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Thread: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;)

  1. #26
    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    The longer scale puts the fret farther apart. Maybe not what you want for short fingers (try a 5 string banjo neck). Everyone starts somewhere, I have been building for 50 years and am still learning from my mistakes. No one learns over night.
    Dave Schneider

  2. #27

    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Why don't you try a washtub bass. One string, no measurements, few parts, and maybe you can use the hardened concrete to add some depth to the low tones.

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    Butcherer of Songs Rob Zamites's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    [nothing nice to say, so redacted.]
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    All of your objections and reasons why you can't do thus-and-so make me wonder about your motivation. Do you really want to build and instrument of any sort?

    I ask because I've known many builders of various types of stringed instruments, and when the passion grabbed them nothing, not hell, high water, lack of tools, lack of experience, or anything else, could stand in their way or stop them. Those that actually had the passion built, those that didn't gave it lip service, but never made anything.

    Tell us about your passion. Or lack thereof, as the case may be.

  6. #30
    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    I don't want to sound like a know-it-all but I think there are some flaws in your design. There are some rules to designing a stringed instrument. First your scale length and fact that you plan to use a tail piece will not work with the string you named (they are too short). Your nut width in overly wide for 3 strings (do you plan to play chords or single notes?). Just because your voice range is baritone doesn't dictate the name of the instrument ( a viola which is said to be an alto instrument is tune the same as a tenor banjo). Scale length is not the only thing that controls the range of the instrument. I am a Non-conformist. I designed a bass mandolin that is tuned 2 octaves below a mandolin rather then like a bass viol. I call it a double octave mandolin. You can search for it on this forum. There are many people willing and able to help you here.
    Dave Schneider

  7. #31

    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by fscotte View Post
    I'd be interested to know where and how you decided on the measurements above? Surely, you have some guidance from somewhere.
    1. How to Kill a Dragon Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, by Calvert Watkins
    2. The Myth of Invariance The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics, and Music, From the Rg Veda to Plato, by Ernest G. McClain
    3. ϕ
    4. Building the Balalaika A Russian Folk Instrument

    Since I pretty much have to start over I may attempt to tighten them up to How to ϕ some more. Though because Brahma lied there is some room for error - approximately 1.4142135623730950488016887242097 over the octave set.

  8. #32
    Registered User Bill Snyder's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    I am curious why your specs give the distance to the 16th fret.
    Bill Snyder

  9. #33

    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    12 is an octave, most of folk songs I play and the few I have written go about 4 notes up from there.

  10. #34
    Butcherer of Songs Rob Zamites's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    1. How to Kill a Dragon Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, by Calvert Watkins
    2. The Myth of Invariance The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics, and Music, From the Rg Veda to Plato, by Ernest G. McClain
    3. ϕ
    4. Building the Balalaika A Russian Folk Instrument

    Since I pretty much have to start over I may attempt to tighten them up to How to ϕ some more. Though because Brahma lied there is some room for error - approximately 1.4142135623730950488016887242097 over the octave set.
    Just buy a balalaika and modify it. Done. And for the record, "approximately 1.4142135623730950488016887242097 over the octave set" is hardly an approximation. Pulling more than 3 significant figures is a waste of time.
    =============================
    Apollonio Acousto-electric bouzouki (in shop)
    Mixter 10 string mandola (still waiting 2+ yrs)
    Unknown brand Mandocaster (on the way!)
    =============================
    "Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible." -- Ambrose Bierce

  11. #35

    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob Zamites View Post
    Just buy a balalaika and modify it. Done. And for the record, "approximately 1.4142135623730950488016887242097 over the octave set" is hardly an approximation. Pulling more than 3 significant figures is a waste of time.
    Can't afford one and it won't mean what I want.

    I feel like Old Lodge Skins.

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    Resonate globally Pete Jenner's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    I understand. However, I don't want to start. I want to finish. I have other things to do.
    In that case, why don't you short cut the whole process and not do anything?
    The more I learn, the less I know.

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  14. #37

    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Rick Lindstrom View Post
    Tell us about your passion. Or lack thereof, as the case may be.
    Very well. I am a historian. I study history because there is nothing that has ever happened that did not happen in history. To study history is to study the field theory of everything, but of course there is no field theory of everything because everything is not related - except that the minute it happens it becomes the past. R.G. Collingwood noted,"A historian is like a prophet, never accepted in his own country. He goes into a place that never was and returns with insights about the human condition which no one wishes to hear." In a place that never was, in a land that never was, in a time that never was, a man stretch gut along a stick and plucked it. And when he used a string half that length he found the octave. And from there he learned math. And then he found the chord. And he found another and another until he had found ten-thousand sounds and it was horrifying. And as he mused on what he had learned he felt God was like the first of all things, but that chaos had crept in to destroy paradise and so he set out to destroy the dragon - to slay Aži Dahāka, who is Ahi in the Vedas and the Muirdris slain by Fergus in Loch Rudraige. And the slaying of the dragon is the slaying of the demons, the slaying of the those who worshiped the Golden Calf, the notes who render the Polychord disharmonious by whose death the hero brings about harmony. The Monochord rules in harmony and salvation. The mountain of God is upraised. The math is assured. The cycles of the note are the measure of a length, the length of a mans arm, the measure of a stone, the foundation of a temple, the building of a kingdom, the building of a philosophy, the making of a pyramid, the creation of a theorem, and raised in the Temple of the Golden Ratio Plato harmonizes the spheres. Alexander the Accursed builds a library in Egypt and burns all the books of an empire. An August monk leaves the east and brings destiny to Rome dressed in the tatters of Zarathustra. And the string. The string that told a man how to make a half. The string that told a man how to make a chord, a plumb, a song on the wind of a mountain, a harmony of nations, a philosophy to describe God. The string was called only a string. Though none of it is true. I will celebrate that string in the measure of the golden ratio, in the memory of what never was, in the human condition which no one wishes to hear. I will praise the God who is, in spite of all this vanity, which is incomprehensible because He revealed a string.

    Quote Originally Posted by PT66 View Post
    First your scale length and fact that you plan to use a tail piece will not work with the string you named (they are too short).
    The strings are what the agent at D'Addario recommended for the project. If they won't work, then I will in deed need something else. That is the tuning required.
    Your nut width in overly wide for 3 strings (do you plan to play chords or single notes?).
    Most stringed instruments have the strings way to close together for me. I can't hold one down without deadening another. Set the distance by putting water color on my finger tips and then testing what I could mark on a cardboard mock-up.
    Just because your voice range is baritone doesn't dictate the name of the instrument
    I used the term baritone because that was the term used for that fret board scale in the charts at Allen Guitars.

    This production is as much about the sanctity inside the art of the design as it is in the intended use of it. I will see about tightening in the numbers a little sense I have to try again anyway. But the purpose in the structure is sacred space, sacred form, sacred definition, sacred expression.

  15. #38
    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Building a musical instrument is about art AND science. The baritone at Allen Guitars was a steel string instrument with a fixed bridge or electric. You can't build a workable instrument from mythology. I can recommend some reading but that take time.
    Dave Schneider

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  17. #39
    Registered User fscotte's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Ken, it seems to me you've really lowered your standards by coming here. Most here just make the sub-standard Loar based instrument called a "mandolin" - there is an "A" model for those who like to take the easy way out, and then there is an "F" model, which attempts to sound half-way decent - but certainly not godlike. I really don't think the ancient gods would be pleased with any of our efforts. Sorry.

    Have you tried the banjo builders forum?
    Last edited by fscotte; Mar-11-2015 at 7:46am.

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    Now the question is: Is there someone out there with which I can collaborate to do what I want?

    What I can't do is cut the neck, prep the neck for the truss rod or other support, cut the soundboard, cut the back, or cut the sides, or seemingly find a decent three string tailpiece.
    Just to be a bit of (possible) help here: a list of Missouri luthiers from the Cafe DB. Perhaps there is one who could work with you or do the work that you do not wish to do. More than likely, tho, in the end you will prob have to convey to this person everything you need in this instrument but may have to relinquish some of your preconceptions as to how these work in the real world. Perhaps there is someone a few hours away and it might be worth your while to get together with this person only a few times to work out the initial details. To really get this done properly, I would guess that you might have to allow the luthier to build the whole instrument. Then again, there may be a luthier who would do exactly as you wish.

    I do find your analysis, influences and dreams very interesting. I did check all your quoted sources. I do love your description of all arts and sciences deriving from the string and it is very poetic, but a poem is a made up thing (I do write poetry). I do think that people here are certainly willing to entertain your musings, however, as noted, this is a builder's forum and most people here are very grounded in the material world. You may very well have to be somewhat flexible in your specs esp if you want to work with someone. OTOH it sounds like you do not have very deep resources in terms of money. Yet you want the fulfillment of these dreams but are unwilling (you say unable):
    • to create this by yourself
    • to compromise
    • or to take the time-consuming path to acquire the skills to get what you want.


    In a strange way, you want immediate gratification. Lots of contradictions here, in my way of thinking. To me the path to actually learn the skills and make this "perfect" instrument would be part of the joy of making it exist. Yes, it may take years, but you seem to feel pretty strongly about this project.
    Jim

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  20. #41
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by fscotte View Post

    Have you tried the banjo builders forum?
    Excellent suggestion. I'm absolutely sure that the OP doesn't connect with the implied sentiment. LOL

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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    Very well. I am a historian. (EDIT)
    Interesting, if somewhat disjointed, history lesson. I believe you may have neglected to tell us about your personal motivations and why you want to build stringed instruments.

    Here's a big list of folk instruments from around the world. Perhaps something in it will pique your curiosity and inflame your passions:

    http://www.hobgoblin-usa.com/info/glossary/

    You may be limiting yourself by restricting your interest to the insular world of mandolins.

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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Rick Lindstrom View Post
    Interesting, if somewhat disjointed, history lesson. I believe you may have neglected to tell us about your personal motivations and why you want to build stringed instruments.
    From what I can glean from his postings,
    I don't think he wants to build stringed instruments, just wants this one he has designed.

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    Butcherer of Songs Rob Zamites's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Garber View Post
    From what I can glean from his postings,
    I don't think he wants to build stringed instruments, just wants this one he has designed.
    Yet he's unwilling to ruin wood or learn the skills required to do so himself, and doesn't appear to have the funds to pay a luthier to do so. As you put it, OP wants instant gratification, and given the specifications of this desired instrument, that is decidedly not going to happen.
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    Mixter 10 string mandola (still waiting 2+ yrs)
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    "Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible." -- Ambrose Bierce

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    Resonate globally Pete Jenner's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    Very well. I am a historian. I study history because there is nothing that has ever happened that did not happen in history. To study history is to study the field theory of everything, but of course there is no field theory of everything because everything is not related - except that the minute it happens it becomes the past. R.G. Collingwood noted,"A historian is like a prophet, never accepted in his own country. He goes into a place that never was and returns with insights about the human condition which no one wishes to hear." In a place that never was, in a land that never was, in a time that never was, a man stretch gut along a stick and plucked it. And when he used a string half that length he found the octave. And from there he learned math. And then he found the chord. And he found another and another until he had found ten-thousand sounds and it was horrifying. And as he mused on what he had learned he felt God was like the first of all things, but that chaos had crept in to destroy paradise and so he set out to destroy the dragon - to slay Aži Dahāka, who is Ahi in the Vedas and the Muirdris slain by Fergus in Loch Rudraige. And the slaying of the dragon is the slaying of the demons, the slaying of the those who worshiped the Golden Calf, the notes who render the Polychord disharmonious by whose death the hero brings about harmony. The Monochord rules in harmony and salvation. The mountain of God is upraised. The math is assured. The cycles of the note are the measure of a length, the length of a mans arm, the measure of a stone, the foundation of a temple, the building of a kingdom, the building of a philosophy, the making of a pyramid, the creation of a theorem, and raised in the Temple of the Golden Ratio Plato harmonizes the spheres. Alexander the Accursed builds a library in Egypt and burns all the books of an empire. An August monk leaves the east and brings destiny to Rome dressed in the tatters of Zarathustra. And the string. The string that told a man how to make a half. The string that told a man how to make a chord, a plumb, a song on the wind of a mountain, a harmony of nations, a philosophy to describe God. The string was called only a string. Though none of it is true. I will celebrate that string in the measure of the golden ratio, in the memory of what never was, in the human condition which no one wishes to hear. I will praise the God who is, in spite of all this vanity, which is incomprehensible because He revealed a string.
    I prefer quantum string theory.
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  26. #46
    Registered User fscotte's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Occasioanlly people like this come around I guess. They feel the need to be someone they really aren't, as to be impressive or something. His first post was fairly understandable, but then every post thereafter turned odd. Simple questions yielded a disjointed mythically inspired rant. That's a major turnoff. You need a neck? Just say hey, can someone help me with this neck, here's the instrument, here's my measurements, any ideas or suggestions?

    All the rest is a waste of time and unneeded. I would in no way ever build this fella an instrument.

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  28. #47
    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by fscotte View Post
    Occasionally people like this come around I guess.
    Yes, and in every field. There were moments when I acted ignorant just to escape conversation.
    the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world

  29. #48
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    Most stringed instruments have the strings way to close together for me. I can't hold one down without deadening another. Set the distance by putting water color on my finger tips and then testing what I could mark on a cardboard mock-up..
    I am not sure that criteria isn't limiting your choices.

    One can learn to only hold the intended strings down, even on a standard width mandolin neck, even on a standard width fiddle neck, with ordinary fingers.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

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  30. #49
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Quote Originally Posted by Jaqaliah View Post
    How to Kill a Dragon Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, by Calvert Watkins

    The Myth of Invariance The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics, and Music, From the Rg Veda to Plato, by Ernest G. McClain
    I am going to guess you got precious little concrete guidance from either of these. I took a run at them, and found that while fascinating, they were both way more dense than they needed to be.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

    The entire staff
    funny....

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    Default Re: Non-conformist idiot here could use a support therapist ... ;

    Padma- is that you messin' with us Dude? If so, glad to see you back- you kept the pot stirred around here for a while. LOL

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