Double-Top guitars

[daniel711]

Does anyone own, or have experience playing double-top guitars? I'm not talking about the Spanish "double-top", which is really a double back. I mean the sandwhich construction used by Dammonn and Wagner, and now being used by some American luthiers, like Reynolds, Hill, Breslin, etc.. So far, I've only heard good things about them. Luthiers - please chime in with any technical pros/cons. Thanks.......

[jens]

Hi Daniel,

as you may know I have played double-top guitars by both Dammann and Wagner. What I can say about them is that at least Wagner's guitars (Dammann's are really not worth the money, they don't offer much sustain and have such a nasal timbre) sound more "traditional" than the lattice-braced guitars I know, while offering volume that is comparable to Australian lattice guitars. What I didn't like so much about them was, that Wagner's instruments sounded EXTREMELY dark, too dark for my taste and a little bitt muddy (but I suppose there are less dark sounding types of double-tops, too), where lattice-braced instruments more tend toward a very "tight" sound. What they all seem to have in common is a kind of a hollow sound. Perhaps you know, what I mean. But the most important difference between lattice-braced guitars and double-tops is the different way in which double-tops are loud as compared to their Australian counterparts. While in lattice braced guitars the sound sometimes is really thrown out of the guitar, double tops are more like a piano that simply fills the room with its sound without being "aggressive" at all. Perhaps you could say a double top is loud in the way a piano is, while lattice tops are loud in the way a violin is. Unfortunately I don't know Reynolds' guitars. Most of the double-top builders already have a very long waiting list. Dammann's is astronomic (more than ten years) as are his prices (more than 20000 Euro). Wagner is not much better concerning his waiting list (9 years), but now and then some new guitars are availible on the internet (for approximately 12000$). There is Fritz Mueller in Canada, who claims to build better instruments than Dammann and who has, as far as I know, not yet a waiting period. His website is www.classicalguitars.ca.

[daniel711]

Thanks Jens
From your reply, I presume you recall that I play an Australian lattice-top. It seems that you prefer the double-top sound to the lattcie-top, but would you choose a traditional top over both?? I know it's hard to generalize, since any given guitar could shoot down any theory, if it sounds good enough. But in general, everything being equal, which of the three wins??

Randy Reynolds is one of the best Luthiers in the US. Check him out at www.reynoldsguitars.com. I'm starting to plan for my next guitar, and I tend toward successful innovators, who are alway working on the problems of volume, sustain, intionation, etc.... And double-tops are really in vogue in the CG world right now - must be something to it..

[Zak]

I've heard through some people here at Eastman that double tops lack sustain, and sound like rubber bands strung across a box, then amplified! "Boing!" then the sound is gone.

[jens]

I think, if I had the money, I would buy a traditional, a lattice-braced and a double-top guitar, all three, just to have all availible "technologies" (perhaps an additional Fleta, too). I don't know how a Jim Redgate lattice-braced guitar sounds. Do they also have this aggressive character? Maybe they don't have, because the top is not so unnaturally thin as on a Smallman. The Smallman copies I have heard had the typical 0.5 mm top and sounded more like carbon fibre than like wood. Maybe the Redgate would be a fine guitar in my opinion, too. But to come back to the original topic: I really prefer the double top guitars I know (which were built by the inventors of the wood, honeycomb, wood sandwich construction, so they are in some sense the "originals") to the lattice guitars I know. Perhaps it's just like the fact that I like the piano more than the violin (modern violins are often too loud and aggressive for me, baroque violins are not so loud and sound much more beautiful to me, but that's another story). Pianos have this hard to describe kind of "relaxed" loudness, that I wish guitars had. But unfortunately volume is something we still have big problems with. Not even a Smallman (which seems to be the loudest guitar of our times) is approximately as loud as a piano, although its tone screams.

To answer your last question: I prefer the guitar that I sonically like best. You know that I like spruce tops more than cedar tops. I have never played a spruce lattice or double-top. Maybe that would be a great experience for me, but these instruments are extremely rare, so it's almost impossible to meet someone who owns one of them. I'm always interested in new approaches in luthierie. But at the moment I don't have any plans to buy either a lattice-braced or a double-top guitar, since my guitar was in direct comparison louder than the Dammann and equal in volume to the Wagner (but having much more sustain than both of them). The lattice-braced guitar was only slightly louder than mine. Believe me, I'm not lying. The Australian luthier Jeff Kemp writes on his website that an appropriately braced traditional top can be almost as loud as the lattice top guitars he produces.

[floyder]

please clarify to me, the uneducated, what a latice braced guitar is? twould be most helpful.