Hi Ron Thanks for the post.Out her in the wild west our Indians ahem ( native americans) are largley tame and on tribal lands and we no longer shoot at each other .Us calif.natives,haven,t had much good surfing weather so we stay in the shop .Isolated no more I,m discovering that people in various locations working somewhat independently have devolped soundbd. designs and rib structuring designs that have more similar characteristics than disimilar and all or most all no longer opt for pure comps. crowning .As to your comments on varying rib curvatures I also have developed similar curve variations and have gone so far as to log some of the specs. enough times so as to have predictable repeatable outcomes .I.E. measuring the radius at each rib and at certain conditions of relative humidity and also before and after installation.I,m sure every rebuilder goes thru an evolutionary devolpment period until the distillation of all that becomes a standard practise of which the quality of work and satisfaction with the sound lends itself to confidence for self and clients.Anyway each of us has doubtless expeirimented with different types of spruce panels and used every concievable kind of material for ribs ( or not yet anyway)and or more than one vartiety of wood for ribs in a given board (I have)and may have opinons worth sharing as to the results ,be they objective or subjective I don,t care !O.K. My confesson if you haven,t already figured it out is that I,m knew to the list and as of dec.00 and have probably missed out on all this great discussion .To top it all off Im, having to learn to type and push buttons but this is a great medium!So anyway, in my particular expierimentation Ive found that ,when using sitka panels a combinatiun of ribs has turned out to work really well for me .In that I,m trying to achieve max. sustain and power (who Is,nt)Using sitka ribs up to and including the longest rib in the largest part of the belly and then switching to sugar pine has really provided wonderful power and long sustain especially up in the money notes ,i.e. octave 6ish Have done this on several stwy 6ft 2,s with very satisfying results.Also on Stwy m,sI was trying to avoid an earlier problem with octave 6 being stingy and this really helped.I believe the lighter weight and stiffness factors of sugar pine are not a detriment to support in the treble because I,m thinking the stiffness for support is there via the ribs themselves getting shorter and shorter. It does seem to make for good impedance match .Anyone have any thoughts or similar ideas to kick around.Or did I miss all that already.? Dale Erwin
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