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What do luthiers think?

Yes. If you mean can it be engineered to have better physical characteristics than a solid top, whatever those characteristics might be.

It needs to be executed well, though. Laminating something doesn't inherently make it better, but if it's done right then it allows you to average properties of materials in a beneficial way. You can count 'air' as a component if you're being really clever, it has a fantastically low density compared to most engineering materials. Nomex honeycomb is averaging the density of air (to bring down mass) with the tensile strength of aramid fiber to make something that's a gajillion times stiffer than the air hexagons and a heckuva lot lighter than the aramid

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

First you have to get everyone to agree what a "better" sound is.

You know, at the end of the day they all sound like guitars. Some people like guitar A, some like guitar B....

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

There are people who might argue that point. There is a huge gain in volume, but there is bit of a loss in "sweetness", IMO.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

No.

Ah, a man of short words!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I think that the biggest benefit with working with composites is repeatability. Wood is a notoriously un-uniform material and part of the art of luthiery is knowing how to adjust the top thickness and bracing to get the sound you want.

Theoretically using composites, you should be able engineer a very "precise" sound. e.g. let's say you used all man made materials in a composite guitar. If you take carful notes on how you built the last one, you should be able to build another one that sounds "identical" to the last one. The trick is coming up with a composite guitar that sounds good in the first place.

There is an engineering paper (grad project I think) of a guy who analyzed a wood yamaha acoustic and tried to re-create the sound profile of that guitar in CF and IIRC, it came out pretty well but didn't sound exactly like the original. Almost certainly with enough sweat (i.e. $$) one could come up with a good sounding one and then stamp out millions of good sounding copies once you have the secret formula.

I'm sticking mostly with wood though.

Edit: Here's the PAPER

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

The sound is always going to be compared to a "gold standard" which in our case is wood. if you can make a laminated top sound like a wood top you've succeeded.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Long ago, a famous old fly fisherman with the handle of "Sparse Grey Hackle" said he would fish with a fiberglass flyrod when Heifetz played Carnegie Hall with a plastic fiddle...

Trouble is, we won't know what a good laminate top guitar sounds like until someone develops the skill to find out. How many solid wood guitars does it take before you gain significant control over the sound? How about if you had no one else to compare to?

Honestly I'm amazed that such a romantic notion as solid wood instruments still rules the market in this day and age. I'm certainly glad for it, as I'm not particularly interested in techno-building, and dealing with all the forms and presses and adhesives for laminating.

Plenty of people have been making nomex double tops though, and it seems like most builders and players still prefer solid. So there must be some real tone quality in solid wood that is more agreeable with the human ear. But I guess the doubles still sell too. Laminates may not have enough advantages compared with solid to get the same response, even if someone does develop the skill to make them sound great.

The humidity tolerance would be nice.

no

Are we including laminated tops with nomax cores? If so, take a listen to one of Paul Woolsons guitars and tell me they dont sound sweet

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