Re: Inside a Smallman Guitar

Eric E wrote:
"It looks like the bracing system is a cast
aluminum piece that the top is attached to (or rests on). "

Just to set that straight: Smallman uses carbon fiber and balse wood
bracing on a thin top. He lays down layers of CF 'roving' in a sort of
grid pattern, using epoxy to stick it to the top. When he's got enough
CF down, he epoxies balsa over that. The balsa is shaped so that it's
taller around the bridge and tapers away at the edhes, and then more
CF is epoxied on top. THe result is a sort of "I" beam, with the epoxy/
CF acting as the flanges and the balsa for a web. Smallman was, or is,
well known in the world of radio control sailplanes, and got the
materials and methods there. The CF/epoxy can shine like aluminum in
some lights.

The idea behind this is simple: most of the weight of a standard
guitar's top is the top itself. The barcing adds much of the stiffness
with very little of the weight. Given the low power of a plucked
string anything you can do to reduce the weight of the top will help
make the guitar louder. In Smallman's system the 'top' is more or less
a mambrane that fills in the gaps between the braces, so it can move
air. The strength is in the braces.

I'm not a big fan of the Smallman sound myself, but I'm not the guy
buying them, in any case. The people who need that amount of power are
happy to get it. I'll note that that sort of extrmemely 'forward' and
'harsh' sound does tend to smoth out a lot in a big hall: these things
are not made for small rooms.

It's possible to think of ways to improve the sound of that sort of
guitar without losing the power. The problem from my standpoint as a
builder is that there's no good way to 'tune' it: the top either works
or it doesn't. The way he builds them tends to preclude quality
control checks for acoustic response, so the onlt recourse is to
string it up and try it out. There are some fine tuning tweaks that
can be used, but they end to add weight or cut down on the soundboard
area, so that goes against the intent of the thing. If it's too far
off, the top has to be routed off and replaced, as I understand.

Alan Carruth / Luthier
.

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