Re-thinking top bracing after the guitar is built

[naccoachbob]

This is really a repair kind of question, but I couldn't figure where to put it.
I'm always playing the first kit I built. I really do like the sound, but I'm pretty sure I overbuilt the top bracing. I believe there's more volumn, more bass, and more sustain inside this carcass. When strings start to wear, and when I capo around the 4th fret, I notice a real degradation in sustain and volumn.
If I remember ('cause I've never been a good note taker), all I did was profile them and not lower the height of the braces. Seems Steve Kinnaird remarked about how tall my bracing was.
If I wanted to go back and do that, what tool would I select? How would I go about doing it? Since there's no visibility, I'm guessing there's a lot of "feel" involved.
Of course, I'd go slow. I'm very familiar with what Somogyi says about the strength of a brace diminishing a lot for every bit of height you shave off. So I'd try cutting a little on the main X braces first, then wait a week or so to see how it sounded. Then proceed from there.
Any suggestions?
As always, thanks in advance for all suggestions,
Bob

[kencierp]

"I really do like the sound"

To me this says it all --- is that not all that counts?

"Blindly" digging at the braces through the sound hole because they looked too tall to someone -- could very well not change a thing and worse lead to a huge mess, and it won't be the first guitar ruined by the owner taking this path.

Aside from proper intonation, changing strings on a regular basis may be one of the most important contributors to a fine sounding instrument.

[Ben-Had]

Don't do it!

[naccoachbob]

I defer to your expertise, gentlemen. I'll learn to embrace what I have.
Thanks for your advice. I will take it.
Bob

ps. I must be a tinkerer, not satisfied with what I have. Always wanting to go that next step. It's like lowering action. That one tiny little extra step can cause you to have to build a whole nother saddle. (Don't ask how I came to that conclusion). But I will build another guitar for myself, and I'll just use what I learned from the first couple to make it my "go to" guitar.

[Jim_H]

I speak from experience. I did this exact same thing. After about a year I decided that my first guitar needed to be rebraced.

Before I got to that point, i tried shaving through soundhole. My comment about this is, don't bother. Unless you are experienced with this, all you are doing is randomly removing bracing material,and if you're like me, making a mess out of the inside of your guitar. Brian Kimsey does a lot of brace shaving, but he does it on a limited scope of instruments, with a specific goal to achieve a a specific sound. He works primarily on 70's era Martin Dreadnaughts, that were apparently afflicted with some overweight bracing out of the factory.

I also tried one of those 'tone-rite' vibraty thingees hoping it might loosen up enough to make me like it better ( or at least the placebo effect version of that). It didn't help.

The guitar never got played, and just sat sadly amongst my guitar collection, until I finally decided I couldn't stand it any more (yes, I have issues :p).

I look at it this way. My first guitar (and every one since) had been more about learning to build guitars, than about having more guitars (I have lots of those). I didn't build it so I would have another guitar to play. I built it as a stepping stone to learning to be a decent guitar builder.

I just carried that philosophy over to post-build repairs. Basically I had a choice to leave it as is, and never play it, and accept what lessons I learned along the way, or do something about it.

15 minutes later I was routing the top off of it :p

I went into that knowing full well I was probably going to destroy the thing in the process, but I figured at least I could get one or two more valuable lessons out of it in the process.

I watched the video on John Greven's site to give me a basic idea how to proceed. I managed to thickness and cut a new top, route it to shape, and the route the old top off, and much to my surprise, it actually went much better than I could have expected. I didn't destroy it after all, and in fact it's actually still in pretty good shape.

I took the new top, fully braced (overly so) to Rick for some tips on making sure I didn't repeat my previous mistake (over bracing). He looked it over (after he stopped laughing) and suggested some places to remove material to lighten it up a bit.

It's all ready to go back together, I'm just waiting for the humidity to settle down a bit.

The hardest part of this (after routing the old top off) is fitting the new top and purflings inside the bindings and getting it clamped down so its a nice tight fit with no gaps. I've dry fit it a few times, and there are going to be some challenges. I probably should not have left it open so long, especially with the humidity bump we had.

I'm not suggesting this is the right thing for you. It's a personal decision. Just know that it's not for the faint of heart. If you're not experienced with these kinds of repairs, there is a high risk of failure (I've been REALLY lucky - so far). When I clamped it down to my bench and reached for my router, I had accepted that it might be it's last day as a Guitar Shaped Object. So far, I've managed to not destroy it, but it remains to be seen how it will look when it's all closed up and ready for finish.

[tippie53]

If making a top loose was the secret , we would have figured out how to brace paper. There is so many things about a guitar and no one can say 100% certainly that one process is better or more important than the other. It is the synergy of the processes in building that make it what it is .
I think we can agree that we often are amazed at what they sound like . Going in and reshaping bracing can take a guitar to fair to great to crap . Learn from your building mistakes and work forward .