A few years back, I had the delightful convergence of working on a new Sprite Two-Point mandolin for Randy Jones, who was the mandolin player for Lonesome River Band at the time, and having Shaun Garrity's Heiden mandolin and mandola in my care for a few months.
So, as Randy and I shipped the Sprite back and forth for tone tweaking and feedback from the music that LRB was pounding out, I was plunking on Shaun's amazing Heiden A . . . and realizing that I wanted to take the top and back graduations for my mandolins in a new direction.
The result was that I reworked the top and back graduations in a way which tied in to some of the variations on Loar era mandolins, refined those graduations in a few new ways, and changed the way I placed and worked the tone bars.
Also, since I started building, I have mixed top and tonebar wood-types to achieve traits which balance the natural tendencies of the different woods. I have continued to refine that approach to voicing too.
At the time, Randy's response to his highly-tweaked Sprite Two-Point was right on target. Unfortunately, he was forced to quit LRB to deal with family responsibilities. What a bummer!
Since that time, the response has been good. Currently, all the instruments that I am building feature the top and back voicing influences of that time (including larger scale mandolin family instruments).
I thought it would be helpful to post some videos which folks have pointed out as highlighting that new "Sorensen Tone".
Here's a recent backstage video of Danny Roberts and Silas Powell to get us started --
https://youtu.be/9pEOr0uELD4
Steve
PS - Silas is 14, video is by his Mom, and he has saved up his own gig-earnings to get a new VX next spring. I am really excited to be working with him!