adorshki
Reverential Member
However, unlike some of the birch ply I've bought in recent years for woodworking projects, all 4 plies of the SF top are of equal thickness. The top and bottom plies of the of the birch were pretty much paper-thin (about like mahogany "luan" ply).
That "wood" make sense if it was for say, furniture/cabinetry.
That's when it becomes "veneer" and in fact Hans explained once that Guild actually obtained its sheets for laminated backs from a furniture veneer maker.
And because the sheets were literally sliced in succession from a parent block, any 2 consecutive sheets had basically identical grain patterns, allowing the Westerly builders to orient the inside and outside veneers to appear like a solid board.
We've actually had more than one member over the years think their laminated backs were solid because of that practice.
OK, that's how it worked for flat-top backs. I don't recall if any mention was ever made about actual number of layers or thicknesses in the case of those backs.
It's easy to hypothesize that in the case of hollow-body bass tops a different set of dynamics could be preferable and explains multiple layers of apparently identical wood and layer thickness.
After all the top still is the primary sound-wave producing element even if feedback attenuation is desired.
SO maybe multiple equal thickness layers work better for the desired goal.