2024
AL#152 p.58
John Huffman
▪ If you are a guitar maker, Ill bet you know the thrill of adapting some cheap gizmo into a specialized tool for the lutherie trade. Huffman quickly jury-rigs an inexpensive fish scale into a useful jig for measuring individual string tension.
2024
AL#151 p.58
Mark French
▪ Its amazing what you can do with a smart phone these days. Think you would need an anvil, a block-and-tackle, and a bathrom scale to measure the breaking strength of a guitar string? Nope. Theres an app for that. Mentions Fine Chromatic Tuner.
2023
AL#150 p.14
Sjaak Elmendorp
▪ When you tighten the strings on an archtop guitar, the neck lifts forward and the action height increases. At the same time, the bridge pushes the top down and the action height decreases. Its a win-win! So you can just feel lucky about it and proceed naively along your life path, or you can do what Elmendorp did: get a bucket of water, a piece of wire, and a dial indicator; collect some data; then crunch the numbers.
2023
AL#150 p.38
Mark French Devon Pessler Alyssa Fernandez
▪ Ya talk about rabbit holes. Research into guitar intonation just gets deeper and deeper. This article homes in on individual string compensation at the nut, plus small adjustments to the position of the 1st and 2nd frets. Industrial strength data collection. Heed the eggheads.
2022
AL#147 p.28
James Buckland
▪ Baroque guitars were 5-course instruments. That is, they had ten strings in five pairs. Then suddenly here comes the 19th century and guitars had six single strings. Yadda yadda, now its today and everything is normal. The real story is a lot more interesting than that and it actually involves a missing link; the 5-string guitar. Luthier, guitarist, and scholar Buckland lays it all out for us.
2022
AL#145 p.42
Sjaak Elmendorp
▪ Here’s the story of a big guy and his little balalaika. After rashly promising a friend that he would make a balalaika although he knew nothing about the distinctively triangular Russian instrument. We’ve all been there, right? Sjaak went on to explore and build the rare descant member of the family. Mentions balalaika player Jan Van der Hoogt.
2019
AL#138 p.69
Fan Tao
▪ Can you avoid excessive string tension in a long-scale harp guitar?
2019
AL#138 p.70
James Condino
▪ Can you avoid excessive string tension in a long-scale harp guitar?
2019
AL#138 p.70
Gregg Miner
▪ Can you avoid excessive string tension in a long-scale harp guitar?
2019
AL#137 p.32
Gregg Miner
▪ Ready for an Americana-infused, vintage-lutherie, history-detective-style nerdfest? Yes, that old joker Orville Gibson is still full of surprises, even now, a century after his death. We have a lot to learn about string material, tension, intention, and nomenclature. Not to mention marketing and musical snobbery.
2019
AL#136 p.69
Walter Carter
▪ What’s the deal with deep V-shaped necks on old guitars?
2019
AL#136 p.69
James Buckland
▪ What’s the deal with deep V-shaped necks on old guitars?
2018
AL#134 p.69
Fan Tao
▪ How do I adjust string gauge to keep playing feel constant when changing scale length?
2018
AL#133 p.70
Andy Powers
▪ Thoughts about short-scale guitars.
2017
AL#132 p.30
Graham McDonald
▪ Mandolins have come in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and styles in over 350 years of history. And while you are not likely to stumble upon the kind of mandolin that Vivaldi wrote for, you may find yourself looking at a century-old American factory-made cutie like this Smurf-head Regal, resplendent in muliple pearloids. This article gives you a quick introduction to the rich diversity in the great Family of Man(dolin).
2009
AL#100 p.48 read this article
Mark French
▪ Guitar strings need to be the “wrong” length in order to sound “right.” The gloriously simple math of Pythagoras doesn’t accomplish this. French uses lasers and spreadsheets, more numbers, and Greek letters to attempt to get closer.
2005
AL#83 p.52 BRB7 p.532 read this article
C.F. Casey
▪ The reviewer notes that this book is more about harp construction theory than about actual construction techniques, but decides that that is where the emphasis should be. He notes that the section of string length vs. string tension is especially useful, and that the book as a whole should have an important place on any harp makers’ reference shelf.
2003
AL#74 p.30 BRB7 p.56
Franz Elferink
▪ A variety of forces begun by simple string tension not only make our instruments function but may eventually tear them apart. With a little math we can determine what those forces are and sort of decide if our archtops are beefy enough to withstand them. With 3 drawings.
2003
AL#73 p.36 BRB7 p.14
Jon Sevy
▪ This piece is aptly subtitled “Rules of thumb for approximating changes in the size of braces, tops, and strings,” which sums it up nicely. Our teachers promised us that math wouldn’t be irrelevant in our futures, and here their words come back to bite us. Sevy obviously believed them, and here presents some “easy” formulas for calculating the results of changes in size we might make in our instruments.
1998
AL#56 p.64 BRB5 p.309
Jeffrey-R. Elliott
▪ The variables that influence the ‘feel’ or playability of instruments with the same scale length, string gauge, and setup.
1997
AL#51 p.6 BRB5 p.86
Ralph Novak
▪ Scale length is seldom used as a design criterion to achieve a given tone, but Novak shows that a given set of strings behaves differently according to the scale length it is stretched over. There are reasons to change other than player comfort. Impress your friends with your knowledge of the evil clang tone. With 6 graphs and 2 photos.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.
1995
AL#42 p.62 BRB4 p.492
Filippo Avignonesi
▪ An unproduced design for a string tension simulation jig.
1995
AL#41 p.29 BRB4 p.137
Debbie Suran Nicholas-Von Robison
▪ Suran’s design allows for the least amount of tension over the side bridges, which contributes to instrument stability. A full-scale instrument plan. See the GAL website for a low-rez preview.
1993
AL#34 p.24 BRB3 p.334 ALA6 p.30
Jonathon Peterson
▪ In AL#29 Peterson looked back at the harp guitar. This time he takes a forward look. A number of luthiers find fascination and a new potential in the big beast, and this is the best look at their results to date. With 28 photos and 8 detailed drawings. Also available is GAL full-scale Plan #34, the Klein solidbody electric harp guitar.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.
1987
AL#9 p.3 read this article
Ernest Nussbaum
▪ Nussbaum offers corrections to the “Fiddle Facts” article found in AL#8.
1986
AL#5 p.7
Michael Knutson
▪ Knutson makes a correction to his earlier letter about wire strength and string tension printed in AL#4 (which was a response to an article in AL#2).
1985
AL#4 p.3
Michael Knutson
▪ Knutson suggests changes to a string tension formula previously published in AL#2.
1985
AL#2 p.42 BRB1 p.78
Graham McDonald
▪ McDonald gives formulae and graphs to determine appropriate steel string gauges for nonstandard scale lengths.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.
1980
DS#144 LW p.106 read this article
Max Krimmel
▪ To use this article you’ll need a gram scale, a Hz frequency chart, and a calculator. You can figure for yourself what some of the string makers won’t tell you.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.
1975
DS#17 BRB2 p.105
Joseph Valentich
▪ The scale of instrument and string tension, string materials and string winding, core wire and wrapping wire size, and acoustic and electric strings for application to ethnic fretted instruments.