The Luthier's Handbook -- Roger Siminoff

[ken cierp]

The information Roger presents is so compelling I went out and purchased a Peterson Strobe tuner (not cheap) and all the other stuff necessary to frequency match the various components of the sound-board. So I could judge the results, I made two David Russel Young "D" style guitars almost identical one with frequency matching the other without. Since I only made one guitar using Roger's suggested methods my conclusions are certainly not rock solid evidence -- but here is the bad news, I could not hear any difference nor could anybody else I asked to judge -- so that was that. However, Roger has a nifty looking sound board tester for determining the optimum sound-board flex and string tension combination -- I will at some point build one of those. There are a lot of test result supporting "Roger's guitar (string instrument) science" and you have to like that - but just the same, some out there dispute the conclusions -- in my view, for the experimenter this is still a "must read - must have" book.

[Dave Bagwill]

I just finished the first -read through of the book and found it to be easy to read, logical, and full of useful information. I thought I could skip over most of it - I mean, strings? Bridgeplates?
I was wrong - there is something interesting and worth learning in every section of the book.
The final section on 'tuning the assembly' is pretty compelling stuff that I will have to re-read a number of times.

Good reading and worthwhile.

[Dave Bagwill]

Re: Tuning the Assembly - this portion of Siminoff's book is truly fascinating.

I was particularly struck with his thesis that the soundhole should be tuned to the assembly at the end of the process. It makes me wonder if I should have my soundholes intentionally too small, in order that I might incrementally enlarge them, instrument by instrument, to a size most pleasing to my ear.

[Tim Benware]

Re: Tuning the Assembly - this portion of Siminoff's book is truly fascinating.

I was particularly struck with his thesis that the soundhole should be tuned to the assembly at the end of the process. It makes me wonder if I should have my soundholes intentionally too small, in order that I might incrementally enlarge them, instrument by instrument, to a size most pleasing to my ear.

We touched on this awhile back. I forget which thread (maybe double backs). I posted a pick of a bass reflex speaker, Guitar box is the same principle, to tune the box the formula would include the sq/in of the opening, the thickness of the top, and the over all cubic volume of the box. I don't know though if you get get it completely in-phase with out a duct in the opening. Maybe I'll try it on one.

[Dave Bagwill]

Yeah Tim, it was me that brought it up some time ago, and I've been thinking about it some since then.

On my next project, I'm hoping to follow the final assembly tuning method of Brian Burns. Brian TAPES on the back of the instrument, effectively closing the box - he has experimented and found that for body resonance purposes, taping it on yields the same results as gluing it on - and then tests the assembly for a particular resonance. He prints out the results of the test, and if the target resonance is not produced, he can untape the back and make the internal mods to bring the results into line. I've watched him do it, and it works.
If I can find a less sophisticated way to get close to the same results, I will. Perhaps a Chladni test with the back taped on?

Any ideas would be welcomed.

[Mark from Ashland]

Excellent, compelling research, guys! I bought the book, but am using it as background info, or just for perspective, not yet having the ability to do double-blind random trials. Obviously, you ROCK, but in a very controlled an methodical manner.