Official Luthiers Forum!

hello fellas.
i´ve seen that term used often refering to a wood characteristic. the dictionary definition does not clear my doubts.
what does it specificaly mean when we are talking about wood?
thanks!!

The short, and unsophisticated, answer is reduction of vibrations.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Conversion of kinetic energy into heat. Is that what you were asking?

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

so, a wood with a high damping would be one that absorbs energy more rapidly and therefore less efficient for acoustic purposes??
im just trying to understand how the therm applies to wood.

Pretty much.

But lutherie being what it is (meaning still somewhat of a fuzzy science), great guitars have been made with high damping wood. Sometime you may even want to use high damping wood. For my flamencos, I like the wood used for the back (and sides, consequently) to have high damping since I'm looking for low sustain.

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

Fellas, I think you might be making damping more difficult for him to understand. It is possible to clearly define and describe damping without introducing the role of heat.

Crash cymbal=low damping
Pillow=high damping
Metaphorically speaking of course.
Or in a more practical sense, in my opinion, in a manner of speaking, in general, ymmv, various disclaimers etc.,
A rosewood guitar (lower damping) will be ring-ier, chim-ier, reverb-ier, and things like that in comparison to the same guitar made of mahogany (higher damping), which would be warmer, softer, rounder, dryer etc. Or listen to a guitar with a mahogany top ( higher damping) vs. one with a spruce top (lower damping) and you will get the idea.
At least that is my perception anyhow.
All of the above words are in the OLF Scrabble Dictionary btw....

since no one said it yet....How bout pouring water on a guitar? Wouldn't that add damping?

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

Regular water or heavy water?

Now you've introduced the confusion between damping and dampening.

Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

understood.
thanks

i think this part is important to retain for the novice (like me). the damping amount is always frequency dependant. high frequency content tends to be more heavily absorbed by materials (be it wood or not) than low frequency/high wavelength content. easy to notice with , for example, echo : the reflected sound has always less high frequency content than the source sound, which is the same as to say it has been filtered.

cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

A practical way to experience damping is to tap the wood and see how long it vibrates. High damping = short sustain. Maple has much higher damping than rosewood, and it is pretty obvious when doing the tap test.

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John