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estebanana -> RE: "Luthiers share your creations" thread (Jan. 19 2013 3:25:16)
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quote:
I think Bob Ruck may have been presenting that particular protocol in general but it does make a difference in some cases to where certain vibrational balance and synergistic communication is necessary, especially with my fine tuning the articulation and voicing of certain strings to get their fullest compliance with performance. But if some players can't hear or feel the difference, then it would make no difference to them.
You also lost me at 'synergistic'. I'm a smart guy, but it this sounds like voodoo talk. I call that out.
Here is what we know, guitar tops don't adhere to strict theory in how they react to bracing. One can say one does not know which side the blah-blah-blah (name your component) braces are on and how it will effect the sound because of what we heard Bob Ruck say.
Vibration is not 'area specific' let's say, to put it into plain language. In other words a treble vibration does not inhabit one isolated section of the sound board anymore than a bass vibration does, to distill down the Ruck idea into a simple form.
That said here is the rub, when we try to contain or influence certain parts of the soundboard to promote a certain vibration our geographic intuition about what should effect treble and what should effect bass actually to some extent works even though it is a totally anecdotal model to follow. An example would be Santos' use of the diagonal bar to effect treble response.
We see that bar going down to treble side so we think Hey! More treble! right? Maybe. Maybe what is also happening is the whole sound board area is being more controlled because we are changing the active areas of the sound board by closing off a major area an in effect making our 'drumhead' smaller and tighter, but at the same time retaining the same amount of air in the box. If we flip the bar in mirror position we create the same amount of controlled surface area a limit the n the same way, but it goes against our natural inclination towards dividing the top into areas which vibrate according to which string is closest to that area.
But we just came from there, where Mr. Ruck says the whole thing vibrates and vibration does not have brain to tell it to go here or there. It moves to where it feels limitation imposed by braces and rim.
So that means what? That braces could be more changeable than remaining with the Torres kite scheme. Mirror images of asymmetrical systems of bracing can effect in much the same way as the first intuitive treble bass oriented pattern. We can flip-flop asymmetrical patterns and still make good guitars. It has been proven. Cited was Manuel Bellido.
So in theory this all means that the top is like vibration; it does not care how it is braced so long as it gets what it needs in terms of flexibility, weight, stiffness, edge treatment, bridge, arching, thickness etc. We know for fact that several systems make good guitars, but what we have to apply in each case is understanding of how to make all those attributes I listed come out of a bracing pattern.
There is more than one way to optimize each system and more than one way to optimize Torres bracing. The understanding of how to do that is often not translatable into language because it is an inner language of tactile experience that guides the brain and hand in telling how much gets left in or out of the process. Language can often only express an abstraction of what is really going on with the inner process of voicing a guitar. It is like a painter throwing brush strokes, it can either be done illustrationally by following a formula or it can be done directly through the nervous system by hands on contact with the material. And granted mechanical means of guidance like tone generation testing and weighing parts can all play a factor to the betterment of your work.
In the end you are either building by rote making illustrations of brace patterns or you are engaging your nervous system and transmitting your inner intelligence to the work. The problem is that everyone has a different and personal way if transmitting that intelligence, that is for the most part internal and non linguistic.
That is my attempt at explaining something I can't explain, but using the plainest language I have at my service.
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