Radiation from Lower Guitar Modes

by Graham Caldersmith

Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume One, 2000



Since 1982 when I attended the Estes Park GAL Convention, and subsequently wrote about “Dissolving the Mysteries”¹ (of guitar behavior — perhaps a presumptuous title), as a distant but faithful member of GAL, I have followed the developing discussions in the Quarterly about guitar top and back vibrations, how they are excited by the plucked strings and how they generate sound. At our January 1985 Australian Association of Musical Instrument Makers Convention (featuring strong GAL membership) the geometry of the lower vibrational modes of guitars and their appearance in the guitar frequency response records was keenly debated by practicing guitar makers, amply demonstrating luthiers’ adoption of scientific knowledge as part of their working repertoires.

Tom Rossing’s contributions to GALQ^{2, 3} the thoughtful articles by Paul Wyszkowski^{4, 5, 6, 7} and the monumental “Kasha Guitar Soundboard”⁸ by Gila Eban, together with some detailed correspondence to me from Gila on her development of the Kasha soundboard all indicate the integration of guitar physics into guitar evolution. I think such unification of science, art, technology (and good ol’ workbench cunning) is healthy and fosters excellence.