Ah, I made it over.

Interesting discussion about the soundboard.  On one of my (now
several) gurdies (flatback), I noticed that if I pressed down on the
keybox while the gurdy was sitting firmly on my lap, the sound changed
dramatically, from rather boomy to sweeter.  The most obvious reason
(I reasoned) was the back was vibrating too freely.  The gurdy had no
soundpost I could see, so I made one out of 1" round wood capped on
both sides by cork pads (used on furniture feet).  I jammed the post
in between the center soundboard brace and the center of the back
(which required a bit of hammering to get it in place) and that did
the trick.  The sound was much improved.  Now in this case the post
was not to transmit sound from the soundboard to the back, but rather
to muffle the back from sounding.  This particular experiment however
was probably unique to my instrument as something like a luteback for
example or a braced flatback is already muted and so the sound post
would act differently.  But I did want to impart that experiment as
food for thought.

Also about soundboards for guitars.  I have an Ovation with a carbon
top.  The guitar is similar in shape and body composition (composite
back) as the Ovations with wood soundboards.  One difference between
the carbon top and the wood tops are the carbon top is very thin (It's
actually carbon on both sides of a very very thin piece of spruce) and
hence can vibrate more freely.  There is a vast, vast difference in
sound between the two models and I have never owned a nicer sounding
guitar (not even close!) then my carbon top model.  It's the top that
makes the sound!  (at least on this guitar).  It seems logical to me
using this same reasoning that soundboard wood choice and bracing
design (and age of wood) on a gurdy would also affect the sound to a
large degree.

Ken

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