No different than do you like the sound of an oval hole or an ff hole mandolin, heavy pick, light pick. Comes down to personal preference.
THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE JUST FOR YOUR SMILE!
While very different in makup than a more standard wooden bass, my Aloca bass now has a Virzi-like structure in it. Since my Alcoa has a trap door, I have had the opportunity to do some experimenting with this. Like the rest of the bass, it's an aluminum plate, having six beech feet bolted onto it, spaced particularly to coincide with the bridge feet and with the slope of the bass top. This mostly flat alunminum plate also has some strategic folds on it to provide sufficent strength allowing it to maintain its primary flat shape and in doing so to prevent rattling. Attached to the bass's top only by the pressure of the sound post, it vibrates freely with the top, spreading vibration through the whole instrument, and it does make a positive difference in tone and volume.
Experimenting with the Virzi concept with a larger instrument than a mandolin or a violin, and with an instrument made with an extremely vibrant material, provides much less subtle and more recognizable results and is a pretty interesting test bed. My primarly reason for installing this was to spread the sound post pressure over a wider area of the top and in doing so to provide strength for a historical top repair, but the tone and volume results are significicant enough that I can't help but reflect on the Virzi's function in a mandolin...
When someone says the word "baffle" in a sound related context, I cannot help but think of something that deadens a room. In a sound studio that is the function of baffles.
I'm not seeing that with this Virzi-like structure in my bass. As I play this bass I can lterally reach inside and feel this plate structure vibrating freely with the top. And if I hold its edges tightly, my hand noticably mutes the instrument. I've carefully tested this with other people listening to make sure it isn't just my expectation-driven perception.
Sooo, whle a wooden mandolin is a very different creature, I have to wonder if a Virzi in a mandolin is really less of a baffle, and more of a sound board extension. That is more characteristic of what I'm seeing with my bass.
Edit: From talking with some bass luthiers I am aware that Gibson did make some mandobasses and harp guitars that included Virzi tone producers.
Last edited by dhergert; Mar-20-2018 at 2:36am.
-- Don
"Music: A minor auditory irritation occasionally characterized as pleasant."
"It is a lot more fun to make music than it is to argue about it."
2002 Gibson F-9
2016 MK LFSTB
1975 Suzuki taterbug (plus many other noisemakers)
[About how I tune my mandolins]
[Our recent arrival]
I've been amused whenever it's asserted that the tone alteration with the Virzi works purely due to the added mass. It always struck me as identical to claiming that a heat radiator works purely due to its mass, like a heat sink, and that the increased surface area doesn't help radiate away the absorbed heat.
The aluminum plate in @dhergert's bass just made the comparison more apt, and drove me to point out that "pure absorption" idea.
----
Playing a funky oval-hole scroll-body mandolin, several mandolins retuned to CGDA, three CGDA-tuned Flatiron mandolas, two Flatiron mandolas tuned as octave mandolins,and a six-course 25.5" scale CGDAEB-tuned Ovation Mandophone.
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To be clear I think the baffle that Jeff was referring to was more like the baffle in a speaker cabinet. That amounts to just a hole that is shallow or deeper and varying in diameter to effect frequency response in an enclosed speaker cabinet. Unlike the foam put on walls to deaden a room this baffle is totally different.
THE WORLD IS A BETTER PLACE JUST FOR YOUR SMILE!
A baffle redirects the sound or modifies it in some way. Like so many things to call a baffle bad is dependent on what you want to do with the sound. The baffles in a studio directs the sound to a dead end, designed to limit or stop reflective sound. That is good in a studio not in an instrument neither is bad just different.
It seems that the point of a virzi is to enhance the tone, not simply make it different, which I guess is what a baffle does. If we just want a different tone, theres plenty of simple things that can be done to do just that. Say you want a little lower timbre? Tape some clear plastic tape across part of your soundhole. The more you tape off, the lower the timbre. Sometimes its enjoyable to completely tape off both soundholes. Try it.
Isabel Mandolins
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arche...50923841658006
If you taped part of the sound hole it would change the sound. If the change is better is a matter of opinion, some would like it some wouldn't. Same with baffles.
I happen to find this website showing some nice photos of Virzi Tone Producer. It states if the Virzi Tone Producer is oval it was intended for a mandolin and a more tear dropped shape piece would have been intended for a guitar.
The other thing I find interesting is that a real Virzi Tone Producer used by Gibson will have two stamps stating, 'Virzi Tone Producer U.S. and Foreign Pats'.
http://www.gibson-prewar.com/virzi-t...er-lloyd-loar/
2023 A. Lawrence Smart A5
2022 Girouard Griffith Tribute A5
2021 Ellis F5 Special
2021 Girouard Concert Master F Oval-hole
2020 Heiden Artist Plus A5
1992 Givens A6
1919 Martin Style C
The Virzi device continues to be a topic of great interest and endless discussion and speculation. The 1920 patent has been mentioned before but I post it here for convenience.
The remarkable thing is that tone improvement or modification is not included in the patent claims, even an increase is volume caused by the additional sounding board is not claimed. Are there any patent lawyers among us?
Mark Lynch
What patents claim and what the manufacturer advertises are often different. Obviously they had a no-nonsense patent application and they are patenting the design. Look at how the Orville Gibson patent started:
He went on to basically do what Virzi did and described a method of construction.Heretofore mandolins and like instruments have been constructed of too many separate parts bent or carved and glued or veneered and provided with internal braces, bridges, and splices to that extent that they have not possessed that degree of sensitive resonance and vibratory action necessary to produce the power and quality of tone and melody found in the use of the instrument below described.
The object of this invention is to correct these objections and attain the results above set forth, and I have attained that degree of success with continued experiments and manufacture that every portion of the woody structure seems to be alive with emphatic sound at every touch of the instrument-a character and quality of sound entirely new to this class of musical instruments, and which cannot be impart-ed to others by a description in words.
"It's comparable to playing a cheese slicer."
--M. Stillion
"Bargain instruments are no bargains if you can't play them"
--J. Garber
Not a lawyer, but have been involved with these arcane documents. A patent, then and now, is only a potential basis for a lawsuit, and the only thing you need to demonstrate is originality, or novelty. Then, as now, it’s impossible to measure something like sound quality, so that’s useless in court.
That said, amateur inventors can’t resist saying why their immensely valuable idea is better than ‘prior art’. The Patent Office researches similar patents to see if yours is novel enough, and may ask you to delete any areas where yours overlaps prior ones. Once you get into areas that are very technical, like drugs, for example, things get very complex and difficult for the USPTO.
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