Thin Tops and Vintage X bracing

[37012player]

Paul,

I'm intrigued to be learning from the forum that the old 360/370 series guitars had considerably thinner tops and X-Bracing.

How was the X-bracing done, was it like an traditional acoustic guitar? Just how thin were the tops and sides of these braced guitars?

I've seen pic's on the RIC site of the routed out bodies, and they seem to leave lot of material in the tops and sides. Possibly far more than would be required to resist the string tension force?

I find this particularly interesting in the age of CNC machining that the bodies have got beefier...due to labour costs associated/versus the X-Bracing construction techniques???

Most of the differences between the old 50's, 60's and 70's models is very noticable, but this is hidden detail and I'm very curious how the instruments have changed in construction and.....of course...SOUND!

Cheers,

Si..............

[jingle_jangle]

Si, I'll give you the short answer based upon my own experience, and hopefully if I've missed something, our vintage experts can chime in.

I've worked on a number of the cross-braced "oldies" and own a '60 Capri that I've had the back off in the restoration process.

The cross-bracing on these seems to be more of a carpenter's or engineer's approach than any kind of well-thought-out and hand-crafted luthier's solution to the issue, not only of strength but also the aesthetic issue of thin tops warping due to string tension and environmental forces. Yes, the tops are thin, and when the oldies were hollowed out on a pin router by hand, it seems that it was much easier to simply hog 'em out and then place bracing into the opening, than to attempt to integrate the bracing into the hogging-out process. The bracing was rough-cut on a table saw for cross-sectional profile, and then bandsawn to length and then to fit the inside curve of the hollowed-out interior walls at each end. The approximate location of the sound hole on some guitars sees the bottom of the sound hole interfering with the bracing in that area, so the bracing was notched in this area. This is typical of the larger-bodied Capris and also of the "F" bodies.

The thinner tops and body braces allow a good deal of top vibration, which makes the guitars feel livelier to play, but the down side is that some energy is lost, especially if the bridge is poorly adjusted. Thank God for those hot old toasters!

Thickness of tops and sides: The tops I've seen are around 3/16" thick; I'm sure there's a good deal of variation in these due to hand setups and soft tooling. Sides...well, these are what I term "billet guitars", starting out their existence as eight-pound slabs of maple or alder, and ending up as a three pound guitar shell and five pounds of chips and shavings. So, they are routed out to get them hollowed, and the "sides" range from about 3/8" thick (wide) to 3/4 in some areas (ends of horns, for example). There's virtually no resonance in sides that thick; most of the motion is in the top and a bit in the back. These share very little with traditional acoustic guitar construction; their construction is original and quite inspired.

Remember, these are electric guitars, so the difference in sound between an older, X-braced instrument and a new instrument with beefier construction, though noticeable to most, is considered to be an acceptable tradeoff for higher production and greater consistency from instrument to instrument.

[37012player]

Paul,

Thanks very much for the in depth response to my question. Most appreciated

Whenever I consider the deign and construction of Ric's I'm amazed at how much innovation they managed to bring electric guitars. Seems there is quite a bit of engineering as opposed to artisan in Rickenbackers.

Thanks again.

Si......