Official Luthiers Forum!

This weeks TLB post is about the aesthetic aspect of soundhole placement.

http://www.theluthierblog.com/articles/ ... oundholes/

How do you balance the structural aspects with the aesthetic ones? What examples do you think balance the two well, which guitars fail to do so?

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nigel

http://www.theluthierblog.com

Soundholes have been moved around according to body length, scale length, number of frets, etc. Aesthetics I think historically have been a secondary consideration.

Very true Colin, but how do you balance the structural aspects with the aesthetic ones? What examples do you think balance the two well, which guitars fail to do so?

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nigel

http://www.theluthierblog.com

Twelve fret guitars.

Worse than a high soundhole is one that's placed too far away from the last fret. And worst of all is if the space between the last fret and soundhole is filled with a large expanse of unfretted fingerboard. Gets in the way of picking fingers, and has no positive aspect to make up for it.

For me, the aesthetic ideal is a soundhole that's centered precisely at the waist, 12 fret neck, 19 frets total, and soundhole edge between the last fret and imaginary next fret position (the exact location depending on the fingerboard termination style). But most of the time, that puts the waist up higher relative to the neck/bridge than people are used to, which affects playability unless you're standing with a strap. Though personally I think the fingerboard is up a little uncomfortably high with a standard classical guitar in classical position, so my way is better *harumph* But tradition is what it is.

And for fan braced classicals, the usual high soundhole position makes the active area below the lower cross brace more circular, which is probably good for tone. But maybe my aesthetically ideal specs would work better with falcate bracing

As for soundhole size, classical soundholes look too small to me, but the traditional wide rosette style helps to fill it out. A lot of steel string parlor soundholes look overly large to my eye... and sound overly large to my ear. Martin's soundholes look and sound just right.

This shot is out of someone's collection that I got off the interweb. These are 3 Nick Lucas Specials. a '29, '32, and '36 if I recall. Note the differences in size of soundholes, locations of soundholes, scale lengths, number of frets clear, number of frets total, bridge locations, bridge designs, and body shapes. Also note the hand applied sunbursts and the spray sunburst.

All of these guitars I find aesthetically pleasing, except for the sprayed sunburst.

Ed

The farther north the soundhole the deeper the sound to some degree. This applies to the smaller soundhole as well. Smaller guitars benefit from smaller soundholes and I think larger guitars from larger soundholes (less bass).

#2 is the only one that makes sense to me, proportionally. First one doesn't even look like a Gibson, but I'm not a Gibson guitar fan.
Many times, photos of sunbursts don't reflect the actual burst well. However, I think the sprayed burst is one of those cases where they really did a bad job. I don't care for the oblong "bullseye". It doesn't transition well, and looks like one of those tinted lacquer bursts where they just spray a very black tint along the edge. Don't like them.