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Thread: Pecan as tone wood?

  1. #26
    Registered User belbein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    Nothing else to do?

  2. #27

    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    I'm from the UK, so pecan and hickory are exotic woods for me!

    But I've made quite a few ukuleles which traditionally have hardwood tops, and my experience (and the consensus of other builders) is that higher density woods make poor tops because they take more string energy to start vibrating, and therefore tend to sound thin and quiet.

    So if your dulcimer has a pecan top I might pause for thought, on the basis of the numbers you quote.

    FWIW walnut and cherry both make good uke tops, but they have to be pretty thin (especially cherry). There's a fine line between light enough to work well, and too thin to give a full sound, and cherry is near the edge of that line. I wouldn't want to use wood denser than the average cherry.

  3. #28

    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by ProfChris View Post
    But I've made quite a few ukuleles which traditionally have hardwood tops, and my experience (and the consensus of other builders) is that higher density woods make poor tops because they take more string energy to start vibrating, and therefore tend to sound thin and quiet.
    Mandolin strings are made out of steel, and you don't hear people complaining that because they're steel instead of nylon, they're deadening the tone. So I'd argue that there's more going on than simply "dense/rigid material = overly heavy/overly stiff structure".

  4. #29
    Registered User belbein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    This isn't my field, but intuitively it feels like a string and a drum head (which is all a top is) would generate sound differently.
    belbein

    The bad news is that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. The good news is that what kills us makes it no longer our problem

  5. #30

    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by belbein View Post
    This isn't my field, but intuitively it feels like a string and a drum head (which is all a top is) would generate sound differently.
    My point is that people think, "Steel = stiff, heavy, dead sounding", "hardwood - too stiff for tone!", etc.
    A structure is the result of the topology (shape) and material properties.

    You can make a spring out of glass. It works fine, pretty much exactly like a spring made from steel. And you can make a railroad bridge out of softwood.

    So my point is, "that wood/material is too strong and dense, and therefore not going to yield a less powerful instrument" isn't logical. If it's stronger and denser than what you're used to, use less wood.

  6. #31
    Registered User belbein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    There's an idea, Marty. A mandolin made out of glass. I'm sure there's a pun in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to make a wisecrack. (That was transparent, I know.)
    belbein

    The bad news is that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. The good news is that what kills us makes it no longer our problem

  7. #32

    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    I would love to collaborate with an artist to do some crazy stuff like that!

  8. #33
    harvester of clams Bill McCall's Avatar
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    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by belbein View Post
    There's an idea, Marty. A mandolin made out of glass. I'm sure there's a pun in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to make a wisecrack. (That was transparent, I know.)
    Read today’s history, patented over 100 years ago.
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  9. #34

    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by Marty Jacobson View Post
    My point is that people think, "Steel = stiff, heavy, dead sounding", "hardwood - too stiff for tone!", etc.
    A structure is the result of the topology (shape) and material properties.

    You can make a spring out of glass. It works fine, pretty much exactly like a spring made from steel. And you can make a railroad bridge out of softwood.

    So my point is, "that wood/material is too strong and dense, and therefore not going to yield a less powerful instrument" isn't logical. If it's stronger and denser than what you're used to, use less wood.
    "Use less wood" is fine, but only up to a point. If you go too thin the instrument starts to sound more like a banjo than a uke (or dulcimer) - this is from the collective experience of builders using hardwood tops. I believe, though I don't have the experimental data to prove it, that there is an optimum range of long-grain elasticity of the top. Too rigid in that direction and your instrument is quiet and dull. Too elastic and you lose a lot of the mid-range and get a banjo-like "plunk".

    Elasticity in this dimension doesn't track density in a linear relationship, which is why softwoods like spruce are the most commonly used for tops because their low density means they can be appropriately elastic along the grain and still reasonably thick. Some wood - ebony is an obvious example - can't be made light enough to be excited by the string energy without being so thin that the top is impossibly fragile. From the numbers, pecan sounds like it might be on the dense side, so that thinned enough to work it's too thin to produce the right kind of sound.

    I'm not saying a good dulcimer can't be made with a pecan top, but that I'd be concerned to buy one without hearing it, even from a known builder. Or at least, I'd want to hear from those who had played one that the builder had been able to achieve a good sound.

    But re-reading the original post, this dulcimer has pecan back and sides. I'm guessing something else for the top. Dense back and sides wouldn't worry me at all.

  10. #35
    Registered User belbein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    Quote Originally Posted by ProfChris View Post
    Dense back and sides wouldn't worry me at all.
    I don't know, someone a long, long time ago when I first wandered into the Cafe said that all of the wooden parts of an instrument resonate. That seems to me (again, not a physicist or a luthier and don't really know what I'm talking about) to not make sense ... or else to make sense in the way that the sides and back might vibrate but add a very minimal contribution to the sound. Where is Dr. Cohen when we need him? He could solve this in a jiff.

    Where is Dr. Cohen, by the way? Haven't seen him here since I've been back.
    belbein

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  11. #36
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    Default Re: Pecan as tone wood?

    FYI I had about 600 Board feet of aged , highly figured, instrument quality white oak stolen from me here in So Oregon about 2 months ago.

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