Category Archives: other

Vibrate Guitars with an Aquarium Air Pump

2022
AL#147 p.60               
Roger Haggstrom                                                                                           

▪ They say you can improve the sound of a new guitar by attaching a machine that will provide direct vibration to the instrument for a few days, simulating the breaking-in that might occur from months of playing. Not surprisingly, “they” will also sell you such a machine. But what else might work? Ask a luthier who also publishes a magazine for exotic fish fanciers, and he might suggest belting an aquarium air pump to the face of the guitar.

Measuring Mechanical Properties of Neck Blanks

2022
AL#146 p.44               
Mark French   Alyssa Fernandez                                                                                       

▪ How stiff is that neck blank? You could cut all your blanks to the same dimensions and then set up a rig with a hanging weight to measure deflection and such. But hey, got a smart phone? It can listen while you tap on a bunch of neck blanks, and then tell you how stiff each one is.

“Restomodding” Wall-Hanger Guitars

2021
AL#144 p.6               
Roger Haggstrom                                                                                           

▪ A hundred and some years ago, Swedish folks sat around the house all of a dark winter and sang hymns together, accompanied by the strummings of cheap mass-produced guitars. Those days are gone, but a lot of the guitars are still hanging on the walls of old houses. Roger Häggström has made a business of restoring them to useful condition and modifying them to sound and play better than they ever could have. He restores and modifies. Restomods. Mentions the Levin guitar company.

Tuning a Marimba Bar and Resonator

2021
AL#142 p.55               
Max Krimmel                                                                                           

▪ If you are luthier who does not remember the name of Max Krimmel, you might be under age fifty. Max was a pack leader in the early days of the American Lutherie Boom, before he went on to specialize in a few of his many other artistic interests. Anyway, why and article about marimbas? As Max says, “Think of it as deep background learning.”

Stiffer Guitar Linings

2020
AL#141 p.47               
F.A. Jaen                                                                                           

▪ These linings are something like reverse kerfing, but they are built up in place, starting with an ingeniously aligned set of individual blocks. There’s always a new way to do it.

A Bridge to Many Tones

2019
AL#138 p.54               
Harry Fleishman                                                                                           

▪ Harry teams up with the owner of one of his flattop guitars to try some major changes to the bridge and evaluate the results. He reaches conclusions about the relationship between saddle height and bridge beefiness. And speaking og beef, Harry shows how he makes individual tapered saddles out of chopsticks.

Questions: Bradley Signal Generators

2019
AL#136 p.69               
R.M. Mottola                                                                                           

▪ Can you still get Bradley signal generators, the kind used for glitter-testing instruments and instrument parts, now that Don Bradley has passed away? No, but there are many more-modern alternatives.

Let’s Catch Up with Joshia de Jonge

2019
AL#137 p.22               
Cyndy Burton   Joshia de Jonge                                                                                       

▪ Joshia de Jonge was a sensation at the 1998 GAL Convention when, as a young female luthier, she brought a nicely-made and fine sounding instrument to the classical guitar listening session. It helped to have grown up in a guitar-making family. And now that she has left her parents’ home and shop, she is raising guitar-making sons. Mentions Geza Burghardt; Linda Manzer; Sergei de Jonge; Eric Sahlin.

Trevor Gore Teaches Modal Tuning

2019
AL#137 p.62               
Greg Maxwell                                                                                           

▪ Australian luthier Trevor Gore is the co-author of the two-volume book Contemporary Acoustic Guitar, Design and Build. Gore teaches a three-day seminar in which he demonstates his very specific and number-based method of measuring and controlling the resonant frequecies of guitars. Maxwell attended one such seminar, held at Robbie O’Brien’s shop, and gives a brief overview.

Mechanical Impedance

2019
AL#136 p.20               
Mark French                                                                                           

▪ We all know what “impedance” is, right? It’s that stuff… the force that… well, what is it really? Turns out it’s something like pushing a kid on a swing at the wrong time. And it has a lot to do with the resonances of acoustic instruments, which has a lot to do with how they sound. Anyway, in this largely math-free presentation, Professor Mark gives us the scoop.

Case Study of a 1935 Guitar by Cremonese Luthier Luigi Digiuni

2019
AL#136 p.42               
Massimo Maddaloni   Lizabeth Jane Hella   Giacomo Parimbelli                                                                                   

▪ From the time that the violin was invented, Cremona was the world center for the highest quality string instrument making, until it gradually became known for lower-quality mass production of fiddles. After its dark age, Cremona has more recently seen a renaissance of its lutherie heritage. This article looks at an unusual guitar made by a Cremonese luthier in the 1930s and sees echoes of the old masters in its design. Mentions Stradivari, Panormo, Fibonacci spiral, Archimedean spiral, golden ratio.

Seeking Quality and Consistency in Classical Guitar Sound

2018
AL#134 p.34               
Greg Byers                                                                                           

▪ So you made a classical guitar, and it sounds good. You want your next one to sound good, too. You want your output to be consistently good. How do you do that? After decades of lutherie experience, Byers has developed a method of recording the frequency responses of the soundboard at each major stage of construction. Does the tap-tone of the raw top set tell the whole story? No, but it can help you steer the project to a successful conclusion.

Let’s Catch up with Harry Fleishman

2018
AL#134 p.42               
Michael Bashkin   Harry Fleishman                                                                                       

▪ Everybody knows Harry Fleishman, right? We first “Met the Maker” in 2001, but by then Harry had already been an active GAL author and convention attendee for some time. Now we are catching up with him. This recent chapter of his story is a doozy, with major moves, businesses opening and closing, fruitful collaborations, international travel, and new beginnings.

Talking about Tone

2018
AL#134 p.52               
Chris Herrod                                                                                           

▪ You’ll often read article in American Lutherie where scientists explain the sound of guitars in terms of resonant frequencies and onset transients. On the other hand, longtime wood merchant Chris Herrod is here to give the metaphoric pendulum a big old shove back to the right-brain tradition of using evocative adjectives like “dry,” “creamy,” and “poignant.” He also discusses psychoacoustics research and how confident we should be about our “ears.”

Letter to the Editor: Brace Sanding Using Higher Grit Sandpaper

2018
AL#133 p.3               
Brent Benfield                                                                                           

▪ Do finely-sanded guitar tops actually sound different from the usual ones? An experienced luthier writes in to aver that they do.

Letter to the Editor: Wood species study

2017
AL#131 p.3               
Samuele Carcagno   Chris Plack                                                                                       

▪ A study at Lancaster University seeks luthiers to help with a scientific study of the impact of wood choice on the percieved sound of acoustic guitars.

Offset Soundholes and Sound Wedges

2017
AL#130 p.22               
David Freeman                                                                                           

▪ Freeman has made a number of guitars with varying combinations of off-center soundholes, graduated body depth, rolled-over edges, and adjustable side ports. He gives us his thoughts on how these design factors interact and how they advance his quest for a more erognomic steel string guitar.

A Large New Set of Stiffness Data for Lutherie Woods and a Proposed Standard Test Method

2016
AL#128 p.58               
James Blilie                                                                                           

▪ We all have ideas about the stiffness of brace wood, probably based on a combination of intuition, hearsay, and informal flexing. Blilie aims to accumulate more quantitave data. Here he reports on his latest tests. He also describes his methodology and the reasoning behind it. This is Blilie’s second article on this topic. The earlier one is in AL128. A third article appears in AL133.

Questions: Guitar Acoustics and Related Topics

2014
AL#118 p.68               
R.M. Mottola                                                                                           

▪ Reading up on the subjects of psychoacoustics, human sensory evaluation, music synthesis, audio electronics, and magic, in order to provide some insight on general guitar acoustics.