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  #61  
Old 06-09-2018, 05:00 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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Herb Hunter wrote:
"To my way of thinking the kinetic energy of the right hand is transferred to the guitar. "

Right, but your right hand doesn't vibrate at acoustic frequencies, let alone those of the higher partials of the strings. Something has to convert the pushes of your fingers or the pick into the frequencies you want, and only those frequencies. This is the job of the strings. In some ways these act like the old fly ball governor on a steam engine, resisting motion outside of a defined frequency band. Of course, the Q value of a string is vastly higher than that of the governor of an engine, so they produce much more exact pitches than the fly balls would.

Strings are very low impedance oscillators; small masses running at high amplitudes. Something has to match that in with the relatively higher impedance of the air in the room. That's what the guitar body does. It's far from having a 'flat' acoustic response, of course, and adds a lot of 'color' to the string tone. One thing this does is allow the player to shape the tone they put out. By emphasizing string partials in certain bands while avoiding others, and controlling the way the string couples with the top by altering their attack, players can achieve a large measure of control over timbre, as well as dynamics, of course.

So there's at least two levels of transduction; finger/pick to string and string to room. You could probably break it down further if you wanted.

That's my take on it, anyway, but what do I know; I'm just a guitar maker.
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  #62  
Old 06-11-2018, 09:08 AM
arie arie is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cobalt60 View Post
Since you asked, though I thought it was clear: If guitars you like generally have finished tops, maybe you prefer something about that. If not, then perhaps not. There is a huge sample set of real-world results.

But no, you're right to enjoy the currently focused state of this discussion, your hilarious argument included.
whatever does this mean?
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  #63  
Old 06-11-2018, 12:55 PM
cobalt60 cobalt60 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by arie View Post
whatever does this mean?
You asked "what good a list would do," and I answered, thinking my suggestion was in the spirit of the OP's question.


I then insulted your goofy strawman response, where you jokingly compared it to a list of left-handed chiselers. Feeling offended and attacked, I lashed out and rudely suggested you enjoy the thread as-is, replete with tables vs. guitars discussion. That's just how fragile my internet posting ego is.


I still think my suggestion was a good idea. The point is not to "further divide" people. If we had a list of luthiers who finish their tops vs. not, folks could say things like "I do like many guitars with finished tops" or "I never like guitars with finished tops" or "I am ambivalent on this topic," instead of trying to dissect the endless physics principles at play.
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  #64  
Old 06-11-2018, 01:30 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Interesting.

Wood is dead: it does not need to breath.

Wood is hydroscopic, meaning it absorbs and desorbs moisture in response to its environment.
Sorry to be nitpicky... "Hygroscopic" rather than "hydroscopic" seems to be the correct word.

Cheers and love!! ;-)
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  #65  
Old 06-11-2018, 01:35 PM
Ned Milburn Ned Milburn is offline
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Originally Posted by printer2 View Post
People sometime are surprised at some of the things I pull out of my hat but I tell them, really there are only two options available when making something. Either you take away something or you add to it.
**** I'm being nitpicky today...

Think of pottery. You start with a ball of clay, and you neither add nor subtract - rather, you re-form it. So there is a third option. We don't usually do this in guitar building, however, bending sides and bindings is a type of re-forming.

Again, cheers and love!! ;-)
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  #66  
Old 06-11-2018, 04:50 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Carruth View Post
Table tops are attached to the skirt at the edges, and that helps to hold them flat. Piano lids are free floating, and could well warp if they were not finished on both surfaces. I talked with a fellow once who bought wood for Steinway. He was always on the lookout for the widest perfectly quartered poplar boards he could find.
I find that quite fascinating ... quite apart from learning that tables have "skirts" (never encountered the term before ... we always called them "rails") I was unaware that piano lids were made out of solid wood. I always assumed that they were made out of veneered Baltic birch multiply

For Steinway to pay some guy to search for "the widest perfectly quartered poplar" also amazes me. If, for some reason, it is preferable to build piano lids out of solid wood rather than Baltic birch, then I would have thought that a far more efficient method would be to rip up thicker boards at an angle which would yield quarter sawn timber and glue the resultant slabs together to yield a perfectly quartersawn lid. Much like how you can always get a perfectly quartersawn guitar top out of a 2" x 4" by judicious ripping and gluing ... although of course it will have multiple joints, just as the piano lid will.
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  #67  
Old 06-11-2018, 09:42 PM
printer2 printer2 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ned Milburn View Post
**** I'm being nitpicky today...

Think of pottery. You start with a ball of clay, and you neither add nor subtract - rather, you re-form it. So there is a third option. We don't usually do this in guitar building, however, bending sides and bindings is a type of re-forming.

Again, cheers and love!! ;-)
You forgot to add heat.
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  #68  
Old 06-12-2018, 07:22 AM
redir redir is offline
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I'm guessing that the poplar used in the piano lid is just the core. They probably wrap a nice decorative veneer around it?
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  #69  
Old 06-13-2018, 02:01 PM
Herb Hunter Herb Hunter is offline
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The link below leads to a pictorial article on how piano soundboards are made.

http://hesspiano.blogspot.com/2014/0...ard-built.html
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  #70  
Old 06-14-2018, 08:11 PM
Fast Jimmy Fast Jimmy is offline
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Default Soundboards

Fascinating, another 22 minutes of my life reading when I could have been practicing!
FastJimmy
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