Official Luthiers Forum!

I always welcome hearing about our friend from the northern Ontario tundra. As part of a general article on Custom Dreadnoughts, Mario chimes in on that which makes his cannons special among the Bluegrass crowd. Having played one of these "simple" guitars last fall, I was blown away by their power and tone!

http://www.acousticguitar.com/article/default.aspx?articleid=23479

Congratulations, Grumpy!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Mario is not quite far enough north for tundra, but he is north of the arctic watershed, the rivers all flow north. I spend the 1st 18 years of my life about 80 miles south of where Mario is and don't miss the cold or snow.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Thanks for posting this JJ bro.

This article actually has some meat in it for builders with the discussion on Mario's use of CF and Engleman. The ball bearings in the HHG bottles acting as heat sinks is also a great tip.

And it's great to see Mario again too in the picture.

For the new folks around here Mario Proulx is one of the finest builders IMHO ever. He participated on the OLF for a long time and many of us, me included, owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

This is a must read - highly recommended!

We miss ya Mario my friend!

Fred...anything north of the Indiana/Michigan border is tundra in my dictionary!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

JJ wrote


JJ you just got to get out of the workshop more.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

JJ, thanks for sharing that. I'm glad that the Grumpster is doing well. Still wish he'd come by here more often though...

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

I think we all know where we can find Mario should we need to get his opinions, advice or admonitions. And if anyone doesn't and wants to know, PM me.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

If you need a fix, without going direct, you can log in over at MIMF, as he's a regular over there.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Wow, I thought I had learned a thing or two about Mario's building style over the years. I had no idea that Englemann is his favorite top and brace wood. Of course, that is Englemann brace stock combined with his use of CF which - according to him in the article - brings it up to red spruce stiffness with the memory characteristics of CF.

Well, there goes some long held bluegrass myths. Mario takes great pleasure in being a professional "myth buster", though. Having heard his guitars, I can tell you the tone he gets is the exact opposite of the well-held belief of Englemann's tone. Extremely loud, articulate, punchy dreads....

I must say, however, my last OM (and first use of Englemann) surprised the snot out of me! Easily kills the average dread and, if I may say so, hangs right with even the best dreads it has come across so far. This may warrant some more experimentation....

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

Nick Kukich (of Franklin Guitars fame) used Engleman quite a bit in the 80's. I have 2 of his guitars form mid 80's - OM and a Prairie State - both with Engleman tops, and both killer guitars!

Glenn

Yes, Wes...I was quite surprised as well. To me, here's the essence of his approach...

"I don't believe in controlling the tone with the mass on the top. I believe in controlling it with how loose I can make the top, and how much it can move. So I went back to Engelmann brace stock with the carbon fiber and I found a combination that worked really nicely. It responds like a red spruce brace, but it has the structural memory of carbon fiber."

I've been pondering this paradigm shift ever since I read the article, and as often happens, I have more questions than answers.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I hear ya, JJ. Yet at the same time, how many times have we heard him preach about mass? Bridge mass, brace mass, bridge pin mass...? I'm more than a little confused now. I wonder if this is a recent shift? I sure thought he used a lot of red spruce, although he was an advocate of judging each piece of wood on its own merits and not getting hung up in a name.

The first time I heard one of Mario's guitars finally nailed down the tone in my head I was looking for. I'd love to spend a couple of weeks in his shop some time, for sure.

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

Well...making the top looser will move even better when there's less mass. So, I'll bet he'd say one or more of the following:
... "It depends", or
... "it's not how loose you make the top...it's how you make it loose" or
... "it's not how stiff you make the top ...it's how you make it stiff" or
... "it's not how much you reduce the mass, but how and where it's reduced"

For sure it would be something cryptic like that to force us to figure it out on our own!

Perhaps we can butcher the message and force him to make an appearance if for no other reason than to make him rescue his reputation!

Your turn! <BSEG>

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

Or not....

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

I don't think that there is anything cryptic in Mario's explanation and it makes sense to me.

Engleman should not be a surprise when Mario is using it in conjunction with CF creating a composite that is a sandwich. He said that other spruces, in conjunction with CF, were too stiff and that makes sense to me. There is the need for enough gluing surface too so Mario has found Engleman to be better than stiffer spruces while still being not too stiff if dimensioned to provide some gluing surface.

As far as mass the composite bracing also is in keeping with what we always heard from Grumpy in that with CF augmentation I'll bet that his bracing mass remains very low.

There is a key word in there too - "memory" where he touches on the memory of CF being useful in permitting a guitar top to move, the objective...., but also recover over and over again.

The impression that I always had of Mario's sense of what a guitar should be is uber stiff, light weight, low mass, and with a top that can move and recover much like a spring. I still think that this is right-on and the goal that I aspire to with my own building.

You missed the point, Hesh. Nothing cryptic in what he said in the article. The "cryptic" reference was a "j-o-k-e" referring to his typical answers to questions posed.

Your comments as to the goals to seek were right on. Eddie Haskell could not have said it better!

The new info was the idea of using Engleman over Red that were stated for the first time in my memory.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

JJ bro I just went back and reread the comments and I did indeed miss the point - nothing new there.....

My apologies.

The CF being used for memory more than stiffness is a beautiful idea. It lets him make a very lightly braced guitar without worrying about the bracing letting the top creep over time. The wood will want to creep, and would prefer to get less stiff VS the load over time, but the CF won't let it permanently change dimensionally.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I mean no disrespect to Mario, but c'mon guys using CF laminated braces is not new. Just check out your past issues of American Lutherie or past OLF posts. It is a great idea, but the reason some people shy away from doing that (myself included) is that your not going to be able to tune those braces with a chisel or finger plane. They have to be ground down. I do use a CF laminated upper transverse brace for both the top and back, but I like to be able to tune the X and tone bars.

Also an analysis was done that showed that a CF laminated brace in fact does not have a better stiffness to weight ratio than a quality piece of well quartered spruce. As Bob said, the real advantage is in the memory, so the whole system can be built lighter, knowing that it will not creep over time.

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Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

There certainly is a lot of truth to that. The guitar I played was the lightest Dred I ever held! I guess only time will tell as to whether it holds up.

I don't think anyone ever said that Mario was or is the first one to laminate braces with CF. It's a topic that rarely gets discussed here but I know there is interest from builders as to its viability.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I'm not quite understanding what you guys mean when you refer to the brace's memory. Can anyone explain that in different terms?

Wood is a thermoplastic; over time it will permanently deform (warp) under stress. Think of a stack of wood that is not properly supported. Carbon fiber will not deform, but will spring back to its original shape.

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Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

As an example:
If you took a wooden beam and a carbon fiber beam the same length that bend the same amount when you put X pounds in the middle (where X is enough to put some sort of noticible bend in them) and wait five years then when you come back:

1- The wooden beam will have bent more while the carbon fiber beam will still have the exact same bend that it originally had
2- If you remove the weight, odds are good the wooden beam won't return to being fully straight while the CF one will

Carbon fiber is actually a good example for this as there's no real way to permanently deform it: it bends and then it breaks, but any bend which doesn't break it is fully recoverable. The idea with the bracing is that while the wood will deform and give, you'll eventually hit a point where the carbon fiber component hits it's steady state (where string tension cannot move it further) and the movement will stop.

The trick is figuring out how much CF to use to get it to stop where you want it to, and I don't know how big a margin of error there is in getting it right.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

[quote="muthrs"]but the reason some people shy away from doing that (myself included) is that your not going to be able to tune those braces with a chisel or finger plane. They have to be ground down.quote]

You can shape CF with chisels and fingerplanes, it is just a pain and it dulls your tools fast. As long as you are always carving "down hill" it is not so bad, the closer you get to carving with the grain of the CF the easier it is. Still harder than solid wood though.

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Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY