[ ]
From: Ross
Remote Name: 76.101.10.136
Date: 11 Jun 2007
Time: 08:33:00 -0400
Luthier’s Weblog 6/11/07 Just flushed the daily batch of email. I don’t know how the closely guarded secret got out that I am a sex machine requiring discount pharmaceuticals and penny stock tips. Everybody seems to know. I’ll need to keep my private life a little more circumspect, I guess. I wonder about that intuitive leap of faith that C.F. the first made before the Civil War. X-bracing. It sounds better even on paper than Y- or Z-bracing. But he probably didn’t check with Marketing. Ladder bracing was the order of the day at that time, but in Europe builders like Benedid and Pages were experimenting with fan or radial struts in the late Eighteenth century. It is not unreasonable to assume that C.F. examined such instruments in Mark Neukirchen where he was employed by Stauffer. His arrival in America in 1833 predated his fabrication of the X-brace by probably 16 years. During this time, he probably got a chance to see what a guitar could expect in the way of treatment in it’s service life. Possibly the rugged conditions and marked extremes of early American life indicated a more robust form of construction than had previously been used. It is easier to believe this to be the germinating factor rather than evolution of the musical literature at the time, which is the more usual engine driving design change. Whatever the reason for it’s genesis, the X-brace unified the upper and lower bout as never before, stiffening the entire structure. I wonder why he didn’t X-brace the back. Not that this is required for sound propagation, but it would surely provide a further stiffening of the structure. Which is sorely needed, if the sheer number of Martin neck resets is any indicator. The robot luthier considers this. An X-braced back? Why not? Increased structural rigidity without increased mass is a good thing, isn’t it? Isn’t it? The builder may have talked himself into an experiment. Ross Teigen 8:43 am