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I have no truly objective information on this but I’ve built left-handed guitars both ways. I liked the ones with “right-handed” bracing more but I have no way of knowing whether this is due to the bracing orientation or one of any of a dozen other variables or combination thereof. I have even deliberately built a few right-handed x-braced guitars with left-oriented bracing. I had a conversation with a well-known builder several years ago who immediately asked, when I mentioned I had just built a lefty guitar with righty bracing, “it sounds better like that, doesn’t it?” So the thought has occurred to other people too, it seems.

It’s another difficult to test proposition. I suppose I could record some sound samples, try and go through the sound hole and knock the face braces off and reglue them the other way to compare but c’mon, there’s bills to pay.


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The thread was too long for me and so I only read the 1st page. A couple thoughts:

Stainless Steel Fretwire
Hearing loss is a very real problem for anybody over 40. So be aware that there are sounds you will miss as you age. I noticed a slight "ping" or "tinny" quality when I compared stainless to EVO and nickel wire. You can run a simulation by filing off the tang and placing the different fret materials right on a completed guitar. Just place them behind an existing fret on the guitar. (Obviously they need to be higher than the fret plane). IF you want, you can even use thick super glue to lightly tack in place and test with 3 different fret locations on the same string.

The tinny quality to SS fretwire is only for the briefest moment right when you pluck the string but I have hearing loss and I was able to notice it. I prefer regular fret material but some players may prefer the SS wire. But I was very surprised to hear any difference as I thought fret material would never make a difference. For what its worth, Taylor guitars tried it and didn't like what it did to the sound.


Finish Materials
When it comes to finishing - the main thing is to keep the finish below 3 mils if you can. This is the limit where finishes become invisible and you get that French Polish level sound. The only caveat is that even with a thin 3 mil film -- polyester will still negatively effect the sound. There is no other wood finishing material out there that is even close to the hardness/toughness of polyester. Amazing for a production guitar but if you are trying to squeeze every ounce of tone from your instrument then choose a different finish. It isn't super noticeable but your instrument will likely sound less mature and open. But you can still build phenomenal sounding guitars with polyester (you just shave off a little bit of the sonic potential of your work by using polyester). I obsessed over the finish perhaps more than any builder out there -- so this is a very well informed opinion.

As for 'bass' and 'treble' sides of the top: other than designating which side the fat stings are on, it doesn't matter acoustically. Low tones are produced by the whole guitar, and by the lower bout of the top moving as a unit, like a loudspeaker. As you go up in pitch with 'pure' tones the top breaks up into some number of smaller and smaller areas, each one moving out of phase with the ones around it. Each puts out sound, and what you hear at some distance is the way all of those areas add up in that particular direction. With the complex sound of even a single string it gets real complicated real fast...

I believe that what matters with asymmetric bracing patterns is more the fact of the asymmetry, and not the direction, but I could be wrong there. Given the virtual impossibility of making ' identical' guitars that sound the same (I've tried...) it would be hard to prove or disprove that: you'd need to make a lot of guitars and test them pretty rigorously. Since people tend to hear what they expect/want to testimonials don't cut much mustard.

Some finishes have higher damping than others: drying oils tend to contribute to damping, for example. In general low damping seems to be desirable, but it's hard to get very specific about just what it does to the sound. Again, how do you 'prove' anything? Less finish is generally 'better' for sound, just because it adds less mass, stiffness, and (possibly) damping, but thin finishes don't offer much protection either. What do you expect the finish to do for you, and what are you willing to give up to get that?

DON'T get me started on nitro...

I would love to get you started on Nitro b/c it's always been my favorite finish for steel string guitars. I pretty much FP or Royal Lac everything now though and the folks who buy guitars from me understand that it comes with some responsibility. But I love Nitro, it's beautiful, easy to repair, polishes out to perfection... and so on.

Many years ago I built a couple guitars with a double X pattern and I remember them sounding so good that I don't know why I did not decide to strictly build those and improve on it. I had some bad experiences experimenting mostly with classical guitars that I decided to stick with the time tested traditions. But there was something about those XX guitars that just worked.

Good post and the stainless vs. nickel silver is a good one too.

I'm with you and I hate stainless on an acoustic. Dave Collins does not hear any difference so he and I disagree in the same shop and that's how this one tends to roll too lots of disagreement here.

My take is I can hear the differences on an acoustic and not on an electric. I have stainless on my Suhr and hate them.... What I hate is the awful noise that stainless makes when there is a rattle of buzz it's more profound and on a frequency that unnerves me actually....

I'll add that EVO is not much better in my mind and to my ears and our testing has it very near as hard as stainless so that would make sense. Fixed a Martin with EVO last week and it sounded tinny to my ear too.... I have a dread I built here that has EVO and it also sounds tinny to my ear.

Regarding finish I agree too, thin is always better acoustically unless you want to hear finish. Some of the $2K imports that people like these days like Eastman when I play one I hear thick, clicky finish and not the wood because the dang finish is so thick.

For everyone here if you ever have the opportunity to string up a guitar in the white with bridge on do it. You will be amazed at what the wood sounds like with no finish, much more pleasing to my ear. And then we slather on finish and they become just another guitar sadly.

So put me in the "thin to win" on finish category too, great post and two great examples of myth busting, flat earth Lutherie.

Thanks Toonces!

Great post and it makes sense that the entire box is what is generating tone and sound. Your explanation has put this one to bed in my mind about asymmetrical bracing and God help anyone else who tries to prove otherwise they will need a super computer

When I went ugly early and started selling my guitars I had to get some of the higher costs out and that to me meant finish them myself to save $500 or so a pop including shipping and such.

After researching all of the finishes available I settled on nitro and loved it too. I found it very easy to use but like HHG it does have it's requirements such as never by anything that can spark, explosion proof lighting and fan recommended. Had to wait 4 weeks to buff out but that lets' me prepare the next batch.

On my first couple I used rattle can nitro and once I learned to pore fill.... which plagued me for a while the results were pretty good.

I tell people nitro was so easy even a Hesh could do it

I have noticed in my repair work that double-x design dreadnoughts I see of around 40 years of age are faring far better than many conventional x-braced guitars of the same vintage when it comes to things like excessive belly, resultant lifting bridges etc.


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This is a fun thread ...

Re: left handed and right handed guitar tops

There is a page on my website which discusses this in some detail and references some nice animations of vibrating guitar tops:
Lutherie Myth/Science: Bass and Treble Sides of Instruments

More than once I have been contacted by first-time builders using my guitar construction book, that realized they had attached the lower oblique braces "backwards" and were in a panic about what to do. You can not imagine the feeling of satisfaction that comes from assuring folks that have done this that it will not have any detrimental effect whatsoever. It is like absolving sins! Of course, it helps when i send them a photo of braces I've mistakenly glued on "backwards" ...

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R.M. Mottola
LiutaioMottola.com

Author of the books Building the Steel String Acoustic Guitar, Practical Design of the Acoustic Guitar and Similar Instruments, and Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms.

I don't check in here very often. If you need to contact me the best bet is via email through the contact page on my site.

Howdy R.M. and great post, thank You! You bring up a great topic in general and that all the little things we may not get right and don't matter but we stress for months over them. The nice thing about being my age, soon to be 66 is I don't stress as much anymore because I can't remember anything..

Thanks for all of your very valued contributions too R.M you helped mea lot back in the day!

Here’s a fun video I found last night, this guy stresses over NOTHING! Obviously his level of quality isn’t the same as what we strive for, but I find it interesting that he makes, at the very least, “guitar-shaped objects” with what looks like very little effort and few tools.

https://youtu.be/wcRxvnpnGRw


Btw, hesh, I’ve been 66 since April, and I’m just beginning. Jealous of your years of experience, but I believe it’s never too late…

Not to break the thread, but what is he using for glue in that video?

A couple of decades ago, my daughter brought me back a guitar of similar construction that she obtained in a street bazaar in Jakarta. The frets were obviously placed from memory rather than measurement. It sports a “Yamaha” label. It’s unplayable but an interesting wall hanging.

I’m in the process of building a lefty on order. I knew it didn’t make any difference, but I reversed the tone bars on the top.

Most likely casein glue — a protein glue easily made from milk. You can find recipes on the inter-web. Very old glue, still in common use in less-developed countries, it’s actually a very effective glue, but with annoying property: you can’t release the glue with heat and moisture.

(Also the most likely glue referred to by guitar repairers as “AMG - Asian Mystery Glue”.)


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Great info. I’m updating my records to refer to it as Asian Milk Glue going forwards.

I guess that's more PC than Asian Sticky Stuff glue.

WudWerker: Where'd we be is Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

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Peter Havriluk

Yeah that's funny and thanks Coleen too for posting it. Nice to know there is life after 65 too

ASM is a nightmare for professional repair people and we generally won't get involved if ASM is present, unserviceable as you said Tim.

You know, well.... never mind.

More a disappointment and commentary on current and past offering but the notion that a tremolo can function and return to it's neutral position exactly... correctly and every time is BS. No matter the trem they all may have issues and this is so true that more than half the Strats that we work on, more like 75% the owner when offered the options elects to have the trem set flat in favor of tuning stability and losing the ability to do swells. Setting a Strat trem flat GREATLY improves tuning stability, like night and day...

I have all my trems on my personal guitars set flat too meaning the Fenders and the Suhr. I set them so the back edge of the trem just starts to lift when I bend a whole step up.

The Floyd's that are not licensed copies seem to have better metal, harder and they don't wear grooves in the posts as often as the cheap, licensed copies do. Grooves on the posts are a major cause of an inability to reliably return to neutral for Floyd trems.

Bixbys are amazingly pretty good but also not perfect and we get complaints about them too.

And another and this is also electric guitar: Chris Pyle will relate to this.

I'm asked a couple of times a week to set-up a shredder to shred to the max.... meaning actually work with the dang settings that shredders like.... super low action and very slacked strings, not a good combination.

So the request is often for a tuning one whole step down except for the low e which goes to low c..... Yep problematic as all hell to set this up but we do it frequently.

The low c is a nightmare and so slacked that it rattles and buzzes just looking at it the wrong way. Action has to be a bit higher and the fret plane needs to be excellent meaning level and true. Since the whole dang thing is one step down even the nut slots we leave a bit higher because this tuning is a rattle factory.

So the tuning and set-up are very much something that can be achieved I do it all of the time and countless others do too but the notion that it will be buzz and rattle free is only for folks who have been smoking the drapes and not sharing...

As such we agree to do these set-ups but require the client in advance to agree to not be an a-hole when it buzzes and rattles if their attack is a bit over the edge. And they do and every one is happy.

I see metal guys tuning down as far as drop-A (ie B standard and then dropping the 6th string to A.) These guys at least tend to run heavier gauges, often 12s with a 60 or heavier on the bottom. Breaks the monotony of regular setups!

Hey, we’re 100ish posts into this thread … did anyone mention the Tonerite yet?

Excellent point the tone rite......

I'm not convinced that a weekend in the closet with two big speakers and Black Sabbath Paranoid looping for 48 hours wouldn't be just as effective. But then bats would want to fly into the guitar and have their heads severed off....

They sell tonerites with different shapes at adult books stores I'm told, I've never been in those places...

And then we have to qualify things for them when there is not enough travel in the saddles to intonate at these tunings.

My generation was too loud. This generation is pushing the instruments beyond the physical limits of their ability to be adjusted.