The great challenge of designing bracing for a steel-string soundboard is to make the bracing light and supple enough to create breathlessly beautiful tone while being muscular enough to withstand years of 180 lbs. of string torque. Here is my laser-cut EO (Engineered Openings) bracing, my bracing innovation that is featherweight while being robust precisely where necessary. And it looks pretty cool, too! (You can see it through the soundhole).

This innovation was originally developed for my 12-string. In that instrument, the bracing had to be stouter to withstand the additional 40% string tension. So I conceived of this EO bracing as a way to minimize the unwanted gain in mass with the heavier bracing. The result was so stunning that I immediately determined that there was absolutely no reason not to adopt the EO principle for all my instruments. And thus was born the 18 month project to re-design the bracing tooling for all the instruments. The project is now complete.

The journey continues to design and build a guitar like no other in the world. The EO bracing has become a large part of that journey.