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From: Ross
Remote Name: 76.101.10.136
Date: 28 Feb 2007
Time: 07:49:37 -0500
Luthier’s Blog 2/28/07 Just finished reading an interesting discussion at the Acoustic Guitar Luthier’s Forum of Brazilian rosewood cut from the old stumps of previously harvested trees. trees. I have little interest in Brazilian rosewood, but great interest in the movement of wood. I wish the site would spend more time discussing fundamental design improvements, though. In fact, I find very little experimentation of that sort being documented on the web. I suppose that doesn’t mean none is being done. If someone is working real hard at it, he probably doesn’t have the time to disseminate it on the internet. It’s time to vent. Here is my list of things I don’t understand about stringed instrument design. 1. I don’t understand the practice of building instruments that have frets that are not accessible to the player unless he contorts his body. A cutaway is not difficult to incorporate, and it must be evident by now to even the meanest intelligence that the current musical literature features the entire range of notes of which the instrument is capable. Solid body guitars have a recent enough genesis that the chokehold of tradition has not dictated the ascendancy of style over function, at least where fret access is concerned. I do not know of any currently produced electrics that do not have cutaways. And the idea of lost interior volume affecting tone on an acoustic doesn’t wash. A tiny increase in either depth or soundboard area could address that, if, in fact, there were any significant difference caused by the deletion of a sound box region that is comparatively acoustically inactive. 2. I don’t understand the practice of placing the sound hole in a flattop guitar or mandolin at the end of the fingerboard, interrupting structural support where it is most needed: in the string path. An uninterrupted structural bridge in the string path means that lighter, less complex bracing can be employed. Moreover, moving the sound hole to a location more remote from the bridge, such as either the bass or treble side of the upper bout , results in more active precious sound propagating real estate near the bridge. 3. I don’t understand the location of f-holes on carved top instruments which are meant to be plucked rather than bowed. Looking out board of each f-hole, I see large areas of top which are effectively uncoupled from sound wave propagation. As with the traditional flattop’s sound hole, relocation to a point further from the bridge will result in increased sound radiating area, and an increase in the lower frequencies which are so ardently sought after by the players of these instruments. I’m just getting started here, and will resume later. Ross Teigen 8:53 a.m.