triport mandolin?

[JeffD]

I just read the fascinating article on John Monteleone, and the side bar on the conception and execution of the side ports on many of his guitars. As I understand it, they are just sound holes in the side of the guitar, bass side, one on each bout. The idea was to allow the player to hear what the audience hears. (I presume one would have to tape the tune list somewhere else.)

In some guitars John built sliding panels, with which to partially or fully close the two ports on the side.


Has John, or anyone else, done anything like this for a mandolin? I don't know if it is even possible. It would be wonderful to hear the mandolin as the audience hears it.

[Mike Black]

It is a fascinating idea, it's something that I've been thinking about for awhile myself. I haven't seen them on a mandolin. But I'm planning on a side port on the upper bout of my next octave mandolin that I'm building.

[JeffD]

I'm planning on a side port on the upper bout of my next octave mandolin that I'm building.

Keep us informed!

[Michael Lewis]

I remember seeing a few pics here on the Cafe of a Monteleone mandolin in green burst with 2 side ports. Maybe some crafty and resourceful moderator could find it.

[Dave Cohen]

Dale Ludewig does it on some of his models. Before you get all excited about ports, though, you might want to check out the following article:

R.M. Mottola; "Blind Listening Evaluation of Classical Guitar Soundports", American Lutherie #96 (Winter, 2008), pp 54-57.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

[Graham McDonald]

I have just strung up an oval hole with a side port, and there is definately some sense of getting more of the sound in your face. There is a little pic attached and you can see the port is nothing like the area of the two holes in the side of the wonderful Monteleone instrument, but it does seem to do something. RM does seem to do his sacred cow shooting with a degree of scientific rigor I admire, and there have been blind listening tests before (especially with violins), that have outraged some entrenched beliefs.

Maybe it is just adding more soundhole area and shifting some resonances around. The Monteleone instrument has what would be thought of as a lot of soundhole and it would be interresting to know what that does to the air and soundboard resonances. Mr Cohen, sir?

cheers

graham

[man dough nollij]

I remember a thread here that showed a long scale five string (IIRC) that had a sound port with a little "pocket door" so you could close it off. Mike? Care to work your search magic?

[french guy]

Michael is it this one you're looking for ?

[Paul Hostetter]

[JeffD]

Wow. I would love to strap one of those on and just "see" how it "feels" to hear myself as others hear me.

[oldwave maker]

I built a sideport originally to let the tone lizards out, then realized it was also part of an overall design.....

[Susanne]

Wooo, that green mandolin looks awesome!!!!!!! Very interesting with the side sound hole. Do you notice a difference?? Doesn't some sound escape there so that less sound is heard to the others???

Great job!

[Rolfe]

I have used a sound port of some models for over a year now. It is a bass side port much smaller than the Monteleone. I tested the effect at the March Mandolin Festival last year in a very large room. I had a player alternate between a regular Neoclassical without port and a Europa II with port as I walked around the room. There was no loss in volume or projection due to the port. I also had two professional players check how the mandolin with the port sounded to them as they played, and they both heard a louder, clearer sound.

[JEStanek]

Dale Ludwig has a open/closing one on the Emory Lestor model. James Condino's Cricket also has them too. Brian Dean made an F model with a Bass side modified F hole and a similarly shaped side port hole as well. Those are the ones that came to mind first... I've never played one with a side port... I really want to try the Cheesehead mando though.

Jamie

[Dave Cohen]

For another, less sensory and more physical look at soundports, look at:

Carruth, A; "The "Corker" guitar: A Sideport Experiment", American Lutherie #94, Summer, 2008, pp 56-62.

Both RM's and Carruth's articles are based on a single multi-ported guitar with corks for plugging some or all of the ports. Carruth built the guitar and did the experiments described in his article. From RM's article:

"The results of this experiment indicate that the port-open and port-closed states are not perceivably different."

and from Carruth's article:

"The one undeniable benefit of a soundport in a location facing the player is as a "monitor", feeding the player a little more sound than she or he would normally get directly from the guitar, particularly at higher frequencies. This can be a benefit when one is playing in a well soundproofed room that is large and has a certain level of background noise (think "restaurant gig")".

Carruth found a number of air resonances up to 750 Hz or so that Rossing and others had overlooked. I think that they have to have pretty low amplitudes compared to the first ("Helmholtz") resonance, though. Not sure how much sound radiation they are responsible for. Also, some of them are a consequence of the shape of the guitar. I have only found three in mandolins up to 1.3 kHz or so, and the upper two are very low amplitude. Also, I don't see any spectral evidence that the upper air modes are responsible for very much sound radiation, or maybe for any sound radiation at all.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

[j. condino]

The Carleen Hutchins article on mode matching also has some good information on soundholes and how the numbers add up. I believe Al's article was pretty similar to hers in the basic testing models. His was with a guitar, hers a violin.

As much as I've read all of the scientific articles and seen all the numbers run in comparison of side ports vs no side ports, if I set two similar mandolins out for someone to try, the one with the ports gets 90% of the attention and that is generally the one that people gravitate to. I've built a couple dozen instruments using them since 1995. For customers who are repeat offenders, they generally always want the ports once they have them. The same is true for the guitar customers. I've also used them on a double bass and in that instance, they had almost no percievable effect on the voice or volume, such that I don't see the need to use them with the larger (largest?) instruments.

That said, I almost always use them with my personal instruments. When a customer is interested in a soundported mandolin and they have never played one, we can discuss it for days without anything tangible for them to decide with. I generally try to send out a ported instrument for them to try or they come by for a visit. That is the true test- playing it live and deciding for yourself. The Cricket is out on loan as we speak for this reason.

Curious new builders should recognize that if you just cut a hole in the side of a traditionally built mandolin, the instrument will likely develop several structural issues, including cracks and failures. The ports need to be part of the original design process and adjusted for in the new build.

Check back with me about Thanksgiving; I should have a batch of soundported mandocellos done by then....

j.
www.condino.com

[Paul Hostetter]

I've played the Monteleone and the Cricket and one of Allan Beardsell's gorgeous mandolins and I agree with Rolfe, the side ports don't diminish the output. It's more like getting a monitor speaker for the player for free. But these are all extraordinarily good instruments with or without a side port or three.

[j. condino]

Dave:

If you'd like to run the numbers on one of my ported mandolins, contact me off this site and we can work something out.

I was at a GAL show a number of years back and there was a fellow who had a dreanought guitar on display. He originally started off by enlarging the soundhole, similar to Tony Rice's Clarence modified guitar. The next thing you knew and he had systematically cut away almost every piece of the top except the braces. There was almost nothing to the top of the guitar, yet it still had a powerful voice and sound to it. It had us all confused...

j.
www.condino.com

[Dave Cohen]

James, are your referring to the "Swiss cheese violin (aka, "Le Gruyere") articles by Carleen? Iirc, there was more than one article on that one.

In both guitars and violins, the air resonance frequencies are shifted around by the nearby body modes. You have to immobilize the body of the instrument in order to get "true" Helmholtz (and other air resonance) frequencies. Beyond that, the violin differs from plucked stringed instruments b/c the soundpost changes the modes. Violins don't have the "trampoline" main mode characteristic of plucked stringed instruments, though they have a rocking motion that kinda substitutes for it.

The immobilization part would make it difficult to get true Helmholtz-type air resonance frequencies with the addition of a side soundport, though I could probably work around it if I gave it some thought. The next thing on my plate, though, has to be how the whole body + neck bending motions interact with and split the body modes. Been dealing with wide variations between mandolins for a while now because of that.

http://www.Cohenmando.com

[Sam Albright]

Hello, I'm new here, so Hi. Paul I was in your mando class at LarkCamp and I've been playing with a side port design this last year. I built a plug for it and always left it out. The instrument is just louder and more present with the port. Of course I couldn't leave it alone and put in a tube to try lowering the internal resonant frequency. That did work. Then I started cutting the port bigger and really messed things up. I think I went past the point of no return and the whole thing seemed out of tune with it self. I'm trying to salvage it now. I like the port idea though.

[Phil Goodson]

Didn't Mario Proulx make a mando with side port (with sliding door) and longer neck with built-in capo last year?

[man dough nollij]

Didn't Mario Proulx make a mando with side port (with sliding door) and longer neck with built-in capo last year?

Yeah, that's the one!

[JeffD]

"The one undeniable benefit of a soundport in a location facing the player is as a "monitor", feeding the player a little more sound than she or he would normally get directly

That is the benefit I am after.

[Jim Garber]

Just a side note... here is my 1901 DeMeglio with small side ports very common in this design. I know the modern version is different, but the concept is old.

[JEStanek]

That's a real beauty, Jim!

Jamie