Master Class on Tap-Tuning Braces on an Archtop Guitar.

[@stacylangford8015]

Ok, that's an impressive difference in the overall sound of the top. I learned in a few minutes what took many years to discover, one instrument at a time. Nice video, thank you!

[@richardmccurdy9333]

Glad it was helpful!

[@richardmccurdy9333]

To clarify; the top should be rough carved like a speaker. Thicker in the center and then thinned about 1” from the edge, then back to full thickness at the edge itself. This trench is called the recurve. I start at .250” in the center, tapering to .170” in the deepest part of the recurve then back to .250” at the edge. Then you glue in the braces and thin them until it sounds like it did unbraced. This is explained in greater detail in Bob Benedettos’ book on building the archtop guitar.

[@boxerfencer]

I can see how bracing is utilized as a means to tune the characteristics of a guitar, other than offer structural integrity, but looking at it in another light it might be construed as choking the natural qualities of the top. After all, the tone of a guitar primarily comes from the top, so why would one want to hinder that tone? I wonder if one might be able to take advantage of the natural structural strength of the dome within the top and design a variable thickness profile to allow maximal resonance, circumventing bracing entirely, and thus any choking.

[@docscantlin]

There was a magazine article about Eddie Lang's guitar and it claimed the top was 11/64 " thick in the center to 1/8" near the edge (probably bottom of "recurve" ). I have copies of the original, 1923 Gibson specs right when they were going from 4's to 5's, Mastertone series and they started out with a 3/4" maximum height on top arch (total height in center). I believe the K-4s were 1/4" thick in the center but the string tension listed was almost 200 pounds and for a guitar, Gibson listed a wimpy 150 pounds. No guitar top thickness listed. Eddie Lang's strings were closer to mando cello tension going by his supposed individual gauged strings on his guitar after his death. Top thickness is probably not a good element to get too precise about as we have very thick tops on Segovia's famous Hauser and also Guarneri's Cannon violin. You might want to reduce your top thickness because of the cross bracing but if you get the result you desire that's all that's important. Nothing else really matters.

[@60tbird1]

Excellent craftsmanship!

[@manuelgomez1768]

Really Interesting course!! Thanks a lot for transmite Your information!!

[@ScheltemaBoutiqueGuitars]

Such a great video

[@kebunbahagiabersama3351]

Fascinating how to get a good tune.

[@Quimerateck]

it also sustains a little bit more when you carved the tone bars, instead of the dry sound prior to carving

[@hatim2]

That is very very interesting. Thanks a lot! Makes me wonder of all the factory guitars I have played and what sound/ responds is actually potentially in there.

[@johnfought9248]

That sounds fairly reasonable I think if you tap it and it sounds good it should sound good as a musical instrument too but I’m glad to hear about the parallel bracing Doc Stanton my harmony has that parallel bracing did they scalloped bracing in the Gibsons

[@MrBajanplayer]

Preise tell me what you mean with scalloped bracing in the Gibsons. I online know about the X-and parallel Bracing. Best regards, and greetings from Austria

[@johnfought9248]

Scallop bracing is where they cut the bracing down a little they tap it trying to get a better sound out of it I don’t know exactly how to do it but it’s cut down in the middle of the brace looks like it’s been carved it is carved

[@murraykilpatrick3029]

@@johnfought9248 i think that the points you leave high on scalloped braces are the node points. I think that working with nodes, will greatly affect the resonance of a soundboard.

[@manuelgomez1768]

T hanks for so knowledge!!

[@FriendM2010]

Fascinating...👍 I learned something 👍

[@kathyparker7140]

Wow great information. Will this work for a mandolin as well. Trying to learn how to tap tune. Thanks a million

[@richardmccurdy9333]

Yes, it’s the same basic idea.

[@geemac7267]

Thanks for the great tips. You make fine instruments sir. Do you think you could put something together someday to explain/demonstrate the soundholes on the top side of the guitars? I've always wondered if they make a noticeable difference.

[@richardmccurdy9333]

+Greg McKnight Soundholes on the side spread the sound to the player more. F-hole guitars sound great 10' away, but to the player they hear mostly bass from the back of the guitar. The side holes bring a little treble to the ear of the guitarist. Be careful and don't make them too big, then the guitar is just loud, not sweet. If I add side holes, then I make the top holes a tiny bit smaller.

[@boxerfencer]

@@richardmccurdy9333 I find archtops lack so much body compared to a Martin dreadnaught style guitar. Assuming this is due to the placement of the f holes near the bottom. Might having f holes in the upper quadrants allow for more of a fuller body sound?

[@olebentzonkjrvik8804]

Thank you so much for this video:-) it helped allot

[@madraxz8284]

Beutifull. Thank you!

[@sebastianrahs2443]

BRAVO

[@SIRONEDRAGON]

Great !!

[@johnfought9248]

I have a harmony box that I put an electric guitar neck on and the neck has a tendency to push down on the top so I think it broke one of the braces the braces run in line with the neck I don’t know if you’ve probably seen a harmony box guitar so is there anything I can do to make them sound better or will it weaken it so much that the top will continue to cave-in

[@richardmccurdy9333]

Most repairpeople can re-glue loose braces. Clean out the old glue, work fresh glue in there with a syringe, then clamp for 24 hours.

[@frankhowell8139]

Thanks for the excellent tutorial. It looks like you have a bump where the x braces cross. Is that just taller there or did you glue something over the joint for strength?

[@JanLarsenFredriksen]

Look again from 5.37 or so and read the text on scrren and listen :-)

[@seasonedtoker]

genius!

[@ZakAmbrose]

Always looking at it like a speaker. how do you go about carving your rims / counter arch where it should be the thinnest for the max. vol / air displacement for your low frequency response (zero-A)? Before of after the tone bars?

[@richardmccurdy9333]

It should be thinnest 1" or so from the edge of the plates; like the suspension on a guitar speaker. I carve it close by measurement before I put the tone bars on. 1/4" in the center, thinning to 1/8' in the recurve then 3/16" on the edges where the binding will go. Then I do the final carving on the top very carefully after the box is assembled. You can tap and find the tight spots after you glue everything together .Carve very slowly; you can carve a tiny amount and it will have a huge effect.You are just trying to get the most response evenly from all parts of the top by slightly thinning the tight spots. This is what tap tuning is; not tuning to a specific pitch. Bob Benedettos' book covers all of this very simply.

[@mamachip]

Boy that looks like a thick top

[@richardmccurdy9333]

1/4" in the center, close to 1/8 in the recurve. Recurve sounds best when its 1" from the edge of the plate. This is how the best-sounding DAngelicos are carved. Suprisingly, some Stradivarius measure the same. Coincidence maybe?

[@michaelhargrove8062]

Do archtops have back braces? I've been looking and haven't found anything on them.

[@richardmccurdy9333]

No, the back needs to vibrate freely in reaction to the motion of the top. That is where all the bass comes from.

[@RonSommers]

What about parallel braces? That's what I put on my top.

[@richardmccurdy9333]

+Buck Rogers The are tuned the same way, full height under the bridge and start feathering to nothing half way between the bridge line and the edge of the guitar. They can be smaller because the top is stiffer with parallel braces. I have been making mine like the later D'Anquistos'; 1/4" wide and 5/8" tall.

[@hayseedfarmboy]

if you have fan braces it will be a very different process from this , with flat bracing like this, im sure this process would help the guitar sound allot better, but if have fan braces dont shorten them, thin them to a note and then a chord between the braces or you will ruin your instrument

[@docscantlin]

Not trying to be personal or negative but I see this as mostly speculation and "by guess and by golly". One man's theory is as good or not, as another I suppose. However, while working as a repairman at Gruhn Guitars, I, along with Doug Green, pre Riders in the Sky era (late 1970s), would play every arch top guitar which came through that store. Many D'Angelicos, Epiphones, Stromberg, ... you name it. None could even come close to George's Lloar L5. The cross braced ones seemed to sound the deadest. I believe Gibson, parallel bracing, pre 1936 pretty much nailed it. No tapping. Machine the top to specs, glue it up, next. Once you have your dimensions in the ballpark, that's pretty much all you can do. You can pretend there is a magic tone, note or dimension/shape that is the holy grail but when you stop fooling around with it how do you know you didn't go too far, or not far enough. Judging final tone by tap tones on a top in free air is fun but not productive. When Gibson developed it's Super 400 guitar, they offered it with an option of top thicknesses, a whole 1/16th on an inch difference. They soon abandoned that as the players got confused because they couldn't hear any difference. So much for micro tuning, carving... Just copy George's L5 and you can't go wrong. Just my opinion. I may be wrong. Look up John Greven's lecture on guitar building myths. Of course final tone is subjective anyway, so it doesn't really matter if the maker nails it. It's the player whose opinion counts. Enjoying all the presentations and I have learned some things. Thanks for this!

[@richardmccurdy9333]

George told me that Lloyd personally tuned each L-5 guitar after completion by adjusting the size of the f-holes. Each piece of wood is different, you have to bring out its best tone way or another. I appreciate your observation and best of luck on your next arch top guitar build.

[@docscantlin]

​@@richardmccurdy9333 Thanks. I do think George is correct on that but after Mr. Loar left, my understanding is they got back to just working to their specifications and many of those post Loar guitars are fabulous. Since we do not know what (despite Siminoff's claims to the contrary),, exactly Loar was trying to achieve (other than an obvious moving around resonate frequencies, after the box was put together, by the way), we're left with a mystery and all of us have to deal with so many variables, never knowing, exactly the end result. I don't even take my own advice and am building NOT according to an "exact" Loar copy. I guess I'm too much of a "know it all" heh, heh, heh...It is fun to speculate but as long as we don't go too far afield from the tried and true we can be sure the result won't be too disappointing. But then there's Greg Smallman...figure that out! Don't forget, musicians are influenced by many more factors than tone even though they might not admit it. Also, the "word' is that Loar mandolins are not consistently stellar; some better than others. That "fact" might dispel the notion that he had a special formula or sense which put him much above standard dimensional specs. Have you delved into MacRostie's deflection theory? Interesting. I am so sorry to take up so much space but I love chatting about this stuff. Have a lovely day and enjoy your building. You are doing nice work!

[@jo_naash]

2:07 UsE hEAdPhOnES foR bEsT fiDELitY

[@34672rr]

tap tuning is utter madness, it reminds me of conventional drum tuning. I call it "folk tuning" which is just passed on from teacher to student without any examination of what's going on or why, but accepted as scripture, hence the "drum tuning bible", which has been almost completely negated by electronic tuners. the thing is, tap tuning might make sense if you were making a sitar-type instrument which is tuned to and played in one key. That way you could know what you are shooting for. But with an instrument like guitar (especially X1000 with electric instruments) , which is tuned equally and theoretically made to play in 12 keys, trying to tune a top will give you a great sound in some keys and horrible in others. The remedy to this IMO is to actually make instruments meant to be played in one key, which India has been doing for millenia, but the ridiculous convoluted western harmony does not allow. I believe western harmony arose out of instruments sounding louder (and thus "better" in the primitive sense) when playing multiple notes. But there is no science, nothing that says multiple notes played together sounds better than a single note, and the human voice is probably the most enjoyed musical instrument, and is monophonic. If you have monophonic music, then you can build instruments that just sound better. A sitar sounds better, richer, fuller, more resonant, than the guitar by far. But western theory would have you believe that it's not the sound that matters, it's the composition, the complexity of harmony, etc etc that are important. After playing music my whole life, then learning indian classical, and getting a degree in audio engineering, I have come to the conclusion that harmony is only one technique (like a trill, flam, glissando, or backbeat, etc) and not worth basing an entire system of music on. Then you can get into non-equal temperament, instruments that sound good at their base, rather than being built for loudness and flexibility like so many instruments. If you look at violins, for example, they have an absurd amount of tension and neck angle because of the need for loudness, thus making them screechy ugly instruments, unlike their baroque counterparts with much less tension.

[@stratocactus]

Late response but anyway... When tap tuning you don't really aim for a note, which would in the end be modified when you glue the top on the body, then put a neck on it, and finally strings tension. What you aim for is a wide variety of tones, resonance and a bell-like sound (as it is often referred too). That's why I prefer talking about "voicing" the top rather than tap-tuning.