Wondering about rosewood mandolin

[Dennis Russell]

Hello All: I just watched a DVD i recieved on how to play cross picking the mandolin by Jesse McReynolds, but at halfway he was being interviewed by Sam Bush and there was a flurry of questions, one caught my curiosity, he was explaining his instrument was made out of traditional design except the wood. The Back and sides were Rosewood, I have never seen that before, the Mandolin had its own voice, somewhat different than traditional woods. how does that fare in the regular world of mandolin building I mean how many others out there have built mandolins out of Rosewood, I was even thinking of Cocobolo and mabey Walnut etc...........................DEnnis in Az

[MikeEdgerton]

Here (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/search.php?query=rosewood&exactname=0&starteronly=0&forumchoice%5B%5D=&prefixchoice%5B%5D=&childforums=1&titleonly=1&searchdate=1&beforeafter=before&do=process) are a few pages of discussions about Rosewood.

[red7flag]

Jesse has such a distinctive style, it might be hard to distinguish the effect of the rosewood. Would love to AB rosewood vs maple on a mando. Or cocobolo vs maple. Or walnut vs maple.
I have rosewood HD28. I have played a cocobolo guitar and a walnut banjo. I still would like to see those woods in the mostly maple world of mandos up front.

[Sleepy Moon Music]

I made an "F" style with Cocobolo back and sides ,love the tone .I even left the top heavy as i use it for campfire type playing and thought the heavy top would be more stable in inclement weather .I was amazed with the volume it has ,Louder than my Gibson F5 and the sound every bit as good maybe even better .I am in the process of an "A" with East Indian Rosewood back and sides ,This is a flat back so can't compare tone to a carved top but just hope it sounds good .I think Walnut is to soft , it does give a good sound but more mellow than the harder woods great for most music but dose'nt get the snap for Bluegrass .

[DerTiefster]

An '80s? Guild Madeira mando just went by on ebay, bearing rosewood back and sides. If I hadn't been busy, I might have bought it just as a decoration. A blonde 2-pointer is something that's been on my interest list. I realize this may not rate high on some foiks' "greatness meter" but I thought it was at least pertinent to the thead title.

The link will go away soon, so here are some images:

[Dave Cohen]

Regarding walnut being too soft: Walnut has about the same density as maple, and it has approximately the same elastic ("Young's") moduli as maple as well. In lay language, that means that walnut has comparable stiffness to maple if the plates are the same thickness. Rosewoods are another story. They have much higher average densities, higher Young's moduli, and the Q values are much higher. In lay terms, that means that rosewoods tend to be very "ringy", something to which any guitar luthier will attest. A maple guitar back plate sounds like a piece of cardboard when tapped, compared to a rosewood back plate. That, along with the stiffness and density, means that significant adjustments would have to be made in order to make a rosewood mandolin back plate instead of a maple or walnut back plate. Rosewood mandolin back plates would have to be made quite a bit thinner, and that brings potential problems if not skillfully done.

I have done quite a few archtop mandolins with walnut back/sides/neck. One of them (A C# with a redwood top) took first place in a blind listening test in Louisville in 2006. The test was conducted jointly by the CMSA and First Quality Musical Supply. The other instruments were well-known brands, selected from large and boutique makers, all with maple back/sides/neck. I bring that up primarily with the intent of pointing out that walnut is an excellent tonewood for mandolins. It's main disadvantage for the luthier is that, like the rosewoods, the pores are large and must be filled for a smooth finish.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

[DerTiefster]

And to amplify on what the good Dr. Cohen has mentioned, if my memory serves me correctly (this is regarding luthiers mostly -- pre-finish on the mandolin) black walnut is a wood for which the shavings/dust are somewhat toxic. I don't remember about English/Carpathian walnut. maybe some of the woodworkers around here will remember better.

The problem with a 95% memory is that the 5% is always showing up at embarrassing times. I forget what my memory rating is.

OK. I actually looked it up. Black walnut in one listing
http://www.gvwg.ca/docs/Articles/WoodToxicity.htm
was given a "medium" potency (regarding toxicity and allergy potential) rating. Rosewoods and cocobolo were "extreme" and western red cedar "great." Other woods more commonly used than walnut may actually be worse for the woodworker. I'll go ahead and post this because I thought it was interesting and questions about other aspects of rosewood and walnut wood provoked me.

[Rick Turner]

Don't put walnut shavings and dust in your compost pile. Walnut has a growth inhibitor in it which helps choke out competing growth.

[D.E.Williams]

For the record, Cocobolo is a true rosewood. No need to separate it out when speaking of rosewoods.

[Dfyngravity]

This is not too bad of an example....

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48360

Extremely beautiful, I think. And I would imagine the sound is pretty nice too.

[grandcanyonminstrel]

Danny Bishop has a Flatbush F5 for sale in his shop with Brazilian rosewood back and sides. It sounds great and has a nice thick low end. I liked it enough that I've got one in the works.

j.
www.condino.com

[Philphool]

[QUOTE=Dave Cohen;632651].... In lay terms, that means that rosewoods tend to be very "ringy", something to which any guitar luthier will attest. A maple guitar back plate sounds like a piece of cardboard when tapped, compared to a rosewood back plate. ... Rosewood mandolin back plates would have to be made quite a bit thinner,....

==============================
Dave,
As I am totally ignorant of acoustic engineering, help me understand this.
If the rosewood rings so well as compared to maple, why not leave it THICKER, so that it would vibrate less well to compensate? Seems like if you made it THINNER, it would just ring even stronger.(Less mass to move.) Or is it a matter of the thinness just taking away the characteristics of whatever it is you're thinning?

Obviously, I'm thinking backwards here. (Must be listening to too much Frank Wakefield.)
"Splain it so a non-"wood guy" will understand.
Thanks.

[Rick Turner]

Excuse me for jumping in, but the thickness of the wood has nothing to do with it's "Q"...the resonant quality...how much the wood itself rings. The thickness will affect the frequency of the plate modes but not the essential quality (or the vibrating nature) of the particular wood you're using. To put this in another realm, think of two plates of metal, one bell bronze and the other lead. You can thin that lead all you want, and it won't ring. You can go for different thicknesses of bronze, and it will still ring, just at different frequencies. That's the difference in "Q" of which the opposite quality is damping. The lower the Q the higher the damping. Rosewoods tend to have higher Q than maples. Sugar and red maples have higher Q than typical western big leaf maple. Honduras and Brazilian rosewood and Cocobolo have higher Q than typical Indian rosewood. For instance, the most highly prized wood for marimba bars is Honduras rosewood because it is so resonant; the stuff rings like glass when you tap it, and that is irrespective of it's thickness.

I've learned a lot about woods by going outside of our fairly narrow field of traditional lutherie...

[steve V. johnson]

I've heard a few rosewood mandolins, and tho they were certainly not made in the American/Gibson A/F paradigms, and I've enjoyed the sound of them all.

The idea of the combination of cedar over walnut just delights me.

Thanks for the good infos!

stv

[lenf12]

I had an Ibanez model 512 A style mandolin for a few years. It had East Indian (iirc) rosewood back and sides. I rather liked the sound and volume of this instrument but suspect that the tone bars could benefit from some judiicious re-shaping. It was a great travel mandolin.

Len B.
Clearwater, FL

[Jim Nollman]

I used to build tongue drums and marimbas for a living. the top and bar wood of choice was always padauk. I tried many other wood tops, including several rosewoods, nothing else ever came close to ringing that way, except maybe a hard-to-find Thai wood we referred to as Narra. Perhaps strangely, redwood, also produced a great tone, although much more woody. As you might expect, the redwood tops had to be cut much thicker than any of the hardwoods. I mostly chose tight grained Sitka spruce for the bottoms, with an occasional one made with red cedar.

Because of that experience, I used to think that a padauk mandolin would sound absolutely terrific. For a while, I even lusted about having one built. I recall weighing in on the Cafe a few years back, asking about padauk as a back plate and side material. Now that I understand the mechanics of mandolin sound a little better, I find myself more in the traditional camp of using spruce and maple, with padauk best left for drums and marimbas. That is, of course, if the coveted growls, barks, pops, and crisp highs is what you primarily seek in a mandolin.

Even a guitar has vastly different mechanics than a mandolin, which is why, of course, rosewood is a more plausible choice.

[Richard Moore]

I owned and played a rosewood back and sides Eccleshall A5 for some 25 years. It both looked beautiful and had a crisp resonant tone.

[Dennis Russell]

Thankyou every one for all the wonderful posting of rosewood mandolins, I would never attempt to try and buy Brazil Rosewood, too pricey for my taste. I didnt know not to throw Walnut shavings and saw dust into compost piles, I dont use walnut that much, more of a oak user and pines and douglas fir and some maple now and then, the sawdust goes into my compost pile or some into my outdoor fire pit. I appreciate this sight I can learn a lot of things here, I wanted to say about rosewood that the guitar builder who is showing a video on Stew Mac, makes his acoustic guitars from Amazonian rosewood as he refers to it, is this the same as brazil rosewood and this noun name he uses is another way to getting around naming it brazil rosewood. My good Freind Fiddle Dan was here yesterday, he told me what the deal is on Rosewood especially Brazil rosewood, said it is unfortunate but it is a endagered species of wood, or it has been exploited because there are persons who have it available but you have to pay their price, He noted it isnt extinct but made that way because it is such a sought after tone wood.
I have a mandola I build several years ago shaped like a F5 but larger, all sorts of fancy inlay work on peg head, and mop and a turqoise eye on scroll on upper body, it has been collecting dust for the past six years, sitting in the corner of my tiny shop. He asked if he could play it, I said sure go ahead it is out of tune, he tuned it up and we set out to play some music using my shop guitar, I built out of scrap maple in 1997, sounded pretty good him playing that thing, it even sounded better me backing him with the shop guitar. he plays appalachian style fiddle tunes so we did the same on the Mandola. He asked what it was made from I said the back is Mesquite from a old tree felled in 1994 i bought a limb for $2.50 that is what the back is carved out of the neck is laminated rock maple and mesquite, the side are rock maple, the top plate is sitka spruce I bought from a aircraft wood source, they use spruce for making spars on smaller aircraft.

Anyways Dan is a excellent musician and also plays the bass the claw hammer banjo, guitar , mandolin and fiddle, he has a nice Red Diamond Mandolin he got from Don McRostie at stew mac a while back.
Dennis in Az

[Dave Cohen]

Rick, Thanks for jumping in to answer Phil while I was building mandolins, etc. Phil, Rick said it about right.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

[Philphool]

Thanks to Rick & to Dave.
I think I understand better now.

[JEStanek]

I have a L&H style A reproduction mandolin with Walnut back and sides. I was shooting for a darker warmer tone than the traditional maple backed sound and got it. I often refer people to Chris Baird's page on building materials (http://www.archesmusic.com/materials.htm) for the tonal potential qualities of different woods. The final effect is from the wood and the skill of the builder using that wood to carve plates that make best advantage of those qualities.

Jamie

[barry k]

# 25 Bulldog

[david blair]

Michael Lewis offers rosewood as an option. Maybe he'll chime in?
There are you-tube videos of Scott Gates playing his rosewood F5 if you want to hear what one sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG_xzuu7M4

[Michael Lewis]

I don't have much to say that hasn't been previously said. Rosewood can make a great instrument but it certainly is not the traditional material for a mandolin. Due to it's density, stiffness, and propensity to split it is a more difficult material to use, and I feel it demands more from the maker. It is harder to carve but scrapes wonderfully. It rings like nothing else, and can look really great, or not. Like I said, it can make a great instrument but is harder to get there.

[barney 59]

I bought one of those taiwan -vietnam fergazy inlay rigs when it was falling through a hole on e-bay.$60 why not. Great over- the- top inlay rosewood back and sides. Plays like dirt in the higher registers but really rings in 1st position and has an amazing amount of sustain.