On Monday 08 December 2003 22:32, Patrick H wrote:
> http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/12/08/stradivarius.secret.ap/index.htm
>l
>
> This is an interesting story about the wood that was used by Stradivari;
> the "Little Ice Age" that gripped Europe from the mid-1400s until the
> mid-1800s that slowed tree growth and yielded uncommonly dense Alpine
> spruce. What does this mean for us? Were soundboards like this used for
> lutes, and is it possible for us to replicate this kind of wood.
>
> Patrick
>
There are still areas where wood has grown very slowly. Bosnia had/has large
amounts of excellent wood, but south of Germany also still has the quality of
Stradivari wood. I go every year with my wife to the south of Germany to buy
wood for her violins (she's a violinmaker) and digging between huge piles of
wood in the specialized carpenters sheds you get a nose for what is nice and
what's not + everything in between. The price of small pieces reflects
clearly the quality. For lutes to top needs to be an excellent class of wood
if you want a top class instrument. It's I think of major importance for the
sound quality but less for a very strong sound as Arto says. A very strong
sound is mostly based on how the lutemaker tunes all the different pieces
inside: thickness of the top, location of bars inside etc.
For a violin I know that tuning exists literally (at least my wife is doing it
like that) of a loop: throwing a fine material on the instrument blades and
connecting a frequency synthesizer to it and looking at the patterns,
removing slight pieces of the wood and test again. With lutes is surely
different.
Taco
