For many years I did three braces, then five for a few years and I'm back to three now. I'll probably be doing five next week. But by itself, none of that really matters. The top plate has to thought of as a whole of it's components; the stiffness, strength and thickness of the top, any radius you might have, the bridge patch, whether or not you reduce the thickness around the perimeter, the number and arrangement of braces as well as their size and shape, etc. Change one thing and you'll likely have to change everything else.
Hi Chuck,.....you had me curious so i took a look inside your Mermaid Soprano i bought from The Music Emporium a few years ago. It has a soundport, and i looked thru the main soundhole with a mirror also.
http://www.themusicemporium.com/product-detail/product/moore-bettah-soprano-mermaid.html
Heheh, when i first looked inside, i was looking just under the bridge plate and saw only a single fairly light brace
running straight back between the soundhole and tail block. I thought, that can't be right (thinking from a classical
guitar or steel string top mindset, where there are multiple fan braces back of the bridgeplate, among other places.)
Then it dawned on me to check around the soundhole, where i found 4 additional (and much stouter) braces at all
4 "corners" (boxing in the soundhole area). So mine is a 5 bracer........
I was actually surprised to find these soundhole braces as thick as they were, but that's only because the single one
under the bridge plate is so much thinner. Again,...this "uke" autopsy/visual disection being fairly new to me.
(and there is some support offered by the bridge plate,....a "6th" brace of sorts)
I was curious if you've experimented with a build that had the upper braces thinned as much as the single
lower brace? (or close) In other words, not a build you would feel safe in selling, fearing that the top may dome up over a period of time.
But a build that would tell you a lot about what little tone or volumn production you give up in order to build/sell a
ukulele that should be relatively problem free if well cared for? I'm sure every builder does some experimenting for
their own development, just wondering what you might have discovered?
This might be a possibility in a smaller scale soprano size, where the shorter scale exerts the least total string
tension of all the ukulele sizes.
BTW, the ukulele sounds wonderful now that i changed a bad A string 2 weeks ago, and have played it maybe
40 or 50 hours. It seems to have opened up a bit over that time, but was always very rich sounding with a lot
of overtones eminating. My only problem from time to time is on some fingerstyle pieces i'm working on.
I could use a bit more fretboard scale length, as in a concert size. Maybe a slothead tenor after that! :drool:
cheers,
Joe T