Posted on September 6, 2019May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Norman Pickering Meet the Maker: Norman Pickering by N.P., with Barbara Goldowsky previously published in American Lutherie #95, 2008 Norman Pickering does not understand the concept of retirement. He celebrated his ninety-second birthday on July 9, 2008, and he is still immersed in studying the properties of violin, viola, and cello bows. This is a logical follow-up to his lifelong study of the acoustics of bowed instruments, as a player, maker, and scientist. Though musical acoustics is his overriding passion, there have been lengthy, but fascinating detours along the way into fields as various as medical ultrasound, aircraft instrument design, and his most famous invention, the Pickering phonograph tonearm and cartridge. Rather than trying to condense his multiple careers and achievements into a question-and-answer interview, Norman agreed to share his life story — so far — in an essay he wrote after moving to our current home in East Hampton. I think AL readers will enjoy it. With characteristic modesty, he calls it simply “Biography.” — Barbara Goldowsky I was born in 1916 in a small fishing and farming town where both sides of my family had lived for at least three generations. Just at that time it was on the way to being submerged in the borough of Brooklyn by development and road building. By the time I was seven years old it was no longer the integrated semi-isolated village my parents and grandparents had known. My mother’s family were farmers and my father and his father were engineers. My future education was decreed almost from birth: I would follow my father’s plan for me. And so I did; after a happy and successful time in grammar and high school, I entered Newark College of Engineering and finished in 1936, a few weeks before my twentieth birthday. I enjoyed engineering, but found that my interest in music was much too strong to be ignored. 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.
Posted on July 31, 2019May 23, 2025 by S Mc Herr Helmholtz’ Tube Herr Helmholtz’ Tube by Mike Doolin previously published in American Lutherie #91, 2007 See also, “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” by Cyndy Burton “Sideways” by John Monteleone “Three Holes are Better than One” by Robert Ruck Design innovator Mike Doolin tried an interesting experiment. Mike’s guitars have the distinctive double-cutaway feature and they don’t lend themselves to a port up in the neck/cutaway region for reasons of underlying structure. So Mike put one in the lower bout and very unexpectedly found his Helmholtz resonance had raised something like a major third. He felt that compromised the responses of the guitar. His solution was to “tube it.” The side was ported before I assembled the guitar. After gluing the back on, I realized the change in the Helmholtz when I tapped on the guitar with the port open. It seemed obvious that a shift of a major third up was going to radically change the sound of the guitar, probably killing most of the bass response. I knew that ports in bass reflex speakers are often tubes, where the longer the tube the lower the resonant frequency. I also knew that the tube could be either inside or outside the box. So I initially held a roll of toilet paper against the port, letting the cardboard core of the roll form a tube that extended the port. That dropped the main air resonance back down, showing me that I was on the right track. Then I turned a tube of wood on my lathe to fit the hole and experimented with the length until the air resonance moved less than a half-step with the port closed or open. I recall the port being 1 1/4" in diameter and the tube being about 2 1/4" long, but that’s just from memory. 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.
Posted on January 14, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Left-Brain Lutherie by David C. Hurd, PhD Review: Left-Brain Lutherie by David C. Hurd, PhD Reviewed by R.M. Mottola Originally published in American Lutherie #81, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Left-Brain Lutherie Using Physics and Engineering Concepts for Building Guitar Family Instruments: An Introductory Guide to Their Practical Application David C. Hurd, PhD ISBN 0-9760883-0-4 Ukuleles by Kawika, Inc. www.ukuleles.com A prepublication copy of David Hurd’s Left-Brain Lutherie was given to AL for review. A draft of the following review was sent to the author prior to publication so that any factual errors in the review could be corrected. During the early 1980s I worked at a small engineering company that made instrumentation used in biomedical research. As the company grew, the product line expanded to include devices used in other fields, including analytical chemistry and materials science. I count the time I spent on this job as some of the most precious in my life, in no small part because it provided the opportunity to spend a good deal of time with research scientists and to be directly involved in some of their efforts. This contact taught me the value of scientific methodological inquiry, and it shaped my consideration for the folks who do this work as some of the most creative and open-minded people to be found. That scientists are smart, careful, and highly analytical fits well with the general image of those in the field. But the fact that they approach their research subjects with high levels of openness, objectivity, and general creativity unfortunately somehow gets lost in the general stereotype of scientists. 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.
Posted on January 11, 2010May 27, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Acoustics of Wood by Voichita Buchur Review: Acoustics of Wood by Voichita Buchur reviewed by Nicholas Von Robison Originally published in American Lutherie #57, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Acoustics of Wood Voichita Buchur CRC Press, 1995 ISBN 0849348013 Voichita Buchur’s book Acoustics of Wood is a synthesis of over fifty years of work by the scientific community into the physics of how this complex material responds to vibrational wave stimuli. With almost 800 references into the literature and about ten years from inception to its being published in 1995, it is a tremendous resource for the luthier’s understanding of his/her main material. I don’t get the feel from the text that the author is a maker herself, even though she is a member of the Catgut Acoustical Society. The book is heavily weighted towards violin family instruments, but this doesn’t make the book any less valuable to guitar makers. After a short, well written, general discussion on the anatomical structure of wood (macro, micro, and molecular), a brief outline is presented dividing the book into three major sections. Part One explores the physical phenomena associated with the effects of acoustic waves in forests (windbreaks to attenuate noise) and architectural acoustics (concert halls, office buildings, restaurants) with wood being used as a construction material and insulator in conjunction with other nonwood materials. A survey of six European concert halls and their geometrical, acoustical, and construction data is pretty interesting. 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.
Posted on January 11, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Research Papers in Violin Acoustics 1975–1993 Review: Research Papers in Violin Acoustics, 1975-1993 edited by Carleen Hutchins and Virginia Benade Reviewed by David Hurd Originally published in American Lutherie #59, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Research Papers in Violin Acoustics 1975–1993 Carleen Maley Hutchins, Editor Virginia Benade, Associate Editor Acoustical Society of America, ISBN 1563966093 It is with some trepidation that I pen this, my first book review for American Lutherie. As I noted to Tim Olsen, “But I’ve never made or even played a violin. How can I review such books and do them justice?” “Well,” he replied, “most of our readers are in the same position. And, having written the review, you can keep the books.” So began several months of fascinated reading of this two-volume set of violin research papers. A little over half of the papers in this collection are from the Journal of the Catgut Acoustical Society, Series 1 or 2 and the Society Newsletter. Both the Society and the journal are still alive, well, and active in mostly violin family instrument research. The remainder of the articles come from such technical journals as: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Acustica, Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan, Journal of Audio Engineering, Journal of the Violin Society of America, Scientific American, Wood Science and Technology, Acoustics Australia, Acta Metallica, Music Perception, American Journal of Physics, Interdisciplinary Science Review, Strad, and Physics Today. Papers from the proceedings of several conferences on acoustics and modal analysis are also represented. 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.
