Big Boodie Joodie

[Stumpy205]

Hello. My name is Nick. I am restoring a old hollow body acoustic guitar. I am looking for some knowledge and advice. She is very old and believed to made between 20s abd 40s. I can’t find any markings on her from her maker. Someone gave her to me and I named Big Boodie Joodie.  She has a blues soulful sound already and that’s how I would like her sound. There’s some echoing though.  Some questions I have are about bracing. It has two long parallel braces from top to bottom. Pros and cons considering the deep blues tone I’m looking for. Im in the process of sanding down and refurbishing her. I took the back of for repairs is why I’m asking about opinions on bracing. Next question if stain or paint the inside of the body what that will affect sound and how?

I did not post pictures on here but if you are interested in pics just let me know 

Advice and any input I would be greatly appreciated. 

[Bizman62]

Hi and welcome!

Pictures are the salt in this soup so please send them. Upload them to your post rather than using a third party host so they will be visible for future readers as well. You can even create an image gallery for your photos in the uppermost bar, under Resources and use that for linking to your posts if needed.

There's many bracing patterns, from just one or two parallel braces to a fully checkered top. I wouldn't recommend changing the original design, though. Most likely a drastic change would ruin the tone it now has. Just make sure the braces are in their original shape and properly glued in so they don't rattle. There's lots of videos at Rosa String Works, especially in the older ones there's lots of repair works. Don't concentrate on only guitar related ones, there's lots of info about bracing and such in the violin/mandolin/bass repair videos as well.

Staining the inside has basically no effect to the sound as it doesn't fill anything. Painting may have a negative effect as it both fills the pores and adds damping material on the surface. After all, the wood of an acoustic guitar is very thin, only a couple of millimetres. Adding a plastic layer of 20% will reduce the vibrations quite a lot! If you've ever studied how to make a car more silent for a hi-fi system, you know what I mean! Soundproof paint is not that much different to regular latex.