Thread: F holes
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Old 05-25-2019, 01:41 PM
casualmusic casualmusic is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EvanB View Post
Violins evolved to the F hole for its more pronounced projection. I don't know if the evolution applies to guitars. But there is a really interesting on-line article explaining "Why Violin Makers adopted the F-shaped hole."

Interview with authors and summary of the research paper:
news.mit.edu/2015/violin-acoustic-power-0210


The research paper:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspa.2014.0905


The Royal Society prefers papers that are interesting to many of its members over those written for hyper specialists.


The paper talks about violins as small systems that need to be very efficient.

It talks a bit about violin design and performance, and notes that the largest contribution is from the front and back plates (implying that the area given to the sound hole should be carefully managed).

It describes how the Helmholtz physics model previously used to analyse guitars with round sound holes was adapted to analyse violins with f-holes.

The paper reports that the best performing part of a violin sound hole is the edge where sound pressure is highest.

And that an f-hole maximizes the amount of high performance edge, and minimizes the low performance centre area.

The research traced the evolution and refinement of f-hole performance over time by measuring 470 instruments from different periods.

The authors credit the good hearing of craftsmen for recognizing which deviations improved the sound and should be repeated on subsequent violins.



Cheers.

Last edited by casualmusic; 05-25-2019 at 02:47 PM.
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