View Full Version : One Piece Back
Rick Schmidlin
Oct-28-2004, 8:03pm
Is there any difference in tonal with a one piece rather then two piece back?
Rick
Spruce
Oct-29-2004, 10:56am
No.
They look pretty cool though. I suppose you could also say that it's much less likely to have the back seam come unglued as well http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Orville Gibson was pretty big on the idea of keeping the wood in it's natural position and free to vibrate without glue etc, but I think the effect of single vs 2 piece back would be fairly minimal. One for the builders out there to answer perhaps, it's something that very few people have much chance to side-by-side compare, and you'd really be comparing 2 pieces of wood more so than single vs 2 piece back.
Craigtoo has a fiddle that is a single piece back, cut in half, and reglued. Not sure what's going on there.
To me, the coolest looking fiddle or mandolin back is a single piece curly maple at about a 20 degree angle so the curl isn't completely horizontal. mmmm...
http://www.mandolinarchive.com/images/5798_scroll_back.jpg
Spruce
Oct-31-2004, 11:57am
" I suppose you could also say that it's much less likely to have the back seam come unglued as well"
Which was an issue back then...
It's no accident that the Gibson Distressed Models fake the seam seperation....
Quite a few Loars with 2-piece backs suffer from this problem...
jasona
Oct-31-2004, 12:27pm
To me, the coolest looking fiddle or mandolin back is a single piece curly maple at about a 20 degree angle so the curl isn't completely horizontal. mmmm...
Like this?
Harry H
Nov-01-2004, 6:49pm
I think if you have a one-piece back and it's a good piece of wood, you're in great shape.
If it isn't a good piece of wood, tonally speaking, then you're out of luck.
If you have a two-piece back and one piece is good and one isn't you're still way ahead
of a bad one-piece back.
HH
Jasona: precisely http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif