MIMF

That wood tricone is nice, Freeman. I was shown a similar prototype maybe 15 yrs. ago at National's shop, and thought it sounded better than anything they made. I wouldn't know where to begin with photos, but there's a gallery here if you're interested: http://www.jmorton.us/ Internal details: I jus...

... I should mention that this will be a steel resonator instrument, which unfortunately doesn't work at all with nylon. The player is highly accomplished and very interested in my work, so I am looking for a compromise that will tempt him to adopt to a flatpick while preserving qualities that matt...

Thanks Gordon. This is interesting. 27" is an extraordinary scale for steel strings, more like for a nylon classical. But the 16" radius is pretty tight for that wide fingerboard. This project is for a Brazilian player whose usual 7 string has a flat fingerboard and wide string spacing (th...

I agree that some empirical tests are a good way to go. I have made chimes from 1/4" aluminum plate (6061 T6) and the notes were spectacular and pure. I think the corrosion might be so slow that it wouldn't matter, except for appearance. (7075 has poor corrosion resistance, I believe.)

I plan to build a 7 string guitar this year. I would be interested to know if string spacing and fingerboard radius specs are generally the same as for 6 strings.
thanks