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Myth's and Science
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aarongreen
Posts: 367
Joined: Jan. 16 2004
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RE: Myth's and Science (in reply to Patrick)
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Hi Pat and Greg, In talking about top design you have to consider that a plate will vibrate in a multitude of ways through out a set frequency spectrum. Anything you do to the plate will affect how (and where) those vibrational patterns form, relate to each other and how efficient they are. Those are called modes for sake of having a term. Anyways the lower frequency modes are the ones we have the most independant control over, through how stiff the bracing is and how well matched it is to the top. Once the guitar is assembled you can work with the top thickness and graduations if you want to bring things into focus. Working the interior braces is also a method that can be employed, which is what Tom Blackshear is doing for his fine tuning. Everyone decides for themselves what needs to be done in the moment. As you go up in frequency you quickly lose the ability to do anything to one mode without drastically affecting all the others. The lowest wood mode (as opposed to air mode) forms a ring shape.....called the ring mode. That is when the top is pumping in and out in it's most straight forward fashion. No matter how you brace your top that mode will be there and that's what it will be doing. The next in line is the top dipole and once again, it does what it does. Both can be a bit asymmetric, it's true, but I have never had a top do that where I felt it was tuned as well as it should be. What I think Old Greg is referring to is about how the top interacts with the air modes in the guitar. The top vibrates, causes the air to vibrate, (how and at what frequency is determined by it's volume, shape, size, depth of the guitar. the compliance of the sides, top and back and the size and location of the soundhole,) Anyways then the back vibrates, which in turn moves the air ...on down the line. Losses are inevitable but how well "tuned' the system is determines to what degree those losses are and where they manifest. So all of this is but to say that there are many variables that determine how efficient a guitar is. I have yet to find a direct correlation between the success of a guitar and whether or not I use an asymmetric or symmetric pattern. I build both depending on what I want the character of the guitar to be and the wood I have to work with. In terms of the angled waist brace......Anything you do to a guitar top, symmetric or asymmetric will have an affect or more to the point, will be part of the recipe for why a specific guitar sounds the way it does. Whatever the guitar is doing, the whole guitar is doing it. I don't believe that a guitar will sound different if you were to switch the strings around. Feel different, most definitely but not sound different. The only reason I would expect it to feel different is that necks are often asymmetric, but then how many of us can play both righty and lefty? Hope this helps! aaron
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Date Jul. 14 2010 4:13:32
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estebanana
Posts: 9373
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Myth's and Science (in reply to keith)
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See what a can of worms it is? :) Even though I really like the writing and the title of the Myth and Science essays, guitar making is not really about science vs. myth as strict binary opposition. It's more about common sense, everyday practice and personal observation. The guitar is a whole system and breaking it down so you isolate one part without thinking going to effect other parts is, at least to me, a mistake. So I never really took it for granted that the slanted transverse bar is for treble enhancement and nothing more because I did not know Santos or Ramirez. When Santos and Ramirez are cited as saying the asymmetric transverse bar it's for the trebles it is received wisdom. How can you trust that? i have difficulty with received wisdom, which is different from myth. Myth implies something more outrageous like a violinist saying the build up of rosin around his bridge is making his tone better. ( yes I heard that form someone.) Received wisdom says it is for the trebles, but if you start thinking about it there are other things that it could do. And lots of variables come into play, top thickness, brace size, plantilla width....and on and on. I can't say unequivocally it is for trebles, but I can say I look at the most basic guitar design, and think the transverse bar is for stopping the top at the waist and to strengthen the top from folding up. I ask the most basic questions first, before getting into the nitty gritty of modes and tap tones etc. and when I see the transverse brace being moved lower, I think, it's making the top smaller. This is why I say I like a conceptual approach rather than an approach which starts with the minutae of whether or not you can tune it by shaving braces or other esoteric modifications. I think most guitar makers work this way, but something about bypassing these basics seems to often come up. Ervin Somogyi once told me talking about bracing is like talking about religion. That really makes sense to me because bracing and how you use it is so personal, like rasgeuados. So my effort is to not be specific in the beginning and work from the bigger general things I know to the details. Not details first. I'm kind of rambling, but I'm saying there are basic things to get like why we stop the top at the waist with a transverse bar and then after that understanding in place think about what happens to the whole structure when you move it. Look at Fleta's brace layout, before we begin to think we can second guess his brace shaving, let's look at his overall architecture and establish some basic knowledge about it. He had a main transverse brace which bisects the top and then under that he added a second one which angles down on the treble side. If we move under the premise which Motolla brings up; many things are scientifically evident, like the idea that trebles don't manifest themselves in just one part of the top, yet if we in intuitively move the transverse brace down towards the trebles this can increase trebles. It is not about busting the science with intuition, it's about understanding we have manipulated a whole system. Maybe the trebles were effected as a byproduct of that structural change, but maybe several other things as well. So with Fleta he has stopped the top at the waist and moved another bar down towards the trebles to make less surface area of fully active top. And he has that funny fat wide load trailer upper bout full of air. What was he up to? Was he using a smaller active top area to drive a bigger air column? I wish I knew. But we can think about it in terms of bigger picture structure first details second.
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Date Jul. 15 2010 2:09:01
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Ramon Amira
Posts: 1025
Joined: Oct. 14 2009
From: New York City
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RE: Myth's and Science (in reply to Patrick)
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quote:
guitar making is not really about science vs. myth as strict binary opposition. It's more about common sense, everyday practice and personal observation. According to Jose Ramirez IIIs' own account of it, he decided early on that he wanted to not merely build a great guitar, but he wanted to know WHY it was great. So he said that he spent sixteen years studying physics, mathematics, acoustics, etc. and then spent years applying all that to his construction, making model after model utilizing all his theoretical knowledge. Finally after years of experimentation he arrived at his ultimate "scientifically" constructed guitar, which he was very happy with. To his astonishment he said it was almost identical to those made by his uncle Manuel fifty years before, made purely by instinct, intuition, and experience. Ramon
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Classical and flamenco guitars from Spain Ramon Amira Guitars
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Date Jul. 15 2010 3:28:23
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Myth's and Science (in reply to Ramon Amira)
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quote:
According to Jose Ramirez IIIs' own account of it, he decided early on that he wanted to not merely build a great guitar, but he wanted to know WHY it was great. So he said that he spent sixteen years studying physics, mathematics, acoustics, etc. and then spent years applying all that to his construction, making model after model utilizing all his theoretical knowledge. Finally after years of experimentation he arrived at his ultimate "scientifically" constructed guitar, which he was very happy with. To his astonishment he said it was almost identical to those made by his uncle Manuel fifty years before, made purely by instinct, intuition, and experience. Ramon I have read Ramirez' book a few times in the original and in the English translation. I also spoke with him several times at the shop in Concepcion Jeronima while I bought instruments that I sold in the USA. His 1a's, made famous by Segovia, differ in many important respects from the guitars of his great-uncle Manuel. The scale is longer, the body is larger, the bracing is different, the top is cedar on most of them. The two designs differ significantly, and the guitars sound different. I have degrees in mathematics and physics. I had a successful career as an engineer for more than 40 years. I have played the guitar longer than that. Jose III's excursions into mathematics and acoustics appeared to me to have little basis, and no strictly scientific support. He made no scientific measurements to support his theories, as does Al Carruth, for example. Like most luthiers before and since, he tried his ideas by building guitars, or having them built by his very talented 'oficiales' like Contreras, Bernabe, Manzanero, Antonio Martinez and others. He arrived at a very successful design that made him wealthy. But I would contend that he operated like most luthiers of the past and present, by trial and error, not 'scientifically'. There is no fault in this. Even the most scientific of luthiers today, with all the benefits of modern measuring equipment and techniques, say that guitar making is an art, not science. RNJ
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Date Jul. 15 2010 15:09:43
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Myth's and Science (in reply to Patrick)
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In saying "art not science" I was echoing some distinguished physicians I have known. While medicine has profited more by science than any of the non-scientific professions, with the possible exception of engineering, medicine still does not qualify as science in the minds of some of its most able practitioners. In science, the ideal is to be able to say, "If A, then B" with no ifs, ands or buts. (Of course in quantum mechanics, "B" is often a statement of probabilities.) They tell me that in medicine, diagnosis and treatment sometimes proceed more from the experience and skill of the physician than from absolute scientific certainty. And there are conditions whose cause is unknown, but whose treatment is effective, as well as sizable areas of nearly complete lack of knowledge about either cause or treatment, though the symptoms have been known and described for decades, if not centuries. I have read some of the most "scientific" luthiers who say the guitar is such a complex system that it is beyond the present capability of science to fully analyze it. Also I have read, "Science can distinguish good guitars from bad ones by measurement, but it can't distinguish good ones from great ones." I agree with your far more expert opinion that luthiery can and does profit from science, but my observation has been that for most luthiers it is more of an art compared with, for example, engineering or medicine. It's great to have such a range of expert players, aficionados and makers on this forum. RNJ
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Date Jul. 15 2010 18:09:05
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3433
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Myth's and Science (in reply to jshelton5040)
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quote:
how come the quality of his guitars varied so much? According to both Contreras Sr and Manzanero, as well as Ramirez himself, Jose III insisted upon and enforced absolute adherence to his design. If this went so far as to insist on the same precise dimensions (and I don't know whether it did or not), then the 'oficiales' were prevented from compensating for the variability of the wood, as an experienced independent luthier would have. Some believe that certain individual employees produced better instruments than others. In my experience of trying and buying a couple dozen 1a's, the quality of individual makers varied just about as much as the variation overall among all the makers. All the same, I have been offered premium prices for my '67 cedar/cypress blanca just because it has Antonio Martinez' initials in it. It's not for sale. I've had it since it was new and I love it. As to variable quality, Ramirez was fond of pointing out that certain instruments quickly rejected by respected professionals were praised and bought by other equally respected professionals. It felt and sounded like variable quality to me. In his book, Ramirez wrote against the idea of voicing a guitar, or attempting to correct "wolf notes". He said that even if you did correct a "wolf note" it was likely to come back again later. The independent luthiers I have talked to have mostly mentioned some philosophy and means of voicing instruments. Others have refused to discuss it. I often suspected they had a method, but regarded it as a trade secret. RNJ
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Date Jul. 15 2010 23:07:50
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