough opinions, you find that the various parts of a guitar contribute something like a total of 300% to the the overall tonal quality.

It's a bit like Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

And my question to Mr. Keillor always was, "above average at what?".

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

That's a huge one and rather all encompassing as well! Builders stress over this nit and that nit in search of the magic tone when it's highly likely that if the basic acoustic guitar is built very well and set-up very well too most folks will get where they want to go.

I'm pretty certain having seen and evaluated hundreds of small builder guitars that some pretty simple stuff that is not being done well currently, such as decent fret work, would have more realizable and genuine impact on tone than most of the snake oil beliefs that folks tend to embrace....

If you look at the Dan Earlywine video I posted on the Fretwork thread Dan demonstrates what poor fret work actually can sound like. It's very much tone robbing at it's best and precisely why getting the basics down, such as fretting is much more important to my way of thinking than chasing myths.

What nut material is sonically superior, different bridge pins, etc. all of these things are rather moot in the big picture if the basics are not done well too.

Regarding Garrison I still remember the story of the 32 Methodist Ministers on the pontoon boat - priceless...

My favorite to date:
Reversed kerfed liners stiffen the sides and produce a guitar with better sustain.

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ELEVATE || Next Level Lutherie
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Ahehm.. I may be on shaky ground here, correct me if I'm wrong please.-
I've noticed reversed kerfed liners if deep enough DO stiffen the sides in a similar way to solid linings (or laminated sides) and as i remember from the Gore book stiffer sides can help prevent them "sapping" the energy produced in a guitar soundboard by the strings (impedence mismatch as I recall, I don't have the book to hand, it's where it belongs, the workshop)
Would this not help to extend the time that the sound's audible threshold is maintained, i.e. the sustain?
Maybe I'm really mixed up here, help me out please.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

The ultimate myth is:
"I won't make any more guitars after this one."

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Flamenco blancas ALWAYS have deep, solid linings...

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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

Colin I started chuckling when I read the word "Ahehm..."

I've build with traditional, wimpy kerfed linings as well as reverse kerfed linings and the reversed kerfed linings result in a much stiffer rim. So much so that it changed how I build in that once the reverse kerfed linings are in I can lose the mold and move on. With traditional linings this was not the case and the mold remained in the box's life a bit longer.

If there is a tonal impact I can't say, too subjective for me but I will add that lots of folks such as Trevor, Ervin and his disciples, etc. believe strongly that a very stiff rim can be a contributor to a more responsive instrument and I tend to agree with them.

No biggie but I wonder how many OLFers are quietly feeling a bit wounded as a result of our myth busting....

Dan maybe we should start a "12 Fret Program" for reluctant never another one builders....

Priceless

I don't know if the "reversed kerf" topic belongs in the myths category. It does affect a change in side stiffness - little doubt about that, as common observations tend to coincide and agree with basic engineering principles and predictions. Pretty safely in the "confirmed" rather than "busted" category.

As to increasing sustain, that may fall in the conjecture or theory department, as solid proof of level of direct influence of this singular factor toward final effect in application is a pretty tough thing to prove with 100% certainty. Still, while influence may be debated, I don't think it could be written off as myth.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I can see how solid linings and reverse kerf linings makes the rims stiffer before he top and back is on, but once the panels are on, and the outline is fixed, I can't see how it would make a difference. I can see how the increased mass of solid ones could make a difference though...

The sides are not perfectly rigid, even after the body is assembled. The guitars I have built with added ribs on the sides have a brighter sound, due to the increased stiffness.


I have. But there is no doubt that an inlaid rosette strengthens the hole against cracks, and is one reason it was developed in the first place.
Sound does travel along the grain, since the sound velocity increases with stiffness. Woods are almost always stiffer along the grain than across.
I suppose one of the biggest myths is that the need for a neck reset is determined by the lack of stiffness of the neck, or by a slipped dovetail joint.
A neck reset is not the cure for a bowed neck.

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John

"But there is no doubt that an inlaid rosette strengthens the hole against cracks, and is one reason it was developed in the first place."

Thanks John - that's what I recall reading a couple of places and saying to myself hmmmm that makes sense and I didn't know that.

Rosettes are more than just another pretty face then - not a myth!

I have a friend who builds (and actually sells) violins, and she mentioned that the little purfling around the top and back that is on virtually every violin is there to keep cracks from traveling. I can definitely see that the guitar rosette can serve the same purpose.

Ed

How about choice of wood for electric guitars? I have not built too many myself though I just had someone contact me about building one. I try and convince them that choice of pickup and amp is what counts but boy oh boy are there lots of 'myths' about that out there on down to set necks, through body necks, maple fretboards or other exotic woods. I'm of the opinion based on my limited experience with electric guitars that their is no tone to the wood but perhaps other properties that affect the dynamics.

BUt how about this one too? Cedar is better for finger picking.

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

The electric gutiar crowd is just as guilty if not more so in promoting myths and pushing utter snake oil. Who was that guy, Roman in Vegas who died a few years ago who was very well known for saying things that were absolute nonsense....

And then in the violin world there is another one who evey 10 years or so will tell the world in a highly promoted press release that he had solved the mystery of the Strad tone... From mini-ice ages to borax in the spruce he was on a mission from God and there was no stopping him either.

The only problem might be that these guys were wrong...... r-o-n-g....

Not sure that I would call cedar fans for finger style guitars myth masters. Although again subjective as hell cedar does do nicely for a finger style guitar, I have one on my bench at home at the moment. It's not my favorite wood, as a repair guy I hate it to death because when cedar decides to lose it's bridge it tends to want to commit suicide in the process.... with lots of lifted fibers and at times top damage.

But for folks who play FS and want a lush, enveloping tone with lots of over tones cedar can work very well IME. It's also quite pretty IMO.

Besides the purfling, they scallop the bracing on the HD while they don't on the D which can make a difference in the sound.

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

If the guy actually believes that wood doesn't matter, then why did he make his bridge from "tone wood"?

I sense hokum at play here.

Also, I have 35 years of experience that taught me wood matters, even on solidbodies.

If you don't believe that wood matters, then GTFU out of lutherie, right fricking now!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

My next guitar will be perfect in every way.

" i've got a lot of tools and have been working with wood for 30 years -making a guitar should be a piece of cake and i'll save money too!"
instrument making is the highest form of wood working and just because you can pound out a kitchen cabinet carcass doesn't mean you can craft a fine guitar.

"just turn the truss rod to set the action on your guitar. +/-.001 should be no problem".
as if eyeballing string action with a ruler is even close enough, then there's the fact that a guitar is a organic construct and is always moving and changing, and the truss rod regulates neck relief.

"my neck is not wide enough. can't i just use some bondo and wood filler to make it bigger?"
uh.. no. this is anti-craft. just buy another guitar.

I agree that the pickups and the amp are the main contributors to electric guitar tone. Scale length is also a biggy. But I also think that the type of wood used for the body does make a small contribution. When the vibrations from the strings go through the nut and the saddles into the body, it's not a one-way trip. They also return to the strings by the same route and are superimposed on whatever vibrations are going on from the player picking the strings and they get incorporated into the signal sent to the amp from the pickups. I don't have data to back this up, but I have to think that the wood acts as a filter that alters the profile of the vibrations returning to the strings by accentuating and diminishing various frequencies and that different woods have different filtering properties. I also think this effect is small relative to the primary vibrations in the strings caused by picking but it can be noticeable. I bet if you played George Harrison's solid rosewood Tele back-to-back with a standard Tele made of ash equipped with the same pickups and strings, you would hear a difference.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

John Arnold wrote:
"The sides are not perfectly rigid, even after the body is assembled. The guitars I have built with added ribs on the sides have a brighter sound, due to the increased stiffness."

What I'm seeing in that picture is a guitar with fairly heavy added outside liners. It's hard to say whether it's the added mass or the added stiffness that's making the difference. If memory serves Gore argued that mass was the more important. I've done my own experiments that show adding mass without changing the stiffness makes the kind of changes that he's advocating. It's hard to think of how you could add stiffness to a given guitar without adding mass.

"Sound does travel along the grain, since the sound velocity increases with stiffness. Woods are almost always stiffer along the grain than across. "

Sure, so there's some truth to the myth, and that's not at all uncommon. What's bogus is the idea that sound is transmitted so much faster along the grain (or the braces) that cross grain stiffness doesn't contribute to the way the ting vibrates.

arie wrote:
" I've got a lot of tools and have been working with wood for 30 years -making a guitar should be a piece of cake and I'll save money too!"

I generally wince when a new student says that: particularly when they point to a long career as a rough carpenter. In those cases I know it's going to take at least six months to get them calibrated. So far my best students have been machinists, followed closely by people with no woodworking experience at all who pay attention and follow instructions well.

As far as I can tell, low density top wood works better for fingerstyle and Classical guitars, and cedar tends, on average, to have lower density than most others, so I'm not sure that's a myth on the whole. It is, of course, alarmingly easy to make a bad guitar out of terrific wood.