DiMauro -- Luthierie

satyr

Hello, I was hoping to get a bit of advice from some of the luthiers on the forum.

I'm in the planning stages of building a gypsy guitar, but with the glut of traditional oval and grand bouche selmer clones, I was more interested in trying out the DiMauro style f-hole instrument.

Now in my research, I've found something interesting that I haven't seen discussed in this forum or MIMF and the various and sundry repositories of information of these obscure instruments...

Look at the Carved backs on these DiMauro's! Cool.

These for sure aren't arched in this way by a simple doming of the back over arched braces. Am I right?

I don't know for sure that ALL the DiMauro's are made this way, but it would help explain why these are sometimes said to have a more midrange dominant character than the traditional Selmer types.

So I thought I'd try this out, it seems a cool idea of mixing the fatter archtop sound with the punch and sensitivity of the thin pliage'd dome top.


Well I guess my question is more about the Bracings then. How would I have to modify the basic Selmer bracings to compensate for the carve in the back? I know that you still want to glue the carved panels onto arched braces to add tension, but it seems that the braces as originally designed to dome the back would be overkill.

and then with the top bracings... a trickier subject. With the f-holes in the way of the lateral braces that would normally go around the soundhole, how would you modify the bracing to go around the f-holes and still cause the top to dome? I've read on the Eimer's site, that for his "Amati" f-hole model, he uses something called "trapezium" bracing... any idea what that means?


ok that was long. but thanks for reading it and thanks for the help!

~James

Josh Hegg

I know one luthier on this board that has built one.... I'm not going to mention any names... Bob.... But he might have something to add...


Cheers,
Josh