Larrivee 12-Fret Guitar Question

[William2]

Is there a reason the Larrivee 12-fret instruments only have 18 frets? And that special run of 12-fret dreadnoughts only had 17 frets. I mean all classical guitars go up to high B. I miss that high B for some pieces I play and looking at my SD-40R it sure looks like they have room to put the 19th fret on there. I think that is another reason the 14-fret Larrivee is my go-to instrument. I wanted that limited run 12-fret dreadnought until I saw it only had 17 frets.

[B0WIE]

 I guess I'm not quite sure what you mean. They take the frets up to the soundhole. To move the soundhole changes the bracing and that's an issue. If you're referring to the end of the fingerboard, you don't want a fret too close to the end as the end of the board may just split off. They could possibly do a classical style fingerboard in order to get an extra couple frets but acoustic players are often scared off by things that don't look traditional so it may hurt sales.

 Personally, it's never bothered me enough to sacrifice all the good things a 12-fret guitar brings. Rather, it's never bothered me at all as it's really rare for me to play anything, on an acoustic, that goes up that high. It's entirely different when I'm playing electric though. I'm often all the way up the board.

[William2]

I'm just saying that I thought with the bridge moved lower this instrument was like a classical guitar in terms of all its components. Taylor's 12-fret instruments have the 19th fret so why 18 here? And why 17 frets on that limited run 12-fret dreadnought they did a year ago? B natural just seems to be a more suitable note for an E instrument or maybe even a C 20th fret. I just saw a Martin D-15S on Reverb for sale. It had 20 frets. And Martin sure clicks the traditional requirement.

[B0WIE]

I recommend checking out image search results for acoustic guitar bracing. The most important parts of the acoustic are the ones we don't see, and few actually think about. When you start shifting braces to move the sound hole you make significant changes in the sound. I won't speak for Larrivee but my guess is that the number of frets is not an oversight. It's because they find other factors to be more important than shifting things to allow more frets.