SOUNDBOARD

The soundboard of my instruments is much thinner and lighter than a traditional fan braced guitar.  I use a lattice bracing system made of natural wood.  I previously used carbon fiber/graphite and balsa for the bracing but found that this impedes the natural sound of the instrument.  By using natural materials the instruments are much more musical and lyrical than there composite counterparts but continue to have exceptional volume and projection.  This type of bracing covers more surface area than traditional fan bracing and is incredibly strong.  Because of this the thickness of the soundboard can be reduced substantially without compromising the structural integrity of the guitar. The individual struts in the lattice are interconnected so when one area of the soundboard is set into motion it necessarily distributes energy to other areas.  This makes the soundboard very efficient in terms of energy transfer and retention. Although my soundboards are thinner than a traditional instrument they are not as thin as many other lattice instruments.  I have found that reducing the thickness of the soundboard too much makes the guitar sound very thin, transparent, and non-musical.  The basses are often unfocused and the trebles are often thin and metallic with little room in between.  Using an intermediate thickness for the soundboard allows the instrument to possess exceptional volume, projection, evenness, and clarity while maintaining the traditional sound of a classical guitar.

A great deal of time is spent tuning the soundboard.  I tune
the soundboard after the guitar has been assembled because I want to know how all parts of the guitar are working together.  I have found that fine tuning the soundboard prior to construction is not necessary since the frequency changes so much after it is assembled.  The soundboard (and the rest of the guitar) vibrates freely at a specific frequency (i.e. resonant frequency).  If a note played on the guitar is a multiple of this frequency, the note will be exaggerated in comparison to other notes.  The goal is to tune the guitar so that its frequency does not substantially affect any particular note in the register.

I use both western redcedar and spruce. I often hear that my cedar guitars are very "sprucey" and seem to possess characteristics of both types of wood. The spruce guitars are very clear and dynamic and do not sound thin or transparent. Again, this is because I do not thin the sounboards enough to lose the beautiful tonal qualities of the wood itself. All soundboards are master grade and have been properly dried and stored.