Fine Guitar Brace Shaving by Scott van Linge


Guitar Repair, Restoration, and Parabolic Brace Shaving Services

Repair and Parabolic Brace Shaving Services by Scott van Linge are available to you from Fine Guitar Consultants. First, let's discuss general guitar repair and set-up on fine instruments. Due to the nature of wooden instruments, an advance discussion about your playing style and needs is important. Call us to discuss the nature of your problem before shipping anything. When we are both comfortable about proceeding, our next important step will be a diagnosis.

At this stage we will look at the guitar. We will instruct you on shipping the instrument, and request a $50 handling deposit, which will cover return boxing and shipping via UPS Ground. For more valuable instruments, we can discuss other shipping alternatives. After recieving your guitar, we will have our best people determine what the problems are, and discuss the options with you. We always progress only when you are comfortable and ready to do so.

Diagnosis and repair work are sometimes done properly out there in the world, and sometimes not. We all know that there are good and bad levels of quality in all fields from carpentry to plumbing. It is the same for guitars.

We have assembled a well-seasoned group of fine guitar repair specialists in our region. Fine Guitar Consultants will be involved in the diagnosis with the appropriate specialist for your instrument's repair issue(s). We will hand carry your instrument to that shop and discuss all options with that specialist. We will then get in touch with you and give you the details with pricing before proceeding.

You are in control of the process. If you decide to proceed, you will tell us how, and then we will begin repairs AT YOUR RISK. What is the risk? We will keep you informed on that depending on how involved the issue becomes. Usually, the risk is quite small.

We take great pleasure in making instruments as easy to play as possible. Periodic maintenance is important over the years, because wood keeps moving and shifting over time with playing, string tension, weather changes and change of locale. Keeping your guitar's body and neck "tuned up and aligned" will prolong its life and make playing more satisfying.
Now let's examine the Parabolic Brace Shaving Services by Scott van Linge
Through the services of Fine Guitar Consultants, it is now possible to convert a heavily braced, sound-dampened guitar into a balanced, lively one. Even fine hand made guitars benefit from the experienced hands of Scott van Linge. If you are not happy with the string to string balance in volume or if one or more strings sound compressed, read on-- Before you hide that guitar in the closet or put it in the newspaper for sale, consider that you may be sitting on a potentially great sounding guitar! FGC exclusively represents Scott van Linge's Parabolic Braceworks. You have seen the ads for years in Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Scott has worked successfully, shaving and shaping braces and bridges on many guitars over the past 20 years: Martin Taylor Gibson Collings Guild Larrivee Seagull Thompson Takamine E.A. Foley Fender Goodall Lucas Mossman Kinscherf Huss & Dalton. For $940US plus 2-way shipping, in 2-3 weeks (possibly more, depending on whether there is another guitar in line), your heavily (or lightly) constructed handmade or manufactured 6-string guitar can be converted into a sensitive, well balanced, easier-playing instrument by Scott van Linge. 12-string guitars are now accomodated at no extra charge. "I have played a several of Scott van Linge's conversions, and I have 3 samples of his work in my posession. Scott gets impressive results. Below is some of the background on his approach. It is pretty technical reading, and is there for those that want that kind of information. If you just play 'em and want your guitar to sound to its maximum potential, you can trust Fine Guitar Consultants and Scott van Linge to improve the tone, balance, and liveliness. References and telephone numbers from people that Scott has done conversion work for, as well as FGC references, are available for the asking. The following is an excerpt from a long, enthusiastic letter Scott received from a client of mine: "Dear Scott, I am writing you regarding the work you did on my 1976 Martin D-28. When we observed the Thanksgiving Holiday this year, I literally listed my guitar and its modifications as something for which I was profoundly thankful this year!...I was pleased with our initial phone conversation and the patient, interested, detail-oriented way that you discussed the procedure. The very mechanics of packaging up my favorite acoustic and shipping it across country were new and somewhat intimidating to me. As I explained to you and Richard Glick, I am very far from the level of guitar owner/collector/musician you may often deal with....the money was an issue for me; and the modification of a factory stock D-28 in otherwise decent condition was a serious step. In my life, there are all too few examples of work that generates excitement and interest, and leave the lingering notion of money well-spent! I remember specifiying that I was particulary interested in responce, resonance, and sustain. The brace work and bridge work seens to have addressed these properties. The improved response means it is easier to play and that a light touch produces a suprisingly sweet tone. The guitar vibrates much more noticebly and the sustain is remarkable. Scott, your workmanship is obviously neat and careful. There seems to be virturaly no tool marks or areas where the surfaces, finished or unfinished, give a clue to what has been done..." Brian H.
Parts of the following are taken from an article in a published luthier organization's journal. "Conventional wisdom is that if you draw a line down the middle, half of the guitar's soundbox makes Treble, and the other half makes Bass. This is determined by which side the strings anchor on the bridge." A light went on for Scott in 1989, sometime after purchasing a Dobro, on which the strings vibrate the speaker cone directly. Scott had already been well down the road, modifying brace shapes to improve volume and tone. He had been trying to make sense of perplexing balance problems with work on his Gibson J-50, chasing dead strings back and forth between the middle four strings. He found that by plucking the quiet string and lightly feeling the top above the two tone bars (diagonal braces below the bridge), there would be one spot that was not vibrating. On the brace beneath this spot would invariably be a slght imperfection in the evolving parabolic shape. Sanding this spot smooth would improve the weak string while deadening another--as the imperfection moved to a different place on one or the other tone bars. (This was before Scott started using a mirror.) Once both tone bars were perfectly parabolic, all dead spots disappeared. The flash of revelation was that the guitar top acts exactly in the same manner as the cone in the Dobro, or in any loud speaker. Speaker cones do not produce highs on one half and lows on the other, but rather, specific frequencies vibrate a discrete ring on the cone, in an inverse manner. That is, the higher the freqency, the smaller the ring, and visa versa. For the guitar, the center of the "speaker cone" is where the X braces cross. The diagram below shows the rings each string vibrates superimposed on the top braces of a typical steel string guitar. The heavy bars across the braces indicate the location of peaks on a scalloped guitar.

Scott believes--and has shown--that when braces have more mass/strength than is needed to balance the forces acting on them, they dampen the top directly where they are glued, and to a little to each side. You can easily demonstrate this on your guitar by thumping lightly with the fleshy part of a fingertip. Just as you can locate studs in a wall, you can locate the braces with this light thumping at the places where the top sounds dead. That is where the problem is located.
If you add up the total surface area dampened by all of the top's braces, it is quite a bit of soundboard that is not performing up to potential. With scalloped braces, the peaks are major dead spots (the tone bars look like the Golden Gate Bridge) and specifically deaden an arc of the ring from whatever string that peak overlays.
On a typical, modern scalloped guitar, there are ten (10) such peaks, each of which dampens about 2 square inches of sound board. Depending on the brace, they can be removed or parabolically reshaped to eliminate all the dead spots.
Getting back to Scott's J-50, the balance problems can now be understood in terms of migrating dead spots along the tone bars and their resulting effect on whatever string ring was in closest proximity. Again, once the tone bar's shape was parabolic in length and cross-section, balance was achieved because sound waves can easily vibrate and transmit their energy along these perfect curves. Even slight imperfections disrupt vibration, absorbing energy.

Notice that the length looks like one-half of the pattern a vibrating string makes. Parabolas are vibrationally friendly. They are also strong.
Scott studied engineering at Stanford, and in the process, learned that a parabolic spanning beam is just as strong as a full rectangular beam. This recollection was stirred in 1983 as he prepared to sell a D-28 he'd bought in a shop in Berkeley, California in 1975. Jerry Garcia had recommended the shop ten years earlier. Although their repair technician said he had shaved the braces to match those of the 1930's era construction, the tone bars were shaped parabolically, not scalloped as were the old Martins. Never having seen a scalloped guitar, Scott decided parabolic was best for all braces, especially noting how badly the bridge had pulled up in response to the radical scalloping of the X braces. The back braces of that guitar were shaped parabolically, as were those of the 30's Martins. Thus, Scott has taken ideas and shapes from others' successful experiences and combined them with a recently proven theory of how the guitar produces sound. Scott's improvements are highly gratifying after his years of perfecting these techniques and very rewarding to the many clients for whom he has performed work. Jim Dennis, of Crystal, Michigan concluded his letter: "...anyway, I'd like to thank you, Scott, for bringing my D-28 to life in a way I never expected."
There is much more to this process than simply making all of the braces parabolic. A brace can be parabolic and still dampen the surface it's glued to if it is heavier than it needs to be. It is only when the strength of the brace balances the forces acting on it that it "disappears", and it takes many re-stringings, to slowly reach this balance. Working with small planes, sanding blocks and sandpaper, Scott parabolically shapes all of the braces on the top and back, except those securing the neck joint.
Next, the bridge is reshaped (with client permission only) to reduce unneeded mass (for more headroom, brilliant highs, and richer low and mid-frequency response) and to flow all surfaces smoothly to one another and to the top. Sound-waves don't like corners or ridges - - they absorb energy right there. Referring to the sculpted bridge on his 1972 D-18, Robert Cox of Hope, Arkansas, said, "Now that looks like something a luthier would make."

With the bridge and top braces fine tuned, the treble is at its maximum, and the last steps remain, bringing the mid-range and bass volumes up to the level of the highs. This involves gradually reducing the height of the braces on the back, while keeping them parabolic in shape. The back can be seen as two separate reinforcement soundboards with the upper bout, or diameter, boosting the mids, and the lower bout, the bass. The treble strings do not have enough energy to generate reinforcement from the back. (Look at how small (low mass) they are.) In fact, there is a law of physics stating that the higher the frequency, the lower the energy of a wave form.
Scott does all work by hand, carefully feeling and listening to each change as he makes it. The process takes from 20 to 25 hours for each guitar over a period of 10-14 days. The cost is $940US. If this solution seems to match your need, call for a personal consultation with Richard. If your particular guitar is known to be one that is heavily braced, with good potential that is now being choked by the above described factors, then call us. With minimal risk on your part, a guitar that might otherwise be left under a bed or unplayed in a closet, can be wonderfully transformed. Scott has been able to effect improved volume, sustain, and clarity on every client guitar he has worked with to date, and the structural integrity of the guitars have been carefully maintained. The only risk is whether you like a more open and clear, newly re-voiced guitar! At this point, you have little to lose and so much to gain.

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