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Thread: What effects sound?

  1. #1
    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default What effects sound?

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    I built the two mandola in this picture about a year apart. The one on the left a year ago, the one on the right just finished. The have the same scale length and the same string gauges. But that is where the similarities end. Throne on the left is walnut with a butternut top. It is X braced teardrop shaped. The one on the right is sycamore with a spruce top and Selmer style ladder braced. I expected a big difference in the sound. They sound very similar. My wife and a friend both feel the teardrop one is just a little brighter and the guitar shaped one is just a tiny bit more bassy. But overall more alike than I expected.
    Dave Schneider

  2. #2

    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Such a simple question! Even two questions: what effects the production of sound, and what effects perception of sound.


    I was beaten over the head in school about the necessity of measurement. If you can’t quantify something, you really have nothing to say about it. In engineering, sonic or otherwise, when you’re in a multi-parameter space with no yardstick, you can’t design the output/performance.
    So, all a luthier has got is opinion about how prior designs worked, as perceived by human ears. Some evolved design rules based on, mostly dimensions and materials, but that’s all. And you build according to very loose rules, but can’t measure the parametrics, or at least most of them.
    The result seems to be that acceptable musical instruments can be made this way, based always on subjective hearing. Good enough.

  3. #3
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    I don’t know about butternut as a top wood. I think I have only heard f it being used for Appalachian dulcimers. I just looked it up and while it is considered to be hardwood it is also on the softer end of that category. I would guess that the wood combinations might be similar in density which would account for the similar tones of the instruments in combination with the other variations. Interesting question nonetheless.
    Jim

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    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    I have used butternut on many instruments. Yes to dulcimers, but also a guitar, tenor guitar, mandolin and now mandola. I think of it as being a little like mahogany.

    Having been a machinist and CAD designer I have worked closely with engineers. One in particular that spent most of time designing test equipment. He probably would have found a was to quantify the sound of a musical instrument. But I have only my ears to guide me.
    Dave Schneider

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Quote Originally Posted by PT66 View Post
    ...He probably would have found a was to quantify the sound of a musical instrument...
    Some measurements are possible and some have been made, and the results published. Still, we are working with materials that, for the most part, are not engineered and are thus variable (wood). We can measure stiffness, density, internal damping and a few other variables, we can choose materials for certain characteristics but we cannot precisely control what sound we get.
    There are so many things that affect instrument sound that it becomes difficult to understand them all, or perhaps it is not possible to understand them all. We simply don't know yet.
    In my opinion, the best thing we can do is study published literature and try to learn what has little effect on sound or no effect on sound so that we can spend our time pondering what actually might make a difference. In other words, learning what not to do is a short cut to learning what to do.

    You have demonstrated that X-bracing and ladder bracing can sound very similar. That is backed up by research indicating that overall stiffness and mas are much more important than how said stiffness and mass are achieved. In other words bracing patterns are of less importance than overall stiffness... or, "it's how stiff you make it, not how you make it stiff.". It's a good lesson. Now we know that we can choose a bracing pattern with structure in mind and the sound will be very similar to other bracing patterns. This discussion can (and likely will) go on for a long time.

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    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    "it's how stiff you make it, not how you make it stiff." Because I was the person that shaped the bracing (by tapping and listening) I may have reached a similar stiffness on both tops, therefore a similar sound?
    Dave Schneider

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Quote Originally Posted by PT66 View Post
    "it's how stiff you make it, not how you make it stiff." Because I was the person that shaped the bracing (by tapping and listening) I may have reached a similar stiffness on both tops, therefore a similar sound?
    Maybe. It could have to do with similar size or... who knows? I suspect that your two tops are at least somewhat similar in stiffness and mass, but if you did not weigh them and record stiffness somehow you may never know. Drawing conclusions from anecdotes (two mandolins is too small of a sample size to draw reliable conclusions, especially without measurements, so we must call this an anecdote) is 'dangerous'.

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    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    I guess I will continue to live dangerously. I am 75 years. I have been building for 60 years, mostly as a hobby. At this point about 2 instruments a year. The sample size is not likely to increase. I enjoy ready the comments of people that do this for a living. The summer of 1966 I spent 3 months working at C F Martin before I got my draft notice. That’s the closest I ever got to making my living in instrument building.
    Dave Schneider

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    That's a lot of experience to draw upon! I've only been doing this professionally for 35 years. Doubt I'll make 60...

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    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    I built my first dulcimer when I was a freshman in high school in 1963. I think I have improved.
    Dave Schneider

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    "it's how stiff you make it, not how you make it stiff."
    Mostly true but I think that statement is an over simplification. Making a mandolin top stiffer usually involves making the top thicker, or increasing the height of braces. That adds mass which will affect sound, especially volume. You need to consider how efficiently you add the stiffness - i.e. for efficiency to be high you add stiffness with the minimum amount of added mass. There are various way of doing that, e.g. by taking advantage of the cube rule and add height to the bracing, or using a more efficient bracing pattern, or using carbon fiber, or any combination of those. What I am saying is that bracing patterns do matter because some are more efficient than others. The most efficient is lattice bracing with carbon fiber tow, and even if the stiffness is the same, it sure as hell does affect sound because the top will be about 50% lighter. Not just volume will increase, but less mass also will also tip the balance towards higher frequencies unless you make other changes to compensate for that.

    What affects sound? Many things. A musical instrument is a very complex non linear system. It takes more than a lifetime to work out how to make them sound "perfect", whatever that is.
    Peter Coombe - mandolins, mandolas and guitars
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  13. #12
    Registered User PT66's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    What is perfect? I’m sure that all the bluegrass people will say a flat top instrument can never have the “perfect” tone.
    Dave Schneider

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    My point, apparently not too well stated, was that; for a given plate mass and overall stiffness, brace placement has less effect on sound than we tend to anticipate.

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    I too will grab my popcorn for this thread. When I first read the title "what effects sound" I thought it was about a reverb effect on a recording, or program patch in a digital reverb.

    I won't even attempt to offer suggestions on the subject of what affects sound.
    Last edited by sliebers; May-19-2023 at 9:54am.

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Quote Originally Posted by sliebers View Post
    I too will grab my popcorn for this thread. When I first read the title "what effects sound" I thought it was about a reverb effect on a recording, or program patch in a digital reverb.

    I won't even attempt to offer suggestions on the subject of what affects sound.
    However, you just entered the debate about when to use ‘effects’ and ‘affects’ in a sentence. I’m thinking both have validity in this context.

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Quote Originally Posted by Richard500 View Post
    However, you just entered the debate about when to use ‘effects’ and ‘affects’ in a sentence. I’m thinking both have validity in this context.
    True. However, "affects" is the verb and "effects" is the noun. Easy to get mixed up. Being a recording engineer, I see "effects" in terms of a reverb or delay anywhere I read it. The English language is fun.

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Apparently I used the wrong word. I didn’t take time to look it up. English was never my strong subject in school.
    Dave Schneider

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Quote Originally Posted by PT66 View Post
    Apparently I used the wrong word. I didn’t take time to look it up. English was never my strong subject in school.
    Nothing directed at you Dave. I apologize if it was taken as such. The topic of the post was misleading to me on first glance at the title. It's a worthwhile question to ask, but certainly not one that can really be answered. Everyone will have their opinion on the matter (some more than others) I opted to chime in on something else that is now in debate. Quite likely, whatever I posted on the subject would be debated or dismissed. We all have to find our personal measure of sound and how to achieve it through experience.

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    I have read so much over the many years I have been building instruments about how different species of wood affects the sound of the instrument that I was surprised by how little difference there was between these two mandolas. Also so much discussion about how bracing affects sound. I will admit that they do sound different but the difference is minimal. Maybe these factors have more bearing on carved top instruments than flat top ones. These two instruments have plenty of volume and sustain. None of my instruments are flawless. I consider myself an amateur even after many years of building.
    Dave Schneider

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    Registered User John Kelly's Avatar
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Quote Originally Posted by sliebers View Post
    True. However, "affects" is the verb and "effects" is the noun. Easy to get mixed up. Being a recording engineer, I see "effects" in terms of a reverb or delay anywhere I read it. The English language is fun.
    Affects is indeed a verb but so too is effects as well as being a noun. It is used in the sense of carrying something out, as in "The rescue team effected the evacuation of the casualty from the mountain". As a teacher of English (in Scotland) for 35 years I certainly agree that languages are fun.
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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Regarding Richard500's post above, there is one simple and objective measurement that can be made that in some way may point to a reason, surely not the only one, that one instrument sounds different than a similar instrument. This measurement is the increase in frequency of say the A strings when one or both of the E strings is well loosed. Perhaps we have all observed this when a string on a well tuned instrument breaks and the other strings go sharp Obviously this is not limited to A and E strings. Perhaps with experiment we might find that loosening both A strings and seeing how the E strings behave might be the most sensitive??
    -Newtonamic

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    To me any increase in frequency do to the lose of tension sounds more like an issue of neck stiffness. I can’t see how that would be the result of the use of different wood in the body or different bracing.
    Dave Schneider

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    Just to set the record straight, I am not claiming this measurement is useful, I'm only saying that it may be with a large enough sample size. And importantly, the results are independent of ones personal preferences. My guess is that results depend on the stiffness of the entire instrument, not just the neck.
    -Newtonamic

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    Default Re: What effects sound?

    The biggest problem with the thread title is that it is SO broad. There's numerous subjective components to it. Also numerous components of the "sound" of an instrument. Is one primarily concerned with (acoustic) volume? Or responsiveness? .....Or bass/treble balance? Similar to bass/treble balance is harmonic content, which can be measured, sorta.

    Since the thread has evolved toward a discussion of bracing patterns, that gives a little more specific focus. A paper published in the mid-1960s found that the exact position of braces in classical guitars did not make a sonic difference that could be discerned by experienced listeners and/or players. But there is something that bracing patterns have control over. I gave an answer to a questioner in American Lutherie about this some time ago. It has to do with the effect of bracing patterns on overall stiffness of your plate. If you measure the Elastic moduli of wood samples from samples of your plate woods and plot those moduli vs their densities, you get a roughly linear plot, (albeit with a lot of scatter). If you measure the perpendicular (i.e., cross-grain) Elastic moduli for those same samples and do the same plots vs density, the results will be all over the place. Iow, some wood samples have higher cross-grain stiffness, while others have lower gross-grain stiffness. Now, the overall flexural stiffness of your plate is proportional to the square root of the product of the longitudinal and perpendicular moduli (per Caldersmith, ~1974). So, do you just throw out those pieces with lower perpendicular moduli? Seems a waste, especially when there is something you can do about it. If you splay out your bracing pattern, you can increase the cross-grain stiffness of the plate without significantly increasing the mass.. So a plate with particularly low cross-grain stiffness can be stiffened across the grain by using ladder bracing or maybe a splayed-out X-brace, while another plate with higher cross-grain stiffness may benefit from a fan bracing pattern or parallel bars, ("tone bars"). This is not going to help you much with controlling "sound" (except maybe indirectly, but it will give you some guidance for how to brace your plates. In other words, choose your bracing based on the wood properties, rather than for some sound correlations that may or may not really exist.

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