Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi, I'm a newbie builder and I found this great site a few days ago. I've read a bit about tap tuning but the goal is still unclear to me. My brother and I have worked out how to tap with a tuner with a bit of consistency (it's still not like every tap reads the same on the tuner). We've clamped tops and backs into an open plywood jig to kind of simulate being glued to the sides. Then we're taping around the center of the top/back and getting pretty consistant readings from the tuner. We've done this with about a half dozen tops and back. Obviously each is a different pitch. We're not sure how to proceed at this point.


Do you try to get your plates to a specific pitch or frequency?
Do you guys try to get back and top plates working together at certain pitches?
Does pitch matter at all?
Do you guys tap tune?
Say if we thought we needed to raise the pitch of an archtop back should we add a brace somewhere to raise the pitch the tuner reads?

Really any advice you might offer would be welcome. Thanks much.

Hi New Guy builder,

Do a search on the site, this is a deep and complex issue. You either jump into it full bore or don't bother... build the guitar, play the guitar, THEN on your 2nd or 3rd unit, study the tapping science. It's not my recomendation for a new builder to even dable with. Make your plates .120 to .150, sides .090 and concentrate on the building. It will sound good when your done. My .02, but there's to much else to learn and worry about on your first build.

Dave

_________________
God, Family, Carreer

NO

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

I tap & listen.
With the small body guitars I make ;I need to listen to the woods
as they are thicknessed ,braced & assembled.
Especially the body after assembly.

I can't imagine making guitars without my ears & senses.

Mike

_________________
Mike Collins

Hello "Sin Saint" (perhaps you'd tell us your actual name?), and welcome to the forum. A lot of luthiers here do tuning of one sort or another. You started off with a pretty much open ended question - should get lots of discussion on this one!! Don't forget to do a search in the archives - this is a fairly popular topic about which lots has been written before.

When I started out, I investigated tap tuning as thoroughly as I could. I bought books/videos, scoured the 'net for information, bought myself a Peterson strobe tuner (490), mics, compressor, filters, etc. and tried to replicate what I saw others doing. However, try as I might, I could NOT get any particular tonebar to resonate enough on its own to get a good reading on it. I gave up.

Six months later, I went to the GAL convention and sat through one of Roger Siminoff's lectures. I asked him what I was doing wrong. His answer was simple - one little change to my measurement technique was all that was needed to get the results I should have been seeing all along. The simple little thing, that everyone (including Roger in his books) had left out, was that you need to damp the other braces/parts using strips of blue painters masking tape laid along their length. Easy! Since then, I've been able to measure pretty much anything I want.

I'm still new to it all, but I'm a believer in slightly detuning the braces from actual A440 scale notes, and spreading the resonances out over as broad a bandwidth as possible. The overall effect is an instrument that has a good broadband response with no particular note/s being louder than any others. I'm still working on refining my bracing and other guitar design elements - basically, still searching for "my sound". You will find that everything is coupled and inter-dependant. There's no single solution for the best sounding guitar (which is an entirely subjective quantity in itself). Experimentation like you've been doing is the way forward. Keep it up. Report what you find. Have fun!


Cheers,
Dave F.

_________________
Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

He has..

this is a highly debated and controversial topic, if i can make a suggestion, other than what has already been said, try glueing the brace on with a glue that can be removed ,if you dont get the results you wanted you can remove it. I am curious myself if adding the brace would raise the pitch of the plate . Jody

I like to bap on everything, not to gather specific information but just to become more familiar with the materials i am using, and because it is fun and seems "old world".

A tip, don't bother using a tuner, tap on whatever it is you are tapping on until you can discern the main pitch and hum it, then continue humming that pitch while finding the note on a strung up guitar(or hum it into the tuner i guess). With a little bit of practice it will be faster, and more importantly more accurate than a tuner, which will tend to give you lots of false readings from such short and indistinct tones.

_________________
Jordan Aceto
Ithaca, NY

Doh! You're right....it's "Michael"......Hi Michael!!

DF

_________________
Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Thanks for the replys everybody. This isn't actually my first build but almost. My brother built 4 archtops last year and I helped him just a bit. We've been partners in the cabinet business for 20 years so we do lots of projects like this in the shop together. We didn't really try to tap tune any of those so we thought we'd try it on our current projects. We started two dreads and three archtops a few weeks ago. I'll try dampening the other braces thing and take some notes. I'm thinking only hands on experience is going to teach us what we need to know. Most info on the subject is so ambiguous the more I read the less I know haha.

I ordered the chladni dvd a few days ago. That looks really interesting.


Thanks,
Mike

I think it would be worthwhile to define terms....

If you are "Tap Tuning" like Roger Siminoff -- where he strives to physically tune each component to specific notes with a special hammer and a tuner... No. The reading I have done on the subject indicates that it is quite a bit harder to get it to work right than the book makes it seem.... because you are checking each individual bracing component for a specific note after it is glued to the top.

If you are asking whether I bonk and flex and listen to try to decide whether the system is about the right compliance -- in other words... Not too stiff and dead.... Yes.

There is a HUGE difference between the two... and unfortunately both get lumped into "Tap Tuning." Most folks seem to say "Tap Tuning" when they are actually doing #2 -- bonking and flexing.

As you might imagine... This causes endless trouble.....

Good luck

John

Yup, thats exactly what I'm talking about. I read his book and we got a mic and tuner setup (it took some doing to get consistant readings). The book is a little vague basically listing types of acoustic instruments and what notes to strive for when tapping braces. So far when tapping, our braces arent near the listed pitches. So we're not sure how to proceed. So we're wondering if builders actually try to tune components to a pitch as his book suggests. Would you add a brace to an archtop back to raise its pitch? Or just tap it and if it rings out well don't screw it up? Maybe only time flexing, listening, tapping as we build more stuff is all we can do.


Mike

Nope.

I DO tap and listen for a musical bell like resonance, but the tune each part to a particular note thing doesn't make sense to me.

_________________
My soundclick xx luthier blog xx luthier soundclick

Most of the published info on tap tuning is a little vague. I have been exploring tap frequencies while building my last 2 guitars using Peterson turbosoft II on my laptop. It is an interesting thing to do but I basically thin the top and carve wood off the braces to get thew sound that I like, but it is cool to see the frequency changes as the guitar comes together. I record the frequency in Hertz as it makes it easier to record the changes. The nice thing with the sotware version 2 is it can easily pick up the taps

Fred

_________________
Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

I don't bother with it honestly. I have read some texts on it by Roger Siminoff and some other guys who support it, and I have read some texts by guys like William Cumpiano who don't favor it. I can't see how taking the effort to "tune" each part of the guitar like that can make that big of an impact on the overall sound of it. I mean, with all the other variables to consider (wood species, finish material, body shape and size, even adhesive type), tap tuning is just one piece to an enormous puzzle. In my opinion (I'm 17 and on my eighth guitar... I'm nowhere close to being an expert on the matter, simply opinionated) you either build good-sounding guitars, or not-so-good-sounding guitars. Basically I'm saying that I would worry with other elements of construction (bridge design, bracing specifics) rather than fuss with tap-tuning.

Again, I'm just a kid, and in 10 years, I may be all about tap tuning.

_________________
Jake

~Make a joyful noise unto the Lord~

Good words Jake! Very well said.

Dave

_________________
God, Family, Carreer

If you're talking about tapping and tuning various parts to a specific frequency, then no I don't do that. I do tap plates through various stages to listen for responsiveness, sustain, complexity, etc. I also look at the main resonance frequencies of the free plates and assembled bodies using glitter patterns to study and adjust the relationships between them. Here I am looking at various resonance modes (monopole, cross dipole, long dipole, etc). There is a bit of usable information regarding these modes and how they influence the sound of the finished guitar. Thanks Al. This is a bit different than trying to obtain specific frequencies for individual braces, etc. and then correlating this to the final sound of the guitar. To me this sounds a little bit like voodoo.

_________________
Randy Muth
RS Muth Guitars Website
RS Muth Guitars Blog
Facebook Fan Page

I tap the top and back once they are finished (i.e.: braced) just to make sure they resonate well. Otherwise would mean a crack somewhere or a misglued brace.

_________________
Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

i was never able to get differing readings from each brace as Roger suggests,not saying it cant be done, I just was not able to do it,seems no matter where I tap the top, all I can get is a reading of the top mode if anyone is getting specific readings , I wish they would share how they are doing it . thanks Jody

Be a tap carver. Ya gotta listen to that wood though. Listen as your thinning the woods, listen when you glue braces on, listen while you carve wood off the braces, listen to it open up as you remove wood. After you start glueing things together, there is no other way to tell what your doing than banging on the thing and listening. Don't try to figure out anything like frequencies, just liste to what your getting when you bang it. Is it dead, is it lively, is it heavy, is it bassy, is it tinny? Does it respond quickly, does it decay quickly? There are all kinds of things to be learned by tapping, but your not really tuning, just listening and learning. Also listen when you glue on the plates and start sanding the top and back. Then listen again when youcut the binding and purfling channels. Listen again after you glue in the purfling and binding, I'll bet you'll be pleasantly surprized after the bindings are in. Things for some reason really start coming to life about then.
I just purfled and bound one today and it was an incredible difference after the bindings and purflings were in and everything was cleaned up.

_________________
Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Mike,

Try contacting Roger with your question. He is a stand up guy.

In his published book... Roger doesn't specify the frequency of the whole free plate -- he gives guidelines for individual braces.

In terms of getting the tapping/checking to cooperate.... there are myriad Olde Engineer Tricks to use...

One trick is to use itty bitty hammers to whack at higher resonance things with. The bigger the hammer, the more energy it puts into the system with each whack.... so if you want to get a frequency of something small and not activate the entire rest of the world... you gotta use an itty bitty hammer. One way to make them is with rubber erasers and bamboo shish kabob sticks. You can carve out little bitty custom hammers in whatever weight/size you want.

There is also a technique to whacking about things... you want the hammer to rebound back off cleanly... not double hit or hit and rest.

A small pendulum works... but can be hard to set up.

Another trick is to damp out parts of the system you aren't interested in.... like if you want to see what happens with a brace.... damp out some of the other braces with strips of blue painters tape or with blobs of poster putty.

Then, you may want to isolate things from the ever present HUM of the computer and other noisy things clunking about (Like the dog and kids...)

Good luck

John