The Sound of Wood and Steel

Some years ago, I found myself standing beside the famed luthier Dana Bourgeois while he prepared the top of a Brazilian rosewood dreadnought guitar that he was building in his Lewiston, Maine, shop. Bourgeois is one of the most respected contemporary acoustic guitar builders, with dealers all over the world, and the list of musicians who have played his instruments includes the likes of Doc Watson, Bryan Sutton, Luke Bryan, and Natalie Maines. I had read a good bit about Bourgeois before I met him, and I already owned and loved one of his guitars and wanted to learn what made them sound so special.

One of the things he’s known for is personally voicing the top of each instrument before it is joined to the back and the sides. To accomplish this task, he uses a method called tap tuning. To the underside of an acoustic guitar’s top he glues several narrow strips of wood called braces. The “luthier’s dilemma,” as Bourgeois puts it, is that if the top, which acts as a soundboard, is too thick or the braces are too strong, the instrument will not vibrate properly, and the guitar will lack resonance and sound dead. If, however, the top is too thin or the braces are too weak, the guitar, which is subjected to as much as 200 pounds of string tension, will literally pull itself to pieces.

While I watched, he held the braced side of the top—two joined pieces of Adirondack spruce—near his left ear. With his free hand, he started thumping the other side, his fingers moving from one spot to another, tapping it some 15 or 20 times. He stepped back over to his workbench, laid the top down, and began to shave minuscule curls of wood off the braces. Then he lifted it beside his ear and repeated the tuning process, after which he returned to the bench and shaved a bit more off the braces, then took a small sheet of sandpaper and sanded a bit of wood off the treble side of the top. Once again, he repeated the tapping process. Finally, he smiled and laid the top down on his workbench. “I think our friend here,” he said, pointing at the top, “is pretty much done.”