Posted on June 30, 2024May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Grading on the Curves Grading on the Curves: Fitting Bars and Bridges on Archtop Guitars by Steve Andersen from his 2006 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #91, 2007 The first thing I’ll show you today is how I fit tone bars to the top. Then I’ll talk about fitting the base of a bridge to a top, first with this router jig that indexes off the top and gets me really close to the final shape, then moving on to the final fitting. I brought some extra materials if anyone wants to try hand-fitting an ebony bridge or a tone bar. I use the term tone bar, because I think of braces as being structural. If you built a flattop guitar without braces, it would just fold up. An archtop could be built without braces and it would hold up fine. The archtop’s bars are not so much for structure, so I call them tone bars. One thing that helps me in the fitting process is that my arching is very consistent from guitar to guitar. The arching templates for my guitars started out based on a D’Angelico New Yorker, and have evolved over the years to what I’m using today. So while I have several body sizes, they have similarities based on what I’ve found works well for my sound. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 3 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 13, 2024May 6, 2025 by Dale Phillips Experimental Violin Acoustics Experimental Violin Acoustics by George Bissinger from his 1984 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #7, 1986 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 It was a pleasure to discuss the “secrets” of violins at the kind of meeting that would scarcely have seemed possible in the time of the legendary Cremonese luthiers. As a member of the Catgut Acoustical Society, which is devoted to all aspects of bowed string instruments from the raw materials (gut?) to the finished product (cat?) and its sound (meow?), I can only welcome this shared discussion. The Society has sponsored the construction of a family of eight violins covering the frequency range of 41Hz to 1318Hz (lowest to highest open string), and has a demonstrated interest in all violin matters whether they are purely practical, subjective, and aesthetic, or purely abstract, objective, and quantitative. The talk I gave at this GAL meeting covered a range of topics concerning violins in which I personally have been involved. These topics leaned rather more to the concrete aspects of violin making such as working with student instruments, testing plates of unassembled (or humidity disassembled) instruments, plate archings, bassbar tuning, and humidity effects, but also included discussion of coupling between enclosed air oscillations and plate vibrations in the assembled instrument. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
