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Like you said, Mario, I guess it all comes down to what you consider a 'major' tone change. Sure the tone changes, but can swapping a bridge plate turn a Dread into an OM? That's what I'd call a 'major' tone change.

Maybe if you had a more complete physical model of how the mandolin works you would not have had to try as many as 90 different tone bar configurations... ;) I can't tell you how much I learned from my 'corker' guitar, and nor just about sound ports. One instrument, twenty corks, and a lot of measurements.

"Nope, what turns me off if simplifying tone and what produces it down to mass and stiffness;..."

I think that's 'way too much of a simplification of what we do when we study guitar acoustics. This is a lot more complicated than rocket science, in some ways, and not least because what constitutes a 'good' outcome is not well defined in a physical sense. However, that doesn't mean that using physics to get a handle on it is useless.

"...I hate to think that newcomers will overlook their ears because the "numbers" tell them this and that is the same..."

I hope nobody will discount what a good set of ears can tell them. I'm not one of those people who has some 'ideal sound' defined in advance. All of my work has proceeded by looking for correlations between measurements and the perceptions of the best players and listeners I can find. They tell me what's good, and I try to figure out where that good sound comes from.

"...That would be truly sad, right?"

It is truly sad when people follow some idea of guitar building just because it is said to be 'scientific' and an improvement, without using their ears. There's a hell of a lot of 'junk science' in this business, and I've tried very hard to avoid doing that kind of stuff.

In the end, I do see the guitar as a physical system that has to follow physical laws. It's right on the edge of being chaotic, so there are definite limits as to what we can measure and control. We may not ever be able to make 'perfect' tonal copies, but I'd bet at some point we'll know enough to be able to get 'close enough' for even very good players.

I do somewhat bridle at the implication that there is something metaphysical about the tone, some mysterious 'feel' or 'vibe' that can have an influence, like feng shui or astrology. There's a lot of that in this business, too, and a lot of beginners get caught up in it.