Aylor a bracing story - Taylor Guitars

Peer into any Taylor guitar and
you’ll see an important source of
its unique sound: bracing — the
thin strips of Sitka spruce glued to the
inside surfaces of the top and back.
Bracing exists to perform two seemingly
contradictory functions: it must
strengthen the top and back of the guitar
to prevent warpage or distortion,
while leaving them flexible enough to
vibrate and generate tone.
While there are almost as many theories
about tone production as there are
T A Y L O R T E C H S H E E T
A BRACING STORY
luthiers, there is little disagreement on
the important role that bracing plays.
Indeed, when the Martin company
invented the original “X-bracing” (sonamed
because the main brace forms an
“X” shape across the inside surface of
the guitar), it served as a significant line
of demarcation between the traditional,
fan-braced classical guitar and the modern
steel-string acoustic.
Although it remains the fundamental
bracing concept on today’s steelstrings,
X-bracing has been modified by
SIDE VIEWS OF SCALLOPED X-BRACES
X-bracing provides a continuous flow of strength from the
upper bout to the lower bout, thus adding rigidity in spite of
the soundhole’s location in the middle of the soundboard. If
the soundhole were on the upper bout, like it is on the
Dreadnought and Jumbo
Grand Auditorium
Grand Concert
Taylor bass, we could use a form of “fan bracing” (on the
bass, we use fan-bracing that extends through the place
where a soundhole normally would be).
innumerable luthiers over the years. As
Bob Taylor says, such terms as “X-bracing”
or “fan bracing” are analogous to
“V-8 engine” or “independent suspension”
— they are accepted standards of
guitar-building that each manufacturer
has fine-tuned to what he feels works
best.
Bracing is so critical that even slight
alterations of its design, profile, or
thickness can result in discernable differences
in tone. That’s especially true
with regard to the bracing on the top,
CROSS-SECTIONS OF
BRACE SHAPES
Dreadnought & Jumbo
Grand Auditorium
Grand Concert
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A BRACING STORY Copyright 1994 Taylor Guitars All Rights Reserved

A BRACING STORY (continued from page 1)
or soundboard. Bob Taylor refers to the
top of an acoustic guitar as its “most
valuable real estate” because it is so crucial
to tone production. Legendary
Spanish luthier Antonio de Torres
Jurado (better-known as Torres) realized
that fact 100 years ago.
Just as Bob Taylor built the “Pallet
Guitar” out of junk wood to demonstrate
that it is the guitar maker’s design
skills and not fancy materials that produce
a fine guitar, Torres once sought
to prove the soundboard’s sovereignty
by making a guitar with a wood soundboard,
but with back and sides made of
papier-mâché. Reportedly, people were
amazed at how good it sounded.
A guitar maker purposely manipulates
bracing patterns and dimensions
to create his preferred tone, which
becomes his aural “signature.” Although
other components of a guitar’s construction
(and the way it is played)
influence tone production, people who
describe a guitar as sounding “like a
Taylor” or “like a Martin” or “like a
Gibson” are making an indirect, perhaps
unwitting reference to its interior
bracing.
In the eternal quest for better tone
production, guitar makers over the
years have looked for ways to maintain
the support properties of bracing while
increasing its flexibility. One successful
method involves shaving wood from
the bracing to achieve a delicate compromise
between preserving its stabilizing
capacity and reducing its unnecessary
heft, which can make the soundboard
too rigid.
This scooped, or “scalloped” bracing,
has become fairly standard on
steel-string acoustics, with different
types of scalloping used for different
purposes. All Taylor six-strings, except
for the Dan Crary Signature Model
(DCSM), feature our own brand of
scalloped bracing, which produces the
warm, rich tone for which Taylors are
famous.
Because our two signature models
were created to suit the specific
requirements of the players involved,
their bracing differs accordingly. The
mellow, “scalloped” tone comes somewhat
at the expense of some treble
overtones, so the DCSM was designed
with non-scalloped bracing to deliver
strong midrange and treble throughout
the whole range of the guitar. Crary
requires that kind of balance — treble
and bass overtones both high-up on the
first string and low-down on the sixth
string — because the flatpicking maestro
usually plays into microphones and
over sound systems, which can turn a
rich, warm, bass-heavy tone into distortion.
Almost the reverse is the case with
the Leo Kottke Signature Model 12string
(LKSM). All of our 12-strings are
made with non-scalloped bracing. This
is because they need more bracing
material to: 1) handle the increased
tension of twice the number of strings;
and 2) prevent the top from being
overdriven. The top and its components
must be beefy enough to adequately
amplify the tone, otherwise it
will be overdriven the way a 10-watt
speaker is overdriven by a 20-watt amp.
Consequently, Taylor 12-strings have
thicker tops, thicker pin plates, and
heavy, non-scalloped bracing. [If you
hear a 12-string that sounds “washed
out,” it’s probably distorting due to
bracing that lacks sufficient mass.]
Unlike its Taylor 12-string brethren,
however, the LKSM has scalloped bracing
that was designed to work with fat,
heavy-gauge, low-tuned strings to give
the guitar its characteristic, “throatypiano”
tone.
Recently, we changed the bracing
on some limited-edition Dreadnoughts
to produce a tone not ordinarily associated
with Taylor guitars. Generally,
Taylor Dreadnought and Jumbo sixstrings
have the kind of bracing mass
that produces the “full-range” tonal
spectrum we prefer. They shine as
“plectrum” or “rhythm” guitars because
they respond well to being flatpicked
or strummed. But over the years, many
players who love our Dreadnoughts
have expressed the wish that they had
that “old dreadnought bass tone.”
So, we created the 810-WMB, on
which we used narrower top and back
braces (5/16-inch as opposed to the
3/8-inch on the regular Dreadnoughts)
to enable them to vibrate more and
produce a boomier low end.
As you can see from the illustrations,
those braces inside your guitar
are more than scraps of wood. Bracing
is a potentially complex subject that
involves the laws of physics and mass
and sound. And although we can’t adequately
cover the subject in one article,
hopefully this will give you an appreciation
of how much thought and effort
go into even the most concealed components
of your Taylor.
1980 GILLESPIE WAY • EL CAJON, CA 92020-1096 • CUSTOMER SERVICE (619) 258-6957 • FAX (619) 258-3797
A BRACING STORY Copyright 1994 Taylor Guitars All Rights Reserved

A BRACING STORY (continued from page 2)
The Grand Concert is an
ideal guitar for fingerstyle
and recording because it’s
smaller, and because its
scalloped bracing was
designed to produce the
“Taylor tone” without the
“boominess” of a
Dreadnought.
The Grand Auditorium’s
braces are narrower; we
removed mass from the
width of the braces to
enable the guitar top to
move faster, thus creating
a higher component of treble
“zing” across the guitar
and resulting in a snappy,
bell-like tone. The GA is
designed to be a strong
fingerpicking guitar that
also can handle medium
strumming.
Dreadnought and Jumbo
six-strings have more
bracing mass, and shine as
“plectrum” or “rhythm” guitars,
because they respond
well to flatpicking or lightto-heavy
strumming. Notice
that the Dreadnought and
Jumbo use exactly the
same bracing pattern (i.e.
the main X-brace, numberone
fan brace, and fingerboard
support braces, are
exactly the same length on
both guitars). That’s
because, quite by accident,
the two guitar shapes,
although obviously different,
intersect each other at
the brace ends. And that is
one reason why it’s hard to
describe the difference
between the tone of a
Jumbo and a Dreadnought.
They are, in fact, very similar
guitars.
Our Dreadnought and
Jumbo 12-strings have
thicker tops, thicker pin
plates, and heavier bracing,
both to handle the
increased string tension
and to prevent the top from
being overdriven. They are
designed to deliver a beautiful
response at concert
pitch (as opposed to the
lower-tuned LKSM).
1980 GILLESPIE WAY • EL CAJON, CA 92020-1096 • CUSTOMER SERVICE (619) 258-6957 • FAX (619) 258-3797
A BRACING STORY Copyright 1994 Taylor Guitars All Rights Reserved