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.
Posted on August 11, 2021May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Violin Ribs/Latent Tension Violin Ribs/Latent Tension by John Meng Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Data Sheet #287, 1984 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Bending Ribs When wood is bent, the length of the outer surface increases or the length of the inner surface decreases; or most likely some combination of the two occurs. In soft woods, the fibers stretch and compress more easily than they do in hard woods, so soft woods can successfully be bent to smaller radii than can hard woods before the wood fractures. Thin maple strips used to form violin ribs must be bent to small radii at the corners. Maple being a hard wood, there is a tendency for fibers along the inner surface to strongly resist compression. 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 April 12, 2021May 16, 2025 by Dale Phillips Free Plate Tuning, Part One: Theory Free Plate Tuning, Part One: Theory by Alan Carruth Originally published in American Lutherie #28, 1991 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume 3, 2004 See also, Free Plate Tuning, Part Two: Violins by Alan Carruth Free Plate Tuning, Part Three: Guitars by Alan Carruth I started learning free plate tuning on violins and violas more than ten years ago from Carleen Hutchins. For those who have not had the pleasure of her acquaintance, Carleen is one of the founders of the Catgut Acoustical Society and its permanent secretary. She is an able scientist, a great teacher, a fine luthier, and a self-confessed mediocre violist. While working with physicist Frederick Saunders almost thirty years ago she helped rediscover and update the old Chladni method of visualizing the vibrations of plates. Her subsequent research, using Chladni patterns as a window into the differences between good and poor violins earned her a silver medal from the Acoustical Society of America. Violin makers have traditionally used some variant of “tap tone” tuning to guide them in working out the final graduations of the top and back plates. Although the technique seems simple and organic on the face of it, it is in fact very complex. It takes a long time, as well as a good ear and a lot of talent, to learn to tune plates by tap tone. Even those who are good at it don’t always succeed. Felix Savart, back in the 19th century, tried to adapt Chladni’s method to research on violin acoustics, but the technology wasn’t there. Now we have the means, and as we gain more understanding of how the instruments work, we also gain more control over the sound. And it doesn’t only work on violins. Fred Dickens, Graham Caldersmith, and Gila Eban have all done major work in applying the principles of violin acoustics to guitar construction. Of course, there are differences and it takes time and effort to sort them out, but physics is physics, or, as a friend of mine said, “it all comes down to F=mA in the end.” I have found these techniques to be useful, and sharing useful techniques is what the Guild is all about. 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 24, 2020May 8, 2025 by Dale Phillips Area Tuning the Violin Area Tuning the Violin by Keith Hill Originally published as Guild of American Luthiers Data Sheet #283, 1984 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 See also, Hints for Area Tuning the Violin by Keith Hill Announcements of “discoveries” of the “secrets” of Stradivarius usually are not worth the ink used to print them. When they appear, everyone reads them with the customary curiosity. Then away they are filed along with the hundreds of other such claims. They get dredged up again when someone writes yet another book on the violin. Mindful of this possible fate, I would like to offer an explanation of a discovery that I have made. It is not of the “secrets” of Stradivarius; rather it is, I believe, the acoustical system utilized by the ancient Italian violin makers. The system is simplicity itself. It is possible for anyone who understands it and has normal hearing to use it. Moreover, it requires no measuring equipment save the ears and possibly a monochord. Furthermore, the thicknesses and their inexplicable variants, which so annoy our modern sense of decency when we observe them in the finest violins by Stradivari and Guarneri, occur naturally as a result of this system. Because it is so simple, it is, of course, the last place one would think to look for the answer. I expect that once you are equipped with the following information, you will go to your nearest antique Italian fiddle and look to see if what I am saying is actually there. 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 8, 2020May 8, 2025 by Dale Phillips Hints for Area Tuning the Violin Hints for Area Tuning the Violin by Keith Hill Originally published in American Lutherie #1, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 See also, Area Tuning the Violin by Keith Hill In my article “Area Tuning the Violin” I presented my discovery of one of the theoretical principles governing the acoustical quality of the violins made by Stradivarius and his numerous Italian contemporaries. Because I believe that the area-tuning principle is the most important of all the acoustical principles pertinent to violin making, I deemed it best to present it in isolation. I would be less than open with you if I did not say that the American Acoustical Society and the Catgut Acoustical Society both rejected the worthiness of the area-tuning principle. I feel that their reasons were full of vested self-interest. I tell you what I told them: Paying attention to flexibility of free plates is a waste of time and attention. Consider the following points. First, thousands of violins have been made using this notion for the last century, yet no consistently superior results have been produced. 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.
