[emmsone]

Originally Posted by Mark Hatcher

Thanks for commenting David. To answer your question I can only say yes and no. Speaker cabinets and guitars are very different animals. Typically if they are designing in a tuned sound port for a speaker they are tuning the port to a specific frequency band which is part of the overall design for the speaker. With a soundport we’re trying to sculpt the sound for “the guy behind the speaker” while not deminishing the sound for the listeners out front.
So the “guy behind the speaker” is the player and he can already hear the lower frequencies because lower frequencies tend to fill an area and aren’t as directional as the higher frequencies. So what we’re after is to bring some of those higher frequencies around the corner for the player. We want a pretty wide frequency band so it doesn’t sound like we attached a little transistor radio on the side of the guitar.
Another difference between a speaker cabinet and an acoustic guitar is the speaker is attached to potentially a lot more power where the guitar is limited to the power of six little vibrating strings, so efficiency is a really big deal with guitars. Asking those strings to vibrate a heavily braced top or a heavy bridge is robbing energy that could otherwise go to sound production. The drag of the air going through sound holes and sound ports can steal volume as well.
My purpose is to increase efficiency by cutting some drag and more effectively guide the higher frequencies directly at the player.
I’ve done reasearch on this for awhile and luckily have Alan Carruth in our Granite State Luthiers group who was very helpful. We also have an acoustic engineer who has worked designing speakers.

Hope that was helpful!
Mark

Thanks Mark! Very helpful as ever!
You brought up exactly my thought about tuning the soundhole, there is a very large frequency band created by the guitar and if I tuned that to a specific range, what would happen to the rest of the frequency range? and if I tuned it to the 'whole range' how would that differ from the current soundholes.

I understand and agree with your thoughts about the soundport too, it's a brilliant concept as well as design.
When you record the guitar, it would be cool if you could headmount a mic or place one where the players head is so we can get an idea of the soundport result.

David