The journey of an idea I

I'd always wanted to make a guitar with a totally flat top. We all know that a flat plate vibrates better than a curved one, but a flat plate has no strength and the steel string guitar is an instrument that suffers greatly if the soundboard cannot resist the pull of the strings. This is the basic problem we makers face: to make in instrument that can both sing and resist the pull of the strings.

It was in India in 2007 that I had a new idea to tackle this little puzzle. I was in the Jagan Mohan palace in Mysore where they have a collection of stringed instruments on the top floor. One of the sitar type instruments had a large gourd attached to the head to amplify the vibrations of the neck. I walked back to my lodgings, thinking about this instrument. What if you attached a gourd to either end? Just a neck with an amplifier? In most conventional fixed bridge instruments the amplifier is under considerable tension. As a luthier I spend my working life trying to balance the opposing demands - that an instrument should withstand the pull of the strings yet still "sing." Would it be possible to have all the strain taken by the neck, and little taken by the amplifier?

This planted the seed in my mind about a guitar where the body was not under tension but instead sympathetically amplified the vibrations of a neck.

I made a few doodles in my notebook, and here they are: the neck takes all the strain of the strings which are attached to the neck at the bridge end rather like a ukelele. The bridge is then attached (Bolted? Glued?) to the flat soundboard which sympathetically amplifies the vibrations of the neck. All the strain would be taken by the neck which would be easily strong enough to take it, so the soundboard could be made much much lighter, as it's only job would be to amplify, not resist.

Nice idea, but would it work? Only one thing to do, and I'd have to wait until my return to England to find out...