Posted on June 13, 2024May 15, 2025 by Dale Phillips A Review of Indoor Air Quality Health Issues A Review of Indoor Air Quality Health Issues for the Home Woodworking Shop by Robert A. Edelstein Originally published in American Lutherie #86, 2006 Indoor air quality is an important issue for the luthier and woodworker to consider. While certainly not a glamorous topic, the benefits of learning some of the important concepts, (and making appropriate changes to protect your health), are certainly worth the effort. I look forward to my time in the shop. The pleasure of woodworking is tempered with chores, though, and I spend some time cleaning up the place before and after each work session. When I first walk in, it looks fairly clean. Upon closer inspection, I find a thin layer of dust is actually covering a surprising number of the surfaces. This became more apparent to me recently when my son and I remodeled our basement shop, and the tremendous amount of dust hidden in the crevices became visible. In addition, my son began to wheeze within a few minutes of entering the shop, and only fresh air provided relief. 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 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 June 13, 2024May 15, 2025 by Dale Phillips A Comment on Symmetry A Comment on Symmetry by Thomas Greene Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly, Volume 8, #4, 1980 There is a particular symmetry of adornment with which I’m quite taken. Albeit not the first guy to do it, I match the pickguard to the peghead veneer, the bridge to the fingerboard and the neck to the body wood. I am a bit disappointed in the many luthiers who put such integrity into their work only to debase the beauty of a fine handcrafted instrument with a plastic pickguard. I use wood veneer for both pickguard and peghead, cut from the same stock so the color and figure will be consistent, and each is bookmatched. A thin black/white/black purfling strip in the center joint of each make them so much prettier. 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: Measuring Guitar Efficiency Questions: Measuring Guitar Efficiency by Alan Carruth Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Buck Montoya of Wichita, Kansas asks: I’ve heard and read that acoustic guitars are horribly inefficient (less than 10% if I remember correctly). Is there a method of measuring a guitar’s efficiency that could be performed by the average luthier without the resources of a fully equipped lab? Al Carruth of Newport, New Hampshire responds: I think most instruments are pretty inefficient. Neville Fletcher and Tom Rossing discuss this in their book, The Physics of Musical Instruments. The figure that I’ve been given for the violin is about 2%, and Ervin Somogyi said at the GAL convention in ’92 that guitars run around 5% efficient. It’s not easy to measure the efficiency of a guitar. For one thing there is so little power involved: any source of noise will throw the measurement off. For another thing, guitars are complex sources: even the headstock radiates some sound. You have to take measurements all around at all different frequencies and add them up to find the total. And you can’t take the measurements from close up, since the phase cancellation of the different radiating areas can skew the results. The cheapest calibrated microphone and preamp combination I know of costs several hundred dollars, and it’s probably the wrong kind of mike for this. I wish it were an easy measurement to make: I’d love to know how efficient my instruments are. But try as I might I can’t think of an easy way to do it.
Posted on June 6, 2024May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Questions: Measuring Soundboard Vibration Questions: Measuring Soundboard Vibration by Alan Carruth Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Gregory Furan of Toronto, Ontario, Canada asks: Over the past several years there have been numerous articles written in many different guitar mags regarding measuring soundboard vibration, that is, tuning tops. Can you give me a reference for where all of the different elements can purchased? Al Carruth of Newport, New Hampshire responds: For tuning plates on guitars or violins, the equipment you need is fairly simple: a signal generator capable of producing a reasonably “clean” sine wave signal over the range from about 20Hz to 1000Hz, an accurate frequency counter, an amplifier that can boost the output of your signal generator to around 12w or more, and a loudspeaker that is matched to the amp and rated for the power. To be on the safe side, I’d get a speaker that was rated for about 1½ times the nominal power of the amp: sine waves have high peak-to-peak voltages. 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.
