Is the position of the braces on a mandolin important?

[Bill McCall]

I strongly believe they should be attached to the top of the mandolin.

Nope. They get in the way when you pick. Even Loar knew that

[sunburst]

I strongly believe they should be attached to the top of the mandolin.

You're probably right, but Dr. Kasha might not have agreed with you.

[j. condino]

I spent a lot of time with many Kasha devotees & attended many workshops from Richard Schneider and the rest of the crew for a dozen years.

I saw and played a ton of very interesting, intellectually stimulating designs, but......out of 100s of instruments from that "school" that I have played, only a couple were instruments that I'd want to own or play regularly. They made great sense on paper and in the lab but just didn't cut it for me as working instruments. The same thing was true for the five years that I worked at Dream Guitars- I would play every modern, incredibly expensive, fancy new school guitar in the shop but at the end of the day 95% of the time I'd be sitting in the corner with a 1937 D18 or a '31-34 OM.