Dupont Chorus f-hole top bracing

Craig Bumgarner

There are numerous discussions and pictures of the Di Mauro Chorus which the Dupont Chorus is modeled upon on the Benoit de Bretagne forum. http://www.benoit-de-bretagne.com/ There is a thread on the Dupont version. There are pictures and drawings of bracing patterns. If you don't read French well (like me), try Google's Chrome browser for on the fly translation, though it takes some time to get a handle on some of the French names for guitar parts (nets = bindings, table = top, dams = bracing, handle = neck, key = fingerboard, ham = guitar, scratching the ham = playing the guitar, etc.)

I think the Di Mauro Chorus is truly an elegant guitar, I hope to be building something similar soon.

deadedith

And ten minutes later, finally getting that 'barrage' means 'bracing', I searched that forum and found this. Thanks Craig!
I will now eat some crow after realizing that it is my deficiency in French, not the lack of openness on the part of gypsy luthiers, that was the source of my frustration.

Craig Bumgarner

That is one approach, similar to Selmer bracing. I think that's one of Bob Holo's guitars, I'll leave it to him to comment further.

If you continue down in the thread where you found this picture, you will find other bracing patterns, including a picture of the inside of a Di Mauro Chorus and some discussion about the differences between the patterns.

http://www.benoit-de-bretagne.com/phpBB ... sc&start=0

Also, this thread shows some other bracing patterns for f hole guitars ala Chorus.

http://www.benoit-de-bretagne.com/phpBB ... 71&start=0

deadedith

This is a very clear pic, there is a lot of material to go through.
I posted an apology earlier and don't see it here - but obviously it is my ignorance of the French language, not the openness of French luthiers, that was causing my frustration. I hereby eat crow. :-)

Bones

It looks like it has F-hole reinforcement also. I've done that on archtops before. I've used book binding fabric and just laid it over the inside of the F-holes and saturated it with Titebond or whatever woodworkers glue that you have. That looks pretty solid though so maybe it is just an extra layer of veneer. It looks like they omitted the parallel braces on this one.

deadedith

What do you think of this type of bracing - if you can envision the f-holes at the waist and eliminate the roundhole at the top?

Craig Bumgarner

I think it is interesting, but would not expect it to sound like a manouche guitar. Those longitudinal braces and only one, thin transverse brace favor very different resonant modes than the traditional ladder braced manouche guitar. It is almost the direct opposite. Not that it would not sound good, just probably not gypsy.

Bones

If you eliminated the lateral brace under the bridge it would look like parallel bracing of an archtop.

An archtop being much stiffer than a selmac wouldn't need the lateral brace.

Interesting concept. If you have the luxury, you could try several versions and see which sound you like the best if you are building them yourself and have enough materials. Try to keep everything else the same so that you have some control over the experiment.

Here's an archtop with parallel braces and f-hole reinforcement.

deadedith

Bones - what I may do, since I've built a number of 000's and OM's, is build one of them with that bracing and do the comparison, then if it is successful go ahead with the DiMauro chorus build. We'll see.

How do you reinforce the f-holes?

Thanks
Dave

Archtop Eddy

Hi Dave. Check out My New Guitar Contest just posted under Archtop Eddy's Corner. It has f-holes positioned similarly to the Dupont Chorus or a DiMauro. During its construction, the builder sent me an email about the top and the challenges of the f-hole postions. I'll be glad to share this with you in a few days -- but first I want to run my contest... AE