Official Luthiers Forum!

hello all you nice people
yesterday I made a setup after Hesh´s tutorium, and it came out very well. Again thank you so much, Hesh, for your advice and support. I made a new nut out of bone to substitute the original tusk nut. The saddle is worn out from the the strings and has a crack, so I will make a new one. Then I thought that this would be a good moment to take a look inside the guitar, and examined the inside with a mirror. I was shocked !!!
It is a Seagull Maritime SWS Folk HS, handmade in Quebec Canada. I wondered about why this guitar sounds so boxy and less resonant than for example my flamenco. Now I know. I have never seen such a bad executed bracing before.
Now I ask you all if anyone has tried to modify the braces of a factory guitar and can give me some advice?
Thanks a lot!

Juergen

I've tried numerous times to reach inside with finger planes and have made some changes but not much. My best attempt involved removing the back. I did that to my old gibson and it sounds amazing compared to original

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Hi Juergen I hope you are doing great my friend.

Yes only I modified one of my own Heshtone early guitars by brace shaving through the sound hole. My experience was like Hutch's experience it opened up the guitar, made it more responsive and more lush sounding. This guitar is in my living room and sounds great today nearly 20 years later.

The guitar was the first attempt for me at parabolic or tapered braces. No one on the OLF had dimensions for parabolic braces so I winged it..... So I made the same mistake that many builders make early on we over brace our instruments.

My approach was to slowly shave with a finger plane the X brace, tone bars and finger braces. I was sure to do to one side exactly what I did to the other side remembering my wheel building and trueing skills from when I owned a bike dealership in a college town. I worked slowly checking often and it did not take much for it to simply start ringing better. That was the goal for me too simple as it sounds shave off some material, reinstall and tune the strings and try it out. When shaving braces I kept the strings neat with a capo and wrapped them around the headstock.

My experience was also productive like our friend Hutch and it was very much shave a little and evaluate. When I could sense no more improvement I stopped and called it good.

The guitar is improved but still over braced and there are some things that could not be easily reduced or shaved such as the X intersection which is a HUGE part of why an over braced guitar is over braced.

When I was an early builder here back around 2005 I was contacted by a more experienced builder who wanted to suggest that I not make my X braces more than 1/2 an inch high including the cap at the intersection. This resonated with me and I followed the advice finding the results to be noticeable and excellent. He even recommended lower which I was reluctant to go.

Some years later another very experienced builder shared with me that the cloth patch as used by Martin, Gibson and others was also to help prevent over bracing the top. I was told that the patch allows some flex at the intersection and loosens up the top slightly. This was of great interest to me too and also an effort to avoid over bracing.

I also followed up with sand paper and although difficult I sanded things to smooth them out and take any edges off. Can you hear this? I doubt it but it had my name on it so I wanted to do the neatest work I was capable of doing.

Good luck. Seagulls are good guitars and Godin is an excellent company that I recommend to people. Sadly they like others have to make products that can withstand the abuse of the uninformed so they tend to over build and over brace. Even Martin has been known to do this again to ensure function for clients even when products are abused in a hot car or left to dry out, etc.

Go slow, be symmetrical and check often for it opening up and especially when it no longer is opening up and you should stop.

My dear friend Hesh, as always your advice and support helps me so much, and also thanks to you, Hutch! I will try and see what happens

Juergen

Hesh, a throwaway comment you made MADE MY DAY! How high the braces want to be at the 'x' intersection. Yours is the first discussion I've noticed, ever! An amateur builder (me!) is often at a loss as to how robust top bracing needs to be.

Thanks!

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Peter Havriluk

I too have over braced guitars and shaved the bracing trough the soundhole.
I check as I went by the sound and also by checking bridge rotation when strung up.
Two of them needed really a lot removed, and I dealt with the X brace area by planing off the cap and then reducing the braces.
Using a block and fine abrasives it's not too difficult to get the X braces in a level state so they can be re-capped with a piece of spruce.

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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.

Gosh, has everyone of us done this! I tried to improve an early attempt at a classical that was very dull sounding. However my relatively large hands made it very uncomfortable. And I couldn't reach far down into the body. A great patch of elastoplast helped reduce the damage to the back of the hand.

In the end I just don't think I removed enough to make a difference.

Cheers Dave M

Fantastic Peter and thanks for letting me know. It was an important moment in my development when I was proactively contacted by someone with hundreds of successful guitars under their belt and an actual spec to follow. My guitars started being more responsive immediately as a result.

When you think of it we typically make our X intersection some of the tallest brace structure on the top. But because of the intersection each of the two braces is force multiplied and it's easy to way over brace. I certainly was.

You guys here these days have a disadvantage we had many more pro builders back in my day here who did share a lot of very cool information. Then the lack of moderation and the risk of having one's professional reputation damaged by someone lacking civility drove many people off. the pros were the first to leave.

PS: I was not supposed to tell anyone back then either so I kept it to myself for 17 years and then let it slip....

PSS: Another situation just like this that improved my guitars was when Mario introduced the analogy that an acoustic guitar is much like a fireplace bellows and it is built and engineered to pump air. That got into reactive vs. reflective backs. Reactive backs are braced so they can move and pump air and that is the route that I went. Reflective backs do as the name implies and the backs are usually immobilized with heavier bracing. Many blue grass dreads are intentionally built heavy to reflect heavy hitting sound. Some of the most successful finger style instruments that I've built or worked on were conversely braced so that the back can move and pump air making more subtile tones like overtones more perceivable and present. Reactive back guitars are often over all lighter in weight.

So the reactive camp like me took the back two braces furtherest back and made them low and wide and low enough that they do and can flex. The front two were thin and taller so from the waist up the back was stiffer.

I also followed Al Carruth's advice on tuning the back to be IIRC 1/2 step different from the top to avoid wolf tones. I may have how many steps wrong I have not built in 15 years now and I'm old and would not do well in a debate....

Anyway hope this helps folks!!! because that is why I'm here, darn it.

Put an FFT app on your phone and follow the guidelines in the Gore/Gilet books and you’ll be alright. Likely on an overbuilt factory guitar such as your seagull you’ll only get a nominal difference as the main component, the top, will still be too stiff.

As Hesh pointed out, the back can play a huge role in the tone, and pitching it correctly has a massive, massive effect on the overall bass responsiveness of an instrument, or at least it does on guitars who’s plates have been thicknessed to a proper flexibility.

Mind the 2* bridge rotation and you’ll be fine…

Ed I think your point about the two degrees of movement of the bridge from full string tension to slack is really useful. OK it only works after you have closed the box but it does tell you if you have got the bracing right. And as Hesh and others have said over bracing is a classic mistake we all tend to make in the earl.ly days. Having a proper test of this is really useful, if not for the current build at least for the next one.

Dave M

Most of us start either by buying a kit or from blueprints based off of overbraced guitars, so…

Here are some picks of the bracing of my seagull guitar. Would anyone of you leave the braces and the top so rough and unsanded?

Gesendet von meinem SM-G950F mit Tapatalk

Some more pics

Gesendet von meinem SM-G950F mit Tapatalk

Most of us are spending more on materials per guitar than the sale price of that instrument. There’s a reason why ours are more expensive.

Myself, I'm overly attentive to the appearance of the inside surfaces. I would not (and do not) leave rough surfaces or glue squeeze on the inside and willing to bet most on this forum do not either. It's a matter of craftsmanship with most, not cost of goods. Volume manufacturers simply cannot have that level of craftsmanship and remain price-competitive. My industry called it "minimum viable product": A product that meets the buyer's needs, but nothing more.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

I am one of those folks who owns a Martin from the 1970's. They are nice guitars but the feeling is that they were somewhat "overbuilt" - oversized rosewood bridgeplate and braces that were somewhat bigger than they needed to be. Lore said that was because Martin was getting too many warranty calls and wanted to beef up their guitars.

In 2005 I decided to have the neck reset on the old D-18 and I chose a repair tech who was noted for after market scalloping of the braces and replacement of the bridge plate. He has retired, last time I looked his web site was still up,. some of the oldtimers her would recognize his name. Along with the reset I asked him to replace the bridge plate with a small maple one and to lightly scallop the braces, I also asked that the popsicle brace not be removed.

The guitar was gone for a couple of months, when it came back my wife's comment was "you are playing louder than you used to", I didn't think I was doing anything differently. The guitar has been played along side a couple of prewar D-18's, and some of the more modern attepts to duplicate the oldies (GE's and such), It has held its own nicely.

One of the interesting little side notes, inside the case was a baggie of wood chips and shavings - the excess wood removed during the operation.

I'll add that was almost 20 years ago, the guitar is still in excellent shape, neck angle and top are just as they were after the work was done.

I always cleaned up the insides of my guitars way too much and even had an informal competition going here on the OLF with Lance on who's inside of their boxes were neater.

But as for what matters, tone it makes no difference.

Mario P. once posted that some of the most valuable and finest acoustic guitars in the world back in the day and even today show saw marks, glue globs, furry tops on the undersides, etc. Those who claim to hear a difference have better pot than I do.

Seagulls are value instruments to me and they are indeed very good values and well made. Godin the parent company is a decent company and pays a living wage to workers. Making guitars in North America that have budget prices is VERY difficult so you may see some things like the added effort to cosmetically clean up the inside of the box not be a priority for them. The benefit is a decent instrument that I recommend to my customers by the way for a decent price.

My only criticism of Seagulls is their nuts fall off.... They don't have the head stock overlay creating a three sided channel for the nut. So it's very common for me to see in my shop when I take the strings off their nuts fall off. I wouldn't like it very much, well you know....

Anyway no biggie.... a drop of CA and the nuts are back on. Ask Sean Penn and Madonna.

Thats what I did with my new nut.
Perhaps my Seagull is a "Monday-" Guitar? I was astonished that the braces are all looking nearly unshaped, and I wonder about the glue joints between rough underside of the top/rough underside of the braces. Aren´t they prone to loosen?
I will record the guitars sound before, during and after finishing the modifications of the braces. I will follow the Gore/Gilet book and I will follow your advice, my friend Hesh: slow going forward! I have the time and patience. Thank God I am retired, a little bit wiser and much lesser restless than 20 years ago
Juergen

There’s really no such thing as a Monday guitar or a Friday guitar. A guitar gets started one day and gets finished another day and has a lots of days between.

I get the concept of differing effort levels during the work week, but, any given instrument going through a line will just be as randomly day aligned as the sized materials in a production facility will be aligned. Ya Know? May as well believe your horoscope.

Ed, I know that all. It is only a speaking when you have bought something and later realize that it has defects you did not expect. It was meant ironic.
Juergen

So if you get a chance to look in a 40's, 30's even 50's Gibson they often look awful with not only glue globs but huge drips running down the insides of the sides, the neck block. Braces were shaped on a saw and then stuck in place. No one came along after and carved anything and seemingly they did not know what sand paper was.

I also don't think that this was a problem Gibson was making guitars on the side, they were a toy company for the regular Joes and Janes and they made them affordable which was a priority for Gibson. They even made them for catalog department stores under other names. It was all about production not doing the details.

None the less when he got back from the crossroads Robert Johnson could make them sing like no other of his day. And he had been a ****** guitar player only 1.5 years before he disappeared.

Anyway a pretty face or innards in no way a great guitar makes.

I hear ya though I went to great lengths to make the insides of my instruments as clean as I could. Some of us, me included even left messages on the insides.

Godin spends time where the results matter to the instrument. Those rough-cut braces work just fine. I wouldn't use the word 'defect' when braces weren't sculptures.

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Peter Havriluk

Sorry, but the guitar is labeled as "handmade in Canada", and though my expectations have been. Now I have learned that such a label means....nothing. After that definition of "handmade" everything I use is handmade....my car, my coffeemachine, my computers and handy. Here in Germany the label "handmade" is a quality label for craftsmanship. I asked the above question because of a lack of sound of the guitar and because of my learning curve thanked even to this forum I tried to find out why and mirrored the inside and found what you see on the pictures. I am dissapointed about what I have found inside a "handmade" guitar, thats all. Now I will try to improve the sound by carefull craftsmanship I only wanted to know if that is possible and get some advice. What I didn´t wanted was a philosophical discussion about if good craftsmanship matters or only the result.
Juergen

I can't expect what I didn't pay for.

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Peter Havriluk

Thank you so much, Peter, for so carefully reading my posts and your attempt to answer my origin question