rmmottola wrote:
There was an article in
American Lutherie in 2005 about the construction methods used at the time by Australian manufacturer Cole Clarke, an early CNC user. Although they didn't carve in the braces they did start with thick plates and carve in the linings, and also shallow pockets for the braces to aid in gluing. As far as I know they continue to build this way. Here is the summary page for the AL article on the GAL site:
https://www.search.luth.org/the-cole-clark-guitar/ and here is the Cole Clarke web page :
https://coleclarkguitars.com/Yes, they do and in practice it is a problematic design. Why? Because when a brace loosens you cannot get under it to clean out the failed adhesive prepatory to a reglue or even easily add fresh glue - the brace is buried in a perfectly fitted CNCd channel in the soundboard. I don’t think there’s a sonic benefit for the instrument in bracing via this method, it’s purely to make assembly easier.
Other “innovations” which Cole Clark is famous (notorious?) for would include utilising a Spanish heel for their production steel string guitars - they claim it avoids the need to ever have a neck reset (!!!) I guess those of us who repair guitars for a living could venture an opinion on this claim from CC, but opinions aside, this year is about their 23rd in operation so we will soon begin to see whether they are right or not.