As you may have noticed, I really like putting the sound hole in the upper bout rather than the center. It makes a big difference to the play, you get a much better idea of what others are hearing. Plus it increases the active area of the soundboard and so on.
I also think it looks great when matched up with a cut-away or the like. It looks kinda odd if you don't have a cut-away.... more on that to come.
So what if you take this to the extreme and move the sound hole to the side of the guitar? There are many examples of this if you search hard enough, here is one example.
I had most of the pieces and parts to crank out a new experimental guitar, and really wanted to test this out before I built my next non-experimental guitar....
Top is reclaimed cedar siding + braces are reclaimed fir, both from the Rebuild-It Center. Back and sides are my favorite cheap + has a good tap-tone Luan from Mr Plywood (< $10 for enough to do a guitar.... this particular one with an interesting gray/yellow splotchiness). The neck is the original one from the Cherry guitar that was dropped and damaged - I whacked off the bad bits and grafted in a ~$0.50 cherry board mill end I found in the mill-end-bin at woodcrafters. Topped off with whatever spare, mismatched tuners I had laying around.
You will also note that this one has the hybrid X bracing with fan braces rather than tone bars in the lower bout. As you can easily see via the big hole in the side.
Results? Sounds great for the player - it is loud, well balanced, and crystal clear. It is muted on the bass for someone who is sitting right in front of the player. The bass / mid / treble balance smooths back out as the listener moves back. Presumably it doesn't project as far, but we were too busy playing it to be bothered to test that.
Rich Wehring immediately bonded with this one and took it home.
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