What qualities does a Neapolitan mandolin have?

[Jacqke]

Ok. Here is what is on Wikipedia.


Bowlback

The Neapolitan style, known as a round-back or bowl-back, has an almond-shaped body resembling a bowl, constructed from curved strips of wood. It usually has a bent sound table, canted in two planes with the design to take the tension of metal strings. A hardwood fingerboard sits on top of or is is flush with the sound table. Very old instruments may use wooden tuning pegs, while newer instruments tend to use geared metal tuners. The bridge is a movable length of hardwood. A tortoise-shell pick guard is glued below the sound hole under the strings.

That is simple description. What is a bowl backed instrument to you? Is it the "Neapolitan" style only that should be considered for the description? What makes this style good? What is missing from this description?

[carbonpiou]

Hello, Jacqke !

I am French and my Latin culture makes that I play still much on Neapolitan mandolines bowlback.
The Neapolitan mandoline appeared around 1750 thanks to the Neapolitan violin makers. These violin makers being up to that point accustomed to built violins, they took again the tuning of this instrument which they knew very well: G D A E.
The form bowlback was especially intended to solve 4 problems:
- to increase the power and sound projection with a volume of case reduced,
- To ensure an optimal sound balance on all the extent of the sound spectrum of the instrument.
- To be able to carry out a case of large volume, without resorting to pieces of wood of large surface, because the good wood of stringed-instrument trade was rare.
- To ensure a great rigidity.

The Neapolitan mandoline also recognizes by its neck narrow (22mm maximum at the nut neck, sometimes 18ou 19 mm). It was very rare to play chords on this instrument and it was very much used by the women. This explains that.
The shape of the table, with a fold at the level close to the bridge is intended to increase rigidity, but more especially to increase the angle of the strings on the level of the bridge, therefore to increase the pressure on the table, therefore to increase the sound power

[mrmando]

It's chocolate, strawberry AND vanilla, all in one...

[Beanzy]

For me when played with a hard narrow plectrum a well made bowl on these will resonate and sustain as well as the top does.

What I have noticed is people talk about resonance a lot when describing a good bowl-back mandolin and those instruments have very thin strips of wood. On the less good ones I have played they have not been shaved to such a fine tolerance, so the bowl does not resonate as well as the top, merely becoming an almost passive echo-chamber and so only leaves the top and 'tinkly' or twangy string noises which should only be the icing on the acoustic cake for these instruments.

I have recently been watching two modern builders who are really coming into bloom in this ability to balance the structural need to cope with string tension and the counterbalancing need to allow all parts of the instrument to resonate as fully as possible, while avoiding 'wolf' notes on open string tunings. The more I listen to these mandolins the better my ear tunes into what is making the voice really work well in those instruments I like.

[ombudsman]

The design is clearly an adaptation of the oud.

I don't have a lot of experience with them, but I recently got a bowlback mandola and was amazed by the sustain and volume. Not just the length of sustain, but also the curve, the amount of volume that it retains as the note dies out. The dropoff seems much less steep compared to an acoustic guitar, upright bass, or violin (played pizzicato obviously).

[JeffD]

One of the things missing in any physical description is the mojo.

Playing the bowl back mandolin one can't help think of the poses of all those angels and cherubim holding mandolins, in all those paintings. The paintings infer that when playing music to honor God, one can't do a whole lot better than to play it on a bowl back mandolin. (For sure they weren't playing spoons.)

The bowl back has become part of the imagery of music itself. The G clef, the eighth note, the bowl back mandolin, the violin. When the general public see these things, they see music.

And of all the mandolins, what type is most likely to be recognized by the musically uninformed? The bowl back.

To hold a bowl back and see your hands holding it, and to know that people have been playing instruments of that general shape, mandolins, bouzoukis, lutes, for many centuries... well, its as if the ancestors and precursors console you and encourage you. By the way, if you include the oud, then the tradition goes back at least 5000 years. Some say all the way back to the seventh generation after Adam, which is before Bill Monroe, by the way.

Anything you play on a bowl back feels magical as you contemplate the grand and ancient tradition you are a part of.

[JeffD]

Oh, and chicks dig 'em.

It took some getting used to, all the attention suddenly coming my way when I picked up the bowl back. And these are not guitar women, for whom its enough to look shaggy, hollow eyed, and unemployable. No, these are substantive educated women with taste and discernment.


Well, ok, but it could happen, right?

[JeffD]

Back to the physical - I really enjoy the compact-ness of the bowl back. It feels like a single instrument, not like a weight on the end of a stick. Compact, small and powerful.

[August Watters]

Lots of good info already in this thread, but I could add: there's a distinction to be made between the Neapolitan instrument and the Roman instrument, which has a long and parallel history. The Roman luthiers introduced ideas that were widely adapted (including v-shaped necks, arched fingerboards and the CGDA mandola), and others that were not (narrower and more trapezoidal necks, taller bridges, sharper cants). Then there's the German Seiffert-style bowlback, a recent invention and a completely different design.

American classical mandolinists have usually preferred the carved top/back design, but that may be changing - seems like the bowlback is a lot more visible lately!

[Jim Garber]

Yes, thank you, August... I was about to same some of the same things. The Neapolitan-style mandolin is a bowlback but nopt all bowlbacks are Neapolitan. In fact there are regional variants in italy such as the Brescian (gut/nylon and single strung) and other ones that are even not tuned GDAE.

[brunello97]

For me, our friend, Martin Jonas, nailed it best when he described the 'shimmering sound' of a Neapolitan bowlback.

That's what I know.

Mick

[High Lonesome Valley]

I recently heard a Neapolitan mandolin song on a movie set in Italy. Absolutely shimmering.

My Italian grandmother-in-law used to tell me "Fa Napoli", but I don't think this was necessarily a good thing.

[Jacqke]

So, do any of the old American bowlbacks come anywhere close to their European counterparts?

[Petrus]

My S.S. Stewart (date uncertain, but fairly vintage) performs adequately, though it probably could use a pro setup. The question is too vague for a good comparison though. I'd like to try a newer bowlback sometime, not necessarily an American ... say a Suzuki, which I've heard good things about.

[Tavy]

So, do any of the old American bowlbacks come anywhere close to their European counterparts?

Well IMO the Vega bowls were possibly the best ever made in that era - the sound and construction is quite different to the Neapolitans though. Horses for courses and all that...

[Elliot Luber]

Do you find them difficult to hold?

[mandroid]

It would come from Naples, Italy, right?

[Petrus]

Playing the bowl back mandolin one can't help think of the poses of all those angels and cherubim holding mandolins, in all those paintings. The paintings infer that when playing music to honor God, one can't do a whole lot better than to play it on a bowl back mandolin. (For sure they weren't playing spoons.)

Not to take issue with your post (which is very well phrased in general, by the way!) I suspect the painters of the time put contemporary (to them) instruments in the hands of the angels, which would explain the mandolins we see. When I think of really ancient instruments, especially of the Levant, I tend more to think of the Kinnor harp, lyre, cithara, and those sorts of instruments. These were really the ancestors of all modern stringed instruments. The oud, etc., came later when some smart luthiers decided it would make for more variety if the player could fret the strings, which required putting a handy neck onto the lyre. From the oud (Arabic for "wood") we get the lute (almost the same word in translation) and all that came after. Mandolins, mandolinettos, guitars, etc., of earlier periods are not easily separable as they had not yet evolved into their distinct modern versions. (Guitars, for instance, were often as small as mandolins; tuning and string count was all over the place.)

An interesting aside: scientists have recently dated what is so far the world's oldest known functional musical instrument, a 9000-year old bone flute from China. The holes in it are clearly arranged in a scale, too. (No 9000-year old mandolins, yet, unfortunately.)

http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/1999/bnlpr092299.html

[Petrus]

Do you find them difficult to hold?

They can be hard to hold standing up, imo, because of how they stick out. They don't seem to be designed for a strap either. Anyway I've never seen anyone play one with a strap. I find they are very easy to play seated and cross-legged, with the bowl resting in one's lap. Sort of Middle Eastern style. The bowl and neck form almost a ball joint with your lap, with a natural center of gravity, and the instrument can easily be rotated around for comfort or to project the sound in a given direction. No risk of dropping it either.

[Bill Clements]

They can be hard to hold standing up, imo, because of how they stick out.
Agreed! Just got my first bowlback, an Eastman. Here's Ugo Orlandi who makes it look so easy.
Note how he lets go of the mandolin with his left hand after the first movement:

http://youtu.be/6AEhxtmQr58

[Petrus]

Agreed! Just got my first bowlback, an Eastman. Here's Ugo Orlandi who makes it look so easy.

Now that's some good pickin' there. I bet Ugo could give Chris Thile a run for his money. :grin:

[JeffD]

Do you find them difficult to hold?

I started on the bowl, so back then holding any instrument was awkward feeling.

I generally play strapless and sitting down if at all possible, so its about the same as with any other mandolin, for me.

[John Cadd]

The internal bowl shape of instruments does not get talked about much . But if you built a hall like a bowlback what would the acoustics be like? And if you were in the audience would you sit in the thin end or the thick end ? The floor would rise at one end so maybe that would be the stage. Remember the curved bowl is the roof. Flat roofs are no good .

[Jim Garber]

The internal bowl shape of instruments does not get talked about much . But if you built a hall like a bowlback what would the acoustics be like? And if you were in the audience would you sit in the thin end or the thick end ? The floor would rise at one end so maybe that would be the stage. Remember the curved bowl is the roof. Flat roofs are no good .

This one looks like the inside of a bowlback: https://smtd.umich.edu/facilities/hill-auditorium/

Some discussion here of auditorium shapes: https://www.constructionspecifier.com/shapes-and-sounds-designing-concert-halls-with-curves/

[Tavy]

The internal bowl shape of instruments does not get talked about much . But if you built a hall like a bowlback what would the acoustics be like? And if you were in the audience would you sit in the thin end or the thick end ? The floor would rise at one end so maybe that would be the stage. Remember the curved bowl is the roof. Flat roofs are no good .

As far as the acoustic of the instrument goes, the shape of the bowl matters very little compared to it's overall volume. There's also some good research that shows bowlback backs participate very little if at all in the vibrational modes of the instrument, so they're more like the "immovable object" than an active participant. Remember also that since the sound is produced *at the soundhole* via the pumping of air to-and-fro as the instrument vibrates, so whatever is going on inside is largely irrelevant to what you hear outside. That said, if you want something to sound like a bowlback does, then the design is a very good one, flat top mandolins with wider more flexible tops, active backs and every resonance coupled to every other one work quite differently.

[Martin Beer]

I enjoy how my bowlback mandolin sounds, a fairly humble Il Globo that's had the fingerboard replaced. It doesn't have a great deal of low end, but it's clear, sparkly and can be surprisingly loud. It's mostly the ergonomics that have pushed me away from playing it more - not even the bowl so much as the neck proportions. I've had it for about 30 years now, and it didn't used to bother me, but has seemed more and more uncomfortable as I've got older.

[Mark Gunter]

Final answer: What is a tater bug?

[Joe Bartl]

212707

[MikeEdgerton]

Unfortunately as we age we find there are some things we are no longer interested in fighting. Heavy electric basses and large bodied arched top guitars have been that way for me. All of a sudden what never bothered me now does. I have never found a bowlback mandolin comfortable but many here do. The good news is that there are plenty of decent A and F style mandolins available these days for decent prices. It might be time to change the mandolin body style you have been playing. In the vintage world there are many cant topped flat back mandolins with decent necks that you might want to look at. They should look similar to what you're used to playing to those standing in front of you.

[DavidKOS]

Unfortunately as we age we find there are some things we are no longer interested in fighting. Heavy electric basses and large bodied arched top guitars have been that way for me. All of a sudden what never bothered me now does. I have never found a bowlback mandolin comfortable but many here do. The good news is that there are plenty of decent A and F style mandolins available these days for decent prices. It might be time to change the mandolin body style you have been playing. In the vintage world there are many cant topped flat back mandolins with decent necks that you might want to look at. They should look similar to what you're used to playing to those standing in front of you.

Mike I deeply respect your moderation and personal opinions.:)

I agree about heavy electric basses - I've even had my luthier buddy hollow out the back of my fretless J bass. BTW, it sounds better.

But I've never bonded with any Gibson archtop F mandolins, and I love bowlbacks...but I really don't play much BG and other styles that sort of need that style instrument.

And not all bowlbacks are equally good. There are many I would never own.

Yes, there are many lovely flat backs that I've loved, like my Fischbach (ELF).

Another thing we agree on - bowlbacks may not be for everyone. And I only play 16" archtops guitars. No 18" ones for me!


Thank you for all your work on this forum.

[DavidKOS]

Final answer: What is a tater bug?


212707

Lots of bowel backs in the early 20th century had ribs that looked like that.

Plus there were those all those Gibson ads!

[DavidKOS]

Lots of bowel backs in the early 20th century had ribs that looked like that.

Plus there were those all those Gibson ads!

Oy...bowl back! not the other word

[brunello97]

As far as the acoustic of the instrument goes, the shape of the bowl matters very little compared to it's overall volume. There's also some good research that shows bowlback backs participate very little if at all in the vibrational modes of the instrument, so they're more like the "immovable object" than an active participant. Remember also that since the sound is produced *at the soundhole* via the pumping of air to-and-fro as the instrument vibrates, so whatever is going on inside is largely irrelevant to what you hear outside. That said, if you want something to sound like a bowlback does, then the design is a very good one, flat top mandolins with wider more flexible tops, active backs and every resonance coupled to every other one work quite differently.

John, I was following (or trying to follow) this discussion in another thread where some research papers were testing the sound characteristics of a bowlback.
You've summarized the summaries nicely.

The part I didn't quite follow from these is this: if the sound is produced "via the pumping of the air to and fro..." I'm suprised that the "shape" doing the pumping doesn't have an affect on the sound produced.

It has me wondering how a comparison of a canted top mandolin with a flat back had the back immoblized (which shouldn't be a difficult thing to do) might be with a bowlback..which the vibration of the bowl purportedly contributes nothing.

If I'm understanding the research conclusions correctly, they ought to sound the same, which sounds off to me, but that's only from playing experience, obviously not from any "science".

If I comp a bowlback, boatback and flatback...all on my lap with the body pressed against mine, they all do have a different quality of sound. (Of course there are many variables between them, but key similarities.) That kind of ad hoc method certainly wouldn't register with the sonic testing wonks but it strikes me as premature to discount the body shape of a bowlback as a contributor to its sound.

Thoughts on this?

Mick

[Dave Cohen]

As far as the acoustic of the instrument goes, the shape of the bowl matters very little compared to it's overall volume. There's also some good research that shows bowlback backs participate very little if at all in the vibrational modes of the instrument, so they're more like the "immovable object" than an active participant. Remember also that since the sound is produced *at the soundhole* via the pumping of air to-and-fro as the instrument vibrates, so whatever is going on inside is largely irrelevant to what you hear outside. That said, if you want something to sound like a bowlback does, then the design is a very good one, flat top mandolins with wider more flexible tops, active backs and every resonance coupled to every other one work quite differently.

It's not quite correct to say that what is going on inside an instrument body is irrelevant to what is heard. True, the movement of the air mass in the soundhole region is what ultimately propagates air to the listeners' ears. But, that air mass movement is essentially driven by the movement of the air inside the instrument body cavity. The air inside the instrument body is essentially the "spring" to which the air mass in the soundhole region is connected. And, just as with every other oscillator in the instrument, the air inside the body has numerous different modes of motion, and each of those modes has its' own characteristic frequency (aka "Eigenfrequency"). The lowest frequency mode, usually referred to as the "Helmholtz" mode, is kind of an expanding and contracting motion of all of the air in the instrument body cavity. If the body is somewhat elongated, the next mode up in frequency is what the late Tom Rossing referred to as a "longitudinal sloshing" mode, the next one after that is what Rossing called a "sideways sloshing" mode, and so on. The way those air cavity modes cause air in the soundhole(s) to move has partly to do with the proximity of those air mode frequencies to plate and body mode frequencies that can drive them, and partly with the location(s) of the soundhole(s). F'rinstance, the first or Helmholtz mode results in monopole radiation from any type of mandolin. In bowlbacks, with their single round or oval soundhole, the longitudinal sloshing mode will also result in monopole radiation, while the sideways sloshing mode will result in nothing, esentially canceling itself out at the soundhole.

[Martin Beer]

Lots of bowel backs in the early 20th century had ribs that looked like that.

Plus there were those all those Gibson ads!

Associating what was the dominant form of mandolin (until they came along) with a loathed agricultural pest was a genius marketing move by Gibson, especially as the association has still stuck 100+ years later!

[hubrad]

The internal bowl shape of instruments does not get talked about much . But if you built a hall like a bowlback what would the acoustics be like? And if you were in the audience would you sit in the thin end or the thick end ? The floor would rise at one end so maybe that would be the stage. Remember the curved bowl is the roof. Flat roofs are no good .

Back in the late 90s I toured with a folk punk band, and you've reminded me of a gig on the east side of Germany.. we were booked to play a students union, which turned out to be a pretty much hemispherical brick-walled room. The acoustics weren't great for an amplified band playing at one end (side, corner) , but you could sit on benches diametrically opposite someone and have a softly spoken conversation without difficulty. I've never seen or heard another place like it.

[Richard500]

I did have one scientific encounter with a tater bug. Around ‘74 I found one and was interested in the iridescence of its (I think) wing covers, so enquired of the bug folks at the Smithsonian on how to preserve same. Iridescence is a favorite point of contact between physics people and the layperson world. I doubt if there’s a high school teacher who hasn’t made a lesson out of it. Anyway, the Smithsonian was not encouraging, indicating that they had no way of avoiding the fading, so a colleague and I tried freeze drying; the bug in a test tube cooled by liquid nitrogen and evacuated to pretty low pressure, then sealed. It only lasted a month or so, and turned brown, so we turned to other follies.
I had no awareness of Orville’s entomological slur, but decades later, collecting bowl back mandolins, started thinking about those moths or butterflies that decorate so many of them, and hardly ever other shaped instruments, and of course, how to keep those celluloid images from degrading. I think the experiment is not worth doing.

[John Cadd]

My wife took me with her on a hunt for knitting wool and the shop in Wales had walls covered in samples for sale. There was a purple knitted shawl in a very flexible loose mesh pattern. I thought it would adapt to a sling to cuddle the bowl back without needing any drilling or straps . But bowl backs are an ideal shape if you have an oval lay back sofa .More like laying in bed than sitting up . Have those sofas gone out of fashion ? The parabola hall articles were fascinating .Much appreciated .As a side issue I thought about the plaster walls 2 1/2 inches thick .I did all the ceiling plastering in our old house . Lathe and Plaster is preferable to ungainly plaster sheets . I had to mix the plaster downstairs and carry it up in two buckets with a Chinese style wooden pole and a length of rope . 5 mixes per day was my ;limit . Sadly on the lower slanted walls I sprained my ankle and that has bothered me for some years since .

[Tavy]

John, I was following (or trying to follow) this discussion in another thread where some research papers were testing the sound characteristics of a bowlback.
You've summarized the summaries nicely.

The part I didn't quite follow from these is this: if the sound is produced "via the pumping of the air to and fro..." I'm suprised that the "shape" doing the pumping doesn't have an affect on the sound produced.

It has me wondering how a comparison of a canted top mandolin with a flat back had the back immoblized (which shouldn't be a difficult thing to do) might be with a bowlback..which the vibration of the bowl purportedly contributes nothing.

If I'm understanding the research conclusions correctly, they ought to sound the same, which sounds off to me, but that's only from playing experience, obviously not from any "science".

If I comp a bowlback, boatback and flatback...all on my lap with the body pressed against mine, they all do have a different quality of sound. (Of course there are many variables between them, but key similarities.) That kind of ad hoc method certainly wouldn't register with the sonic testing wonks but it strikes me as premature to discount the body shape of a bowlback as a contributor to its sound.

Thoughts on this?

Mick

So much subtlety, and so much we don't understand yet, but... the defining difference between the instruments you mention is generally the width of the top, as well as the level of activity of the back. So there is a continuum between tops that are wide enough to be fully coupled to the main Helmholz resonance (archtops) and those that are not at all (bowlbacks) with lots of sounds in between. Most canted top flatbacks, are closer to modern width than say Neapolitan width I would guess.

Dave C mentions some interesting points (as ever), the observation that the air in the cavity behaves somewhat like a spring ties in with some empirical observations (sorry don't have the link to hand) that adding a sound port to a guitar makes it louder - there had a been an "internet wisdom" that the reverse was true. Likewise many luthiers will tell you that there should be nothing that interferes with free air movement through the soundhole for maximum volume (this is still at the anecdote stage as far as I know). Or to put it another way it appears that most instruments have their volume constrained by how freely they can shift air, not by how much the top is moving (or trying to against the resistance of the air).

With regard to side to side sloshing modes, there has been a perceived wisdom for maybe a 100 years or more, that asymmetry is a "good thing" - the typical brace design on a bowlback being a good example. One can speculate - and make no mistake it is speculation - that the asymmetry allows some of those side-to-side modes to shift air and not cancel out after all. A sound port would be the most obvious example of this, but asymmetric bracing may also move the modal line on the top enough to one side that the sound hole now behaves more like it would were it placed off-axis. Should someone want to do the experiment, it would be interesting to compare two otherwise identical flattops, one with symmetrical German style ladder bracing, and one with Neapolitan style "sculpted alpine" bracing.

[Dave Cohen]

Tavy, the "cancellation" which I posted about above has to do with the fact that the sideways sloshing mode has a nodal line that goes through the area under the soundhole, and hence is attempting to move air both "in" and "out" of the soundhole at the same time, hence the net cancellation. The same sideways sloshing mode in ff-hole type instruments results in dipole radiation. That is, when air is moving "in" one of the ff-holes, it is simultaneously moving "out" of the other one, and vice versa. It has little or nothing to do with bracing patterns. Air mode shapes are dominated by the 3D shape of the instrument body cavity, just as plate mode shapes are dominated by the quasi 2D shape of the plates.

[Tavy]

Tavy, the "cancellation" which I posted about above has to do with the fact that the sideways sloshing mode has a nodal line that goes through the area under the soundhole, and hence is attempting to move air both "in" and "out" of the soundhole at the same time, hence the net cancellation. The same sideways sloshing mode in ff-hole type instruments results in dipole radiation. That is, when air is moving "in" one of the ff-holes, it is simultaneously moving "out" of the other one, and vice versa. It has little or nothing to do with bracing patterns. Air mode shapes are dominated by the 3D shape of the instrument body cavity, just as plate mode shapes are dominated by the quasi 2D shape of the plates.

Yes absolutely. What I was trying to say, was that once you have some measure of asymmetry, either in the top construction (bracing) or soundhole placement (side port), then that cancellation *may* no longer be the case. Or perhaps is :)

[Dave Cohen]

Any plate normal mode that is close enough in frequency to the normal frequency of a body cavity air mode will set that air mode in motion, Changes in the bracing pattern do NOT change the shapes of the plate normal modes; they only affect the overall stiffness of the plate, and they don't do so as much as is often assumed, I ran that experiment in Rossing's lab back in 2004. Likewise, changes in the bracing symmetry will not have any effect on the symmetries of the air modes.

The only way tp get the sideways sloshing mode to drive monopole radiation in a single soundhole instrument would be to reposition that soundhole to one side of the top plate. Not much room to do that in a typical Neapolitan mandolin, nor does there seem to be much motivation to do so. And in any case, the longitudinal sloshing air mode would likely contribute much more to the monopole radiation in the soundhole than would the sideways sloshing mode, as the longitudinal sloshing mode occurs at a lower frequency than the sideways sloshing mode. Recall that the Helmholtz mode in Neapolitans occurs in the 140-200Hz range, which is too much lower that any of the top plate modal frequencies to couple with them. So while the Helmholtz is the biggest contributor to monopole radiation in guitars and other types of mandolins, it doesn't do much in the Neapolitan mandolin. So that would make the longitudinal sloshing mode more important to the lower frequency response of the Neapolitan mandolin. I didn't do any experiments on that, nir did I see any such results reported in the paper you cited. Or did I miss them?

Not sure about the effect of a side port. Recall that both Alan Carruth and R.M. Mottola ran some experiments with side ports in guitars, and found that the sound port made little or no difference to listeners in ordinary quiet listening conditions, but made a small but noticeable difference for the player (not for listeners) in noisy rooms. i.e., full of people conversing, etc. In a Neapolitan, I'd be kinda worried about the structural consequences of putting a side port anywhere near the heel end of the bowl.