Posted on June 6, 2024May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Kenny Hill Responses in AL#98 Letter: Kenny Hill Responses in AL#98 by Alan Carruth Originally published in American Lutherie #100, 2009 Tim — I found Kenny Hill’s response (in AL#98) to R.M. Motolla’s study of ports (in AL#96) interesting. I’m not going to answer every point he made; some are more properly addressed by R.M. himself. However, there are a couple of things I would like to comment on. Kenny wrote: “I’m guessing that Al’s cool Corker was not really constructed as a concert instrument, that it does a good job at its original intended purpose but was not built to prove or disprove the validity of soundports as a useful design element.” I think the concept of what is or is not a “concert instrument” is slippery enough that we won’t settle it here. Nobody is likely to appear on the stage with something as rough as the “corker” so that in itself excludes it from that class. I will note, though, that several people, including one very fine maker, have remarked that it is at least “not bad”, and R.M. told me that most of the players had a much higher opinion of it when they were blindfolded. 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 June 6, 2024May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Another Method for Calculating the Area of a Plate Another Method for Calculating the Area of a Plate by R.M. Mottola Originally published in American Lutherie #70, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 There are a number of reasons to calculate the area of the plate of a stringed instrument. The area of a flat plate can be used to determine the volume of the instrument by simply multiplying the area by the depth. This value is useful in the design of electric guitars and basses to determine the weight of the body of the instrument before it is built. This info can aid in the design of an instrument that balances well when hanging from a strap or sitting on the leg. In the design of acoustic instruments, the volume can be used to calculate the nominal Helmholtz resonance of the soundbox, which may be useful in the tuning of the resonance characteristics of the instrument. The technique specified here will work for any arbitrary shape and is both simple and relatively quick. It is the essential algorithm of a CAD script I use, and is based on a computer graphics rasterization technique. Modified and simplified for use with pencil and paper, it yields a good enough approximation of the area of a plate for the purposes outlined above. 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 June 6, 2024May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Questions: Book on Acoustics Questions: Book on Acoustics by Tim White Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 Lee Parks from cyberspace asks: I just need to know a good book that teaches fundamentals of acoustics for guitar construction. Tim White of New Boston, NH responds: The GAL has published many articles over the years but the only “book” I know of is the one I put together — Journal of Guitar Acoustics, from seven issues of the Journal of Guitar Acoustics, originally published between 1979 and 1982, which includes the complete collection with addenda, 700+ pages. The Evan Davis thesis bibliography alone makes it worthwhile as an entry portal to the strange world of guitar acoustics. The republished single volume has an updated bibliography and additional material. It can be ordered from me at: 146 Lull Rd., New Boston, NH 03070; 603-487-2696; tpwhiteco@aol.com; www.chrysalisguitars.com/JGA_Page.html. ◆
Posted on June 6, 2024May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Google Calculator and the Guitar’s Magic Number Google Calculator and the Guitar’s Magic Number by William Leirer Originally published in American Lutherie #96, 2008 Since the frequency of the octave note at fret 12 is two times the frequency of the open string, the fret positions can be determined by finding a number that can be multiplied by itself 12 times to get 2. That’s the guitar’s magic number: the 12th root of 2. In one form or another, it is a part of every calculation related to scales, fret placement, intonation, compensation, and much more. When Google perceives an entry in its search field to be math, it switches from search mode to calculator mode and displays the answer. Any calculator can solve a math problem, and there are plenty of online fret calculators. But with Google Calculator we can view the entire equation at once and see the effect of substituting one part at a time, helping us to understand the “why” behind the numbers. 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 March 6, 2024May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Using the Golden Section to Design a Kamanché Using the Golden Section to Design a Kamanché by Ahanali Jahandideh, Mitra Jahandideh, Hadi Abbaszadeh, and Samad Jahandideh Originally published in American Lutherie #98, 2009 The kamanché is a Persian bowed string instrument related to the violin. (See “Building the Kamanché” by Nasser Shirazi, AL#4, p. 27 and BRBAL1, p. 126, and GAL Instrument Plan #9. The kamanché has a long neck and a spheroid sound chamber made from gourd or wooden staves, which is usually covered on the playing side with skin from a lamb, goat, or fish. It is widely played in classical music of Iran, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, with slight variations in structure. The Golden Section (also known as the Golden Mean, Ratio, or Proportion) is a ratio defined by the number phi (Φ=1.618033988...). It has been used in designing violins and other musical instruments, but for the first time we used it to design an Iranian 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.
