Re: Tone bars. What if...?

[Clicker]

It's like the cello and violin in using a sound post.

Thanks. I didn't think of this. I suppose too that comparison to the violin can also be drawn to similar forces being exerted due to the similarity in tuning. -h

[Clicker]

I have removed wood from violin bass bars, mandolin tone bars, and guitar bracing post-finishing. I don't believe this is at all uncommon.

I just didn't know. It makes perfect sense to me. Do you use any equipment, e.g., a Peterson Strobe to lock onto a particular frequency?

That's a rather simplistic view. I find the important thing for an acoustic bass and for a violin and even a mandolin is getting energy cleanly into an appropriate frequency range for the role of that instrument in solo or ensemble work.

If it's not simple then I just don't get it a lot of times.

You're welcome to visit and chat. Near Knoxville.

Thanks. Maybe when I get my project done. -h

[Clicker]

First of all, you should have some expected sound in your mind (or in hands in a form of a great instrument) and try to get consistently close with your instruments.

Hello Adrian. I guess that works for those that want duplicate another mandolin model. I just can't though. I look outside and see that every building is different, every tree is different and every face is different. Yet, you write that I should expect a sound like another instrument? What I'll probably end up expecting is that mine will sound like ALL of them in some way. -Harry

[pelone]

To paraphrase a well known quote....that's just a whole bunch of nothing. I respect the insight and knowledge of the folks who have contributed to this thread that is garnered by vast experience and consideration of tradition. However, when the OP admits to not yet having built a mandolin, it seems to me best to encourage him to garner some bench time to accompany his reading time.

[Clicker]

To paraphrase a well known quote....that's just a whole bunch of nothing. I respect the insight and knowledge of the folks who have contributed to this thread that is garnered by vast experience and consideration of tradition. However, when the OP admits to not yet having built a mandolin, it seems to me best to encourage him to garner some bench time to accompany his reading time.

I've acquired a serious amount of "bench" time... I just haven't made a musical instrument yet. I have started one. I'm not here to finesse techniques, I'm here to try and understand why you guys do things the way you do. YOUR post for example, explained to me that ... well, it didn't explain anything but only paraphrased a quote, which ironically, is applicable to your post.

[Stephen Perry]

"I just didn't know. It makes perfect sense to me. Do you use any equipment, e.g., a Peterson Strobe to lock onto a particular frequency? "

For me, it's not an equipment game at all. I can get pitch(es) just fine by listening. I use a guitar and match pitch, if I really want to know a pitch. It's relationships and response. Really, sitting down and watching me go through a few things would be an easier way to work. I posted a description of my mandovoodoo process in detail somewhere on here. Expand that to selecting the pieces of wood that seem to like each other through final bass - treble - brilliance balancing, then you'll have a better idea.

Might be a bit like cutting violin bridges. The first hundred generally show improvement and understanding. Then the real nature of the task becomes apparent and the next few hundred present real challenges!!

"If it's not simple then I just don't get it a lot of times. "

Could be. Usually takes a little while to get it. Making a really fine instrument is sort of like the bar exam. Only takes a relatively short period of time, but getting to where one can use that time for the task at hand takes a bit of study and work. If the study and work has been taken on carefully and well, and found to be enjoyable, then the exam will be. [It was for me - I had a blast and passed first time. Yes, other people probably hated me!]


I highly suggest you get your woodworking chops together. I have never had anyone approach me with an eye to working with me for any length of time who had the basic chops. My test used to be that I would ask someone who wanted to work on real wood to make me soundpost stock. A cylinder about 6 mm in diameter. From spruce. Shouldn't be too hard, eh? Starting from a slab of spruce.

How would you do that? If you don't know, then more study would be in order.

By the way, just like a spar. I think that's one of the issues. When I was little, I saw people making spars by hand. And making rope on a rope walk. And I worked with machine tools when I was little, or at least got to pull levers and push buttons. And watch a delicate touch in action with a boring bar, and on a lathe. People who have grown up typing and watching TV don't seem to do as well with sharp things. After a while, one can use other machines. I can do a pretty decent soundpost with a froe and belt sander, but I know where I'm going.

I meet relatively few people who can sharpen tools. And even fewer who can set up hand tools. Sharpen a saw, set it for various woods. I have the tools to take a saw down and recut the teeth if I want. My interest is zero, but if you want to work with such things, best to know them intimately.

And I consider myself just barely qualified to make an instrument. It's sort of an honor for me to reach for a chisel my great grandfather used over 100 years ago, to sharpen it on his stones, or to turn a piece of wood cutting with a forge welded blade from the early 19th C. There's history in instruments and history in making them. Knowing that history, learning it with mind and hands, developing the feel, paying one's dues, all part of the process.

Fun process!

[Beanzy]

"However it's main job is to get both back and front working together, transferring the sound from the bridge through the top. to the back."

Absolutely not so. If you availed yourself of the existing literature, <SNIP> & Btw, all this is not theory or conjecture or hypothesis; you can view the interferometric images in numerous papers. I have given the references to some of them several times on this forum.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

Thanks for that.

But Like I emphasize earlier I'm no expert. To be honest it's something I look at and think "that's for people who spend time making rather than practicing." But I love reading about how you all do it and hope it'll inform how and where I purchase. Until I retire and have time to poke I'll just keep playing the resulting cellos and mandolins.

[belbein]

I think you're exactly right about use of hand tools, and even tools in general. We're starting to talk like altakakers here, but: It's a sad state of affairs when Americans think that putting in a ceiling fan or changing out an electric switch or, for that matter, learning to set up the musical instrument you play, is just [whining] "too hard." Nothing's "too hard" if you try. It's true that most of us have to accept that you're never going to catch up to Cohen and Coombe and Loar and a whole bunch of you guys--but by getting in the game, you can get far beyond what you ever expected. The journey's worth the aggravation and chisel cuts and sanded-off-fingertips and wood that just doesn't quite sing. A person only truly gets to know himself by bleeding for his art, and cannot know himself without. That's what we've lost with the keyboards and computers you reference.

HowEVER:

Making a really fine instrument is sort of like the bar exam.

Really? Did you forget to wear your mask when you were laquering again? :-)

[Stephen Perry]

Well, making a fine instrument is like the bar exam. In both processes one takes a very finite amount of available time and pulls together many skills originally learned independent of each other to make a product.

In the bar exam, the various skills are evaluation, analysis, organization, writing, and the technical knowledge of the law, garnered through stupifying hours of class and practice in many many exams. Which were quite fun, actually, although I'd have been bored silly if I hadn't been working at the same time!

In violinmaking, or I suppose here it should be mandolinmaking, one learns joinery, measurement, listening, design, finished, and so on. Then combines all those skills into a unity, where the piece of wood freshly split becomes seen scraped clean, sealed, with a ground and orange-red varnish laid with a sable brush. Where the sound of the tapped top and back billets call to each other.

So I don't see much difference. Except one keeps making instruments. With the bar exam one is supposed to go and do law things, which aren't really as much fun as instrument making, but involve people and perhaps less solitude.

[Philstix]

I have read through this whole thread, half of the time quite confused as to what points were being made, and wondering when someone would answer the question asked in the post. The question was - could the purpose of tone bars in violins and by extension in mandolins be to change the volume of air in the soundbox rather than to change the stiffness or vibrating patterns of the top as commonly thought. The answer is no. The difference in total volume is way too small to have a noticeable effect. If you don't believe it play a mandolin you like for a while to get the sound in your head. Then drop an extra chunk of bracewood through the sound hole and play it some more. That will effectively reduce the volume of air the amount you could have shaved off. Goodluck detecting a difference in the sound.

[Stephen Perry]

A similar excellent test with better results for banjos is to keep putting styrofoam peanuts into the resonating chamber until you like the sound. May have to push those last few in pretty hard.

Now if you want something subtle to talk about, consider violin grounds!

[JeffD]

It's a sad state of affairs when Americans think that putting in a ceiling fan or changing out an electric switch or, for that matter, learning to set up the musical instrument you play, is just [whining] "too hard." Nothing's "too hard" if you try.

I beg to differ. We all have different abilities. We all have different levels of spacial thinking, and eye hand coordination. I am good at a lot of things. I am very very good at a few things. Working with hand tools is not something I have any competence with. It is not just a matter of not trying, I have tried. (You should see the ceiling fan I put up. I am scared to sit under it when it runs.) I know my limitations.

If I were to say that everyone should be able to do mathematics, and "all you have to do is try" nobody would agree with me. Analytical abilities are not equitably dealt out either. Everyone needs to know how to add, etc., but that is roughly equivalent to being able to hang a picture. Even I can hang a picture.

Luthiers are an amazing lot. Not only do you have to make stuff that is structurally sound, and beautiful, but it has this accoustic requirements. I am in awe. A perfect day would be to sit and watch one of you guys building a fiddle or a mandolin or a guitar. I'll buy the coffee. I have no aspirations in that direction, but I do love to watch folks doing what they are good at.

[JeffD]

Is it valid to compare a violin design so closely to a mandolin from the point of view of how the sound originates? .

This is a gigantic question, it seems to me. I was really naive about this and my reading on this site has really made me skeptical how far one can generalize from violinistic understanding. The shape of the F holes, for example, in a violin is pretty fundamental to how it makes sound,as I understand it. Not so much with the mandolin. And the sound post. Not to mention the way the strings are moved is, of course, very different.

Just my observation - keep going, I am loving this thread.

[Stephen Perry]

They are indeed the same, only different. Many things cross over. Some that are important in violins I strongly suspect would be important in mandolins if they were adopted, e.g., grounds with interesting mechanical properties.