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Armando -> RE: Plate tuning guitars (Mar. 6 2006 11:00:16)
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Hi
I have recently bought the book from David C. Hurd called "left brain lutherie". I must say, that this stuff might be interesting for engeneers and highly studied folks in mathematics, but it was definitely not for me. Not only that i wasn't able to follow all the very technical explanations and formulas but it requires also loads of experimental equipment, which for sure is also not cheap to get. He wrote in his book, that the aim of this left brain lutherie approach is to get more uniform results by knowing why a guitar sounds the way it does.
I have also read the book from Siminoff, and found, that some of the statements are quite different to those made by David C. Hurd. Some luthiers that i asked do not share the oppinions of neither Hurd nor Siminoff allthough they partially work also with a scientific approach.
David C. Hurd wrote in his book, that in order to achieve an optimal tone, the top and back of a guitar should be coupling with each other. This could be achieved by tuning the back either a semitone above or below the main top resonance. I know that some famous spanish makers use to work with much stiffer backs up to 4 semitones above the main top resonance. I have asked Mr. Hurd what could be the reason for that. Did they understand something wrong, or could it be that they have their good reason why they don't want the back coupling with the top. The anwer was:
"Whether or not builders match the backs of their guitars to the tops
depends on whether they realize that it is possible or desirable to do so!
If they don't understand why they should do it, then whether it happens or
not will be an accident and they won't understand why a better instrument
happened"
This is heavy stuff for me, because i understand, that people like Reyes build good guitars by accident. I appologize if i did understand that wrong.
I'm always thinking in the old school lutherie, which i call "right brain luthierie". Most of them did not know anything about this scientifc approach of guitar tuning and their guitars are considered to be absolutely world class until nowadays. Torres used a the fingers to check the tops for the correct stiffness and i'm sure they used more techniques to tune their guitars but it was much more intuition involved. In many cases this intuition is missing today. Such a level of intuition is not possible to achieve by just having build one or two guitars. To gain the experiences and to make the right conclusions takes many years of dedicated building. It seems to me that nowadays people are not willing anymore to accept this and they are looking how to speed up things by using the scientific approach.
I believe however that it will allways require intuition and experience to build a good instrument. On top of that i believe that it makes much more fun to work with intuition than with all that laboratory, physical, technical and mathematical stuff.
Armando
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