most resonant guitar top

[dain]

so i'm going to get back to work on my electric sitar.  i've been playing it as a solid body for the last couple of months and love it to death but the sympathetic strings are just not working.  here's the old thread...

index.php?topic=6112.30

so i'm going to pull a rickenbacker style hollowbody act on it.  except instead of routing a solid body from the back i'm going to route the hollow cavities from the front then cut a thin top to stick on the front of the guitar.  i'm hoping that having a solid piece of thin wood on the front will transmit the vibration of the main strings to the sympathetics more effectively than if i routed from the back.

am i making any sense at all? 

anyway, my questions are many...
A: what kind of wood would be the most efficient transmitter of vibration

B: where do i get a piece of wood wide enough for the front of the guitar...i'm assuming the bookmatched tops would be counter productive to my aims...+ it seems like all you can get on ebay is bookmatched pairs?

C: what kind of glue is the best for applying a top to a guitar...

D: (extra credit)  what is the science of F hole placement?  is my main goal to empty as much wood from the inner cavities as possible?  larger resonant chambers = better transmission?

anyway, any help would be appreciated

[øøøøøøø]

Look at acoustic guitars.  Softwoods like spruce or cedar vibrate more.  They vibrate across their grain lines (the wood 'flexes' at the grain lines), so wood with tightly-spaced grains (slow growth soft-woods) tends to be most resonant.  2-piece bookmatched is fine, most acoustic guitars use 2-piece tops (both archtops and flat tops).

[dain]

usually though bookmatched tops are just trying to bounce sound back, out i'm actually trying to move vibrations from one bridge to the other.  wont this join dissipate the waves?

plus anybody know of a good walkthough for joining the tops?  i'm a total noob when it comes to acoustic guitar building    i was hoping i could get away with just finding a single thin piece.  also; how thin should i go?  the original body for the rogue was paper thin but the sympathetics worked great!

[djetz]

I'd agree with øøøøøøø (how do you pronounce that?) about the woods, "spruce" was my first thought.

Don't worry about the join "dissipating" the vibrations, a decent join will make zero perceptible difference to the resonant qualities of the wood.

There will be archtop & acoustic building forums around, that'd be a better place to ask these questions. I'd also expect those forums would be less susceptible to guitar wood myths, though probably not free of them.

[rickenmetal]

I was thinking of doing the same thing at one time, I never got around to it though.

wood:
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bodies,_nec ... _tops.html

I was actually thinking about using back wood for the top, which would work also, might not vibrate quite as much though:
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Bodies,_nec ... sides.html

[dain]

thanks for the input guys...is it impossible to find 1 piece of top wood?

hmm.

[quarterpound]

sure, they're not cheap, but you can find the wood you're looking for at Gilmer Wood. They're located in Washington state, iirc, but they ship, and have a really nice website you can check and use to pick your individual top. Most of their tops are smaller than you want but poke all the way through the instrument woods sections, you'll find some big pieces of Port Orford cedar, i think it's called. Sorry, i'd help ya more but i'm on my mobile.

[øøøøøøø]

thanks for the input guys...is it impossible to find 1 piece of top wood?

hmm.

How wide of a top do you need?

Think of the average spruce tree you've seen in your life.  Have you ever seen a spruce whose trunk is 35" or so in diameter? (because if I understand right I think that's what you'd need for a one-piece 15-16" top... I think the top wood has to come from one half or the other-- I don't think the heartwood in the very center of the log can be a part of the top, but I may be mistaken).

[dain]

oh god...you just depressed the hell out of me...

who am i to think that another tree should die so that i can play cheesy sitar riffs...  i'm switching to plastic guitars guys...seeya!

[robert(og)]

cypress, used on most flamenco styled guitars

[Papajerry]

cypress, used on most flamenco styled guitars

I concur.