Bit of a thought process here…

The (semi-acoustic) design I’ve decided to use has kerf-bent walls, and a flat top/bottom. To get things to fit together a bit more solidly, I’ve decided to go with something like this

So the tops/bottoms are two layers, glued together. The inner layer doesn’t need to be solid… might be better (thunk I) if if was just a frame… it’s just there to make a solid connection with the walls etc, so I read the internets and found that the struts etc on an acoustic guitar have specific purposes…

… in a nutshell, the long struts are for bass, the short for treble, so I figured, I probably ought to do something that looks a bit like that:

Which looks kindof cool in a funny sort of way. Then I saw this video…

…which describes why/how these designs work… and to be honest, I think with guitar bodies the size I’m making, it’s probably a moot point. But I like the way they look:

In fact I kindof like the whole deconstructed deco/voronoi thing more than the conventional front I’d designed

So I’m casting around for some way to make the front translucent. The only thing I can think of at the moment is lightly sanded acrylic… will need to see how it goes, but I’d really prefer something a bit more organic. Like Japanese paper walls, or Frank Lloyd Wright style lamps

But I don’t know how to do that.

One thing that is emerging from this though, is that it would be really good to have a design where I can experiment with / swap fronts easily… and glueing everything together into a solid lump makes future maintenance of electronics extremely difficult… so I’ve decided to go for a design that’s held together with hex bolts… like this:

Not sure how that will work out acoustically – I doubt that it will make much difference – given that these things are semi-acoustic rather than full acoustic – and modularity is its own reward. It means if I ever make something good enough to sell, I can make a load of different designs at a fraction of the cost – and more to the point, so can other people.

So the top is a 2 – layer thing, with nuts embedded into it… held in place with craftily etched nut-covers

And glued in place using my ultra hi-tech clamping system:

Favela-Chic. It’s the new frontier. Even though parts of these machines are made with a laser-cutting robot, when I say they’re lovingly hand-made, they’re lovingly hand-made.