Acoustic Guitar Construction

Oh, the high e string. That's a different matter entirely. That high up you're out of the range of the main air resonance. It's more likely a strong resonance in the top, or in the neck. This will be more interesting to track down. One method might be to play that note repeatedly while pressing in d...

There ya go. I bet if you thump the top of the Breedlove you'll hear an air resonance close to, but not quite exactly, the pitch of the open low E. How to fix it? You'd probably want to raise the air resonance since it's pretty low to start with. That would mean enlarging the soundhole, reducing the...

It turns out that the pitch of the main air resonance is relatively insensitive to changes in soundhole size and box volume. Most steel string guitars have a 4" soundhole, and even though the air volume varies tremendously between the largest and smallest (say, a Dread and an OM), the air reson...

Hi All, Mike Doolin here. Great thread, here's my $.02 - The main function of the soundhole is to tune the main air resonance of the body. The guitar body with its soundhole acts as a Helmholtz resonator (although it's certainly not a theoretically perfect one, as that would require an infinitely ri...