Old Masters chose wood wrongly ?~??

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

This article discusses how the old instrument makers were not using tonal characteristics to select the best wood. Instead they found a wood species that worked and approached it in a rather uninformed way.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070409/full/070409-3.html

[Andrew Williams]

I've been following this topic for years now and I have to say that the article is pretty incomplete journalism in my opinion. Here is an older one with a bit more science...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/saturday_review/story/0,3605,381986,00.html



Interestingly enough, it basically points to luck as the main factor in violin sound, not all that far from the first article's premise. I've been to Nagyvary's site and he presents a pretty convincing argument that he has duplicated the Stradivarius for the bargain price of 15k.

[Eddie Darby]

Interestingly enough, it basically points to luck as the main factor in violin sound, not all that far from the first article's premise. I've been to Nagyvary's site and he presents a pretty convincing argument that he has duplicated the Stradivarius for the bargain price of 15k.

I've been hearing this as well, except I've been hearing it for years and years now, and every time it is a New Secret. He must be running out of "Secrets" by now. All of the arguments for the previous "Secrets" that have since been disposed of, were pretty convincing arguments too. Still no one seems to be playing his instruments and selling their Stradivari's.

What owners of Stradivari instruments pay for up-keep of there instruments makes 15K look like pocket change.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I have had the same sort of question about the tonality of wood for years. My first Guitar was all mahogany. It was a 12 string. I modeled it after a Martin 12 that was in my shop for repair.

I really liked the mellow resonant sound the mahogany sound board produced. It's different from an old growth spruce sound board but no less pleasing.

I chose my lumber then based on expediency and preference for a certain look. I did so for years there after. I never had a complaint.

Yet I talk to luthiers today a great many of whom insist that they are making great efforts to "sound out" their sound boards before they use 'em. Apparently they whack 'em with a mallet and divine from that whether the stick of wood will make a nice sound board or not.

I could be wrong but, I think this is more myth and marketing hype than reality because if a stick of lumber isn't resonant you will know it straight away. It'll have sapwood in it and pitch or other visible defects that will light your hair on fire when you think of it on a musical instrument.

So if there are guys here who are familiar with the process of sounding out a sound board please enlighten me. I want to get back into musical instrument building and I'd like to get up to speed on this more modern approach.

[Andrew Williams]

Famous musicians do not buy Strads. They play under endorsement contracts given to them by large scale antique instrument dealers and are allowed to play the instruments for free, as long as they make the required appearances and obey the clauses in their contracts. It is in the best interests of the status quo that nobody creates a new violin that sounds as good as the 2 million dollar old ones.




Of course I play bass, and he does not make a bass (not yet anyway), so I have not tried one of his instruments, but I am certainly not going to dismiss them out of hand without hearing it.





I've been hearing this as well, except I've been hearing it for years and years now, and every time it is a New Secret. He must be running out of "Secrets" by now. All of the arguments for the previous "Secrets" that have since been disposed of, were pretty convincing arguments too. Still no one seems to be playing his instruments and selling their Stradivari's.

What owners of Stradivari instruments pay for up-keep of there instruments makes 15K look like pocket change.

[John Schreiber]

I want to get back into musical instrument building and I'd like to get up to speed on this more modern approach.

I don't know squat about music or much about musical instruments, but I am very aware of the human ability to fool itself. I'm willing to bet that if you select both visually beautiful woods and less attractive woods or expensive woods and less expensive woods and ask people to evaluate them based on their sound qualities, they will say that the beautiful and expensive wood sounds better.

If you were to blindfold them, they would make different selections. What I am saying is that I think if you want to pick the best wood based on sound, you should develop some kind of double-blind testing method for evaluating that quality. It would also be very valuable to test instrument components or complete instruments the same way.

Many people argue that what makes a Stradivarius sound so good is the fact that it is played by the best artists who believe they are playing on instruments of mythical qualities. My ear is tin, so I won't take a part in that argument. But I know that suggestion has great affect on human perception.

[David Weaver]

There is definitely an art to consistenly building great guitars. Anyone can build guitars where several out of a group will be great, but there are only a few builders who build almost all of their guitars to a great level.

One of the guys is Dana Bourgeois (and his employees). He doesn't tap-tune his tops, he picks the wood for the best tonal characteristics - mostly red (adirondack) spruce and he planes his wood and materials to equivalent characteristics, not equivalent size or looks (i.e, each spruce top has the same flexibility, etc, rather than the same thickness).

The art isn't only in wood selection, but also in voicing the tops of guitars to have the right amount of overtones vs. fundamentals and to have equal volume across the strings - and a lot of it - or more mids or highs, whatever one would choose. There is definitely an art to that, and when you buy from the finer makers, you get fit and finish and consistency. It took me a long time in buying guitars to stop looking for "deals" and trying to find hot ones, and to look for good builders instead.

I got a Bourgeois slope D at the end of last year, and I've never had another acoustic guitar that could touch it for the ability to be tonally full at all volumes without distorion - and to be loud enough to hang with a resonator banjo. The others I've seen are all consistently the same.

Without starting a war among the guitar fans, if you don't buy the higher-end custom guitars from the big builders, you won't get anything close to what comes from a shop like Bourgeois. You might by chance get one once in a while, but you won't consistently, and the little nitty gritty things like perfect intonation and balance all the way up the fingerboard - they just don't come on the mass produced guitars. I bought several production guitars, including Martins, and you're just gambling when you buy one off the rack.

That's all relative - to a beginner, they'll all sound good. It's the same as WW tools. When you really want to search for something that's done as well as you can find it done, there aren't any deals to be had.