Posted on June 29, 2026June 29, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Field Guide to Mandolins A Field Guide to Mandolins by Graham McDonald Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 The aim of this article is to give you a broad overview of the diverse world of mandolins, and to some extent, what can go wrong with them. I will not spend a huge amount of time discussing Gibson and Gibson-style mandolins. They are the industry standard for mandolins in America, and there has been a lot written about them with lots of other information readily accessible out there on the web, some of which might even be correct. This will be more about other sorts of mandolins that a customer might bring to you. Instruments called mandolins (or in Italian, mandolino) appeared in Italy in the middle of the 17th century (Photo 1). They were small, in fact tiny, lutes. This photo of Italian builder Carlo Ceconni with one of his mandolins gives you a sense of just how little they were (Photo 2). These mandolins are very lightly built, with the soundboards a little over 1MM thick and string tension of around 3KG per string. Scale lengths were 11.5˝–13.5˝ (29CM–35CM), which was likely to have been determined by the pitch standard of where the builder lived. It came down to how high the gut top string could be tuned in any particular climate. They were tuned in fourths with four, five, or six double courses of gut strings. The 6-course tuning, low to high, was g b e´ a´ d˝ g˝. These are the instruments for which Vivaldi wrote his mandolin music, and I am told that the mandolin parts in those concertos falls much more naturally under the left hand with the tuning intervals mostly in fourths rather than fifths. 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. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 1, 2022May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Inharmonicity of Guitar Strings Inharmonicity of Guitar Strings by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #100, 2009 Strings are uniquely well suited to make music because all their resonant frequencies are very close to being integer multiples of the fundamental frequency.1 The octave is the most consonant interval and the resonant frequencies of a vibrating string are separated from one another by octaves. The expression for the resonant frequencies of an ideal string is familiar to many luthiers. 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 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Calculating String Tension Calculating String Tension by Max Krimmel Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Data Sheet #144, 1980 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1997 Just how tight is that string? Experience tells most of us that the pitch of a string depends on how long it is, how big it is, and how tight it is. It would seem then, that we could figure out the tension if we know the pitch, mass, and length of any given string. Yes, it can be done. The biggest problem is to realize how A natural, 25.5", and .042" phosphor bronze can be converted into something recognizable as tension. I am not going to go into the why of all this as much as the how to do it. First, put the pitch into cycles per second, or Hz. Next put the length into CM. Then find the mass of the string by weighing a piece of the string as long as your string length. Cut the ball or any other windings off the string before you weigh it on a gram scale. Then insert these variables into the following formula. 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: Folk Harp Design and Construction by Jeremy H. Brown Review: Folk Harp Design and Construction by Jeremy H. Brown Reviewed by C.F. Casey Originally published in American Lutherie #83, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Folk Harp Design and Construction Jeremy H. Brown www.musikit.com 150 pp. You’ve got to like a book that begins, “Anybody can spout off his own opinions into a book if he puts his mind to it. Why a person would want to go to such trouble is a question I’ve been asking myself lately.” I should point out that there’s an alias at work here. Jeremy H. Brown, author, is in another life Jerry Brown, founder and head honcho of Musicmaker’s Kits, Inc. (See John Calkin’s “Kit Review: Musicmaker’s Regency Harp” in AL#69, BRBAL6.) Does that mean the book is a shill for selling kits? Not at all. Naturally, most of the references are to Musicmaker’s designs. That’s reasonable enough; they are, after all, the designs Brown would be most familiar with. You wouldn’t expect Chris Martin to write a book on Gibson designs. However, Brown doesn’t stop there. I counted over two dozen references to the approaches and opinions of other harp builders throughout the eight chapters of the book. 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 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Violin String Tension Letter: Violin String Tension by Ernest Nussbaum Originally published in American Lutherie #9, 1987 Dear Tim: I’d like to point out that the article “Fiddle Facts” contains at least two non-facts. 1) The author says that raising the pitch of a violin’s “A” string to 442 (presumably from 440) is an increase of 0.05%. Wrong: it’s 0.5%. 2) More serious: He says that string tension is thereby increased by 10%. He should have said 1%. (Raising the frequency increases tension according to the square of the raise, i.e., (442/440)2 which is 1.009 or about 1.01 — therefore 1% higher. Maybe it’s bad for old violins to replace gut strings with steel. On ’cellos it seems to do no harm in most cases.
