Official Luthiers Forum!

...I agree with all of the positive assessments of these great books found above...I am fortunate to live in Australia so they were cheaper for postage but the AU dollar is about 81 US cents at the moment ...this time last year it was above parity so now is definitely the time to buy them... and remember it is not money spent it is invested!

Not sure why some folks get up tight about the math in the Gore design book. The vast majority is there just as verification of theory. One does not have to work through the math to grasp the vast bulk of the important points. Someone who is totally math illiterate can still get what is needed in the book. Am just pointing this out so that no-one will get scared of and miss out adding to their building knowledge.......!!!
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

My wife promised to buy me the books for Christmas.
On Christmas morning I couldn't wait to get tucked into the long-awaited-for books.
Turns out she bought Somogyi's books by mistake!
Bummer!
Have to wait again until we send the books back to US and get a refund.

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We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at guitars.

Somogyi -1, G/G +10 an excellent refrence book whether u build falcate or conventional style. Don/t tell Trev the shed , but IMHO they are worth close to $300 minus the shipping . Trev made them reasonable so that many of us could have access to this great information. Thanks Trev u da man!,I have a huge library of gtr/vln/instrument making books, this one is the most complete, easy to read except for the occassional translations from OZ english to amercan english, and has the most info!

Not sure why some folks get up tight about the math in the Gore design book. The vast majority is there just as verification of theory. One does not have to work through the math to grasp the vast bulk of the important points. Someone who is totally math illiterate can still get what is needed in the book. Am just pointing this out so that no-one will get scared of and miss out adding to their building knowledge.......!!!
Tom

Exactly. The points contained in the books, provable by math, are concepts that any mere mortal can grasp without needing to prove for themselves. The chapter summaries of concepts changed my everything. Mind you, I was at the right place to be asking the right questions at the right time when they came out, so ymmv, but...get them.

I just received my copies after a surprisingly fast shipping time to Canada.

All I can say is "WOW!!!"

I'm sorry I even hesitated to order these. As many others have said, these two books are an absolute bargain!

The quality and depth of information is just excellent. I will be incorporating as much of this vast knowledge as I possibly can into my design and building processes.

The balance between having the engineering and math equations clearly explained and available, yet also presented with practical methods for implementing the ideas without requiring the math if the reader is not comfortable with it, is a testament to the intelligence and teaching skills of the writers.


Trevor Gore and Gerard Gillet, thank you for creating these precious books!

There is a number of things I would have liked to see in the book. But then it would be a three book set rather than two.

Not enough math for you?

OK, I'll bite! What would you like to see if there ever was a Volume 3? Anyone?

When we decided to write the book, it was intended initially as just one volume, but it very soon outgrew that idea. There was also a lot of stuff we considered peripheral to the core intent that we didn't include because we thought two volumes and 4kgs was as much as people could cope with from the physical size and cost point of view. But for those who would like more, please tell us what! Those subjects may well be suitable for an article or paper somewhere.

To those that have posted above, thanks for all the kind comments!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I would love to see a beter/electronic/html kind of index (maybe on a CD). Type a/some words and see all the relevant parts in the books.

Last night I searched for your prefered neck thickness. I found it, but it took some time (for example).

Maybe a (small) volume with more examples how to combine the building process with the science measuring and what to do when "things don't add up" (frequency wise).

How to build a elavated fingerboard with your neck construction.

No complaints what whatsoever on the books, just thinking "out loud".




Best regards,



Edzard

I'd love to know how much its reasonable to think we can pull this or that quality out of the guitar, and how to do it.

Overtones for example. Or, conversely, dryness from a lack of them. Can I make a guitar with a huge monopole response and a distinct dryness? Just various hypotheticals like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Archtops, dovetail neck, wood selection for stability, examples of cracks and why they formed. How to try and limit cracking by the design. I see people buying/selling wood that I would hesitate to use due to humidity fluctuations. More on rosettes, building tiles. Vintage instruments, their construction, the good and bad. Basically years of experience rolled into a book.

Bump.

Anything else, anyone?

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I will add my support for a comprehensive index......!!!
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I would have liked to have seen proofs with real measurements. I'm still not sure I'm measuring specific mobility correctly!

a digital edition, or maybe a cd with the books.

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Under Compensated Nut!

A falcate classical. Although I did use the information in the book to make a great sounding falcate classical. With information from that build I can use the information and models from the book to hit the targets in the range the Book suggests on my next one.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Someone at MIMF is selling them for half price.

http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php ... 759#p36032

Go in his spreadsheet on google docs and look in the books tab.

He posted in the Classifieds a while back, as well.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

He isn't selling unless you purchase a minimum of $500, and he's pretty firm about it (I tried to buy these as a second set).

The books are great and I have no complaints.

Trevor, you have been VERY KIND to answer my PM'd questions. Looking back at my questions, I've noted the following below for your convenience per your request above. These are small issues.

There is not much on bridge pins. I understand that you use plastic slotted bridge pins, but this is not discussed in the book. I understand that you have some charts on bridge pins' impact but that they did not make it into the book.

The discussion on "cooking tops" could be slightly expanded to include your logic on why you pass on using them when the stiffness is increased and the density is decreased. The decreased strength and its potential effect on classical guitars is not obvious to all. Also, given that untreated (uncooked) top wood can already be pushed into the raucous range, an expanded discussion on this "raucous range" as it relates to bracing and top wood selection would be helpful. How would you change (reduce) the bracing to push closer or into the raucous range? (I understand that, ideally, the bracing is a "fixed" parameter so that plate thickness becomes the variable to change/adjust together with mass side loading. But how does changing the falcate bracing affect the final results?)

I would not issue a pdf version of the books due to thief concerns. But an electronic index mentioned above by others is a great idea. I often find myself trying to remember where I read such and such and struggling to find it. Since a number of important topics are discussed in multiple places I find myself writing down cross references in the book itself and in the index.

There is good discussion about the effect of a guitars footprint shape on the sound frequency through various sections. But I do not recall a discussion of the effect of the interior volume of the guitar (i.e. how does various depths affect the various footprint shapes? I understand from other communication that the effect of depth is nil. )

I can always come up with more questions! When I read the Bible its a whole lot worse!

Ed

Agree about not doing an electronic version. Speaking of bracing, you could look at bracing of the top from two extremes, thick top and minimal bracing or thin top and the bracing carries the majority of the load with the top acting as a diaphragm. I know the books do go into it a bit, just wondering if there is more to add on trading off one for the other? Or how about a list of articles or resources for us to look up ourselves?