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2010 Luthierie Camps...H5 Mandola Construction:
July 18-23, 2010 F5 Mandolin Construction:Oct. 10-15, 2010
Please visit our website or email Kali for more information about these programs.
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 Dear Luthiers,
I hope your early summer is off to a good
start and that you are deeply engaged in luthierie projects.
Several things to share with you this
month:
There are still two workbench seats
available for our Siminoff Luthierie Camp in July. This program focuses on
building the H5 mandola, and at the end of the week-long program, campers will
leave our shop with a white-wood H5 mandola in their hands. For more
information, please visit us here
or call Kali at 805.365.7111.
We were saddened to hear of the flood
tragedy in Nashville but relieved to learn that many of our friends and
associates escaped without personal or property harm. George Gruhn mentioned
that the water poured by but did not enter his facilities (Gruhn Guitars); we
learned that the Ryman had water flowing by it, but no flooding (fortunately,
it is on a hill); DiAnne Patrick's shop didn't get flooded, but lots of water
flowed through it; and Earl Scruggs was dry and safe (he lives in Franklin
which is at a higher elevation than the Cumberland River and downtown
Nashville). Lynn Dudenbostel lives in Marysville (near Knoxville), and he said
that the rain was mostly centered in the Nashville area. Unfortunately, the
Opry Mills shopping center - which is outside of downtown Nashville - was badly
flooded. The shopping center is basically on the banks of the Cumberland River
and is where Gibson has its Showcase store and some acoustic instrument
production. Not only is it questionable when the shopping center will re-open,
but we hear there is a possibility that Gibson's Showcase store and shop may
not re-open at all. The neighboring Opryland Hotel received major flooding
damage, as did the Grand Ole Opry (all of these building sites are virtually
adjacent to each other). Gibson's plant on Massman Drive was heavily flooded
and suffered severe wood and equipment damage. A major warehouse where many
popular road-warrior bands store their instruments also received heavy damage.
While this secure space was humidity controlled, it was never prepared to hold
back a flood. And, because of the kinds of instruments, amps, and speakers that
were stored there, and to keep them grouped and easy for bands to load and
unload their trucks, nearly everything was stored on the floor. The damage is
un-repairable and the loss is right near the 100% mark. It is a very sad story,
and I hope you will join us in sending our thoughts and best wishes to
everyone caught up in this tragedy.
On to brighter news, if you are an IBMA
member, I could use your support. I have been nominated as a candidate for a
position on IBMA's board to represent merchandisers and luthiers. This is a
position that I would enjoy holding, and I believe that I can be an asset to
both the IBMA and to merchandisers and luthiers in this capacity. IBMA recently
mailed ballots to its members. If you are so moved, I would appreciate
having your vote AND having you tell your IBMA-member friends about it.
We are just around the corner from
announcing an H4 mandola kit. The H4 mandola is similar to the H5 except that
the H4 has an oval soundhole and an11-fret neck. We are pretty far along with the lengthy testing process
of our carving patterns for H4 soundboards and backboards, and we are now
tooling up for the neck. I am expecting this kit to be available in July, and we
will announce the H4 Mandola Kit in this newsletter, so you'll be the first to
know.
To keep our
customers up to date on what is happening in the shop, our marketing director
Kali has set up a Siminoff Banjo & Mandolin Parts Facebook page. We look
forward to sharing current information with you on this page so that you can
stay close to our goings on. Please visit our Facebook page.
Lastly, the story about my involvement in the development of Gibson's F-5L mandolin in 1978 is an exciting one. Scott Tichenor, owner of the Mandolin Cafe site, posted this story in its entirety along with several never-before-seen photos, and it ran for the week of May 9-15. It is still part of Mandolin Cafe's archives, and you can read the story by going here. I think you'll find it very interesting.
We love visitors - if you are ever coming
through California's Central Coast area, please call us so you can stop by and
let us show you around our shop.
Thanks for building with us...
Roger
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Gibson bridge designs...
When Orville Gibson first began making
instruments in the late 1800s, his instruments featured a low neck angle of
about 2° and a correspondingly low bridge height. His early bridges were
one-piece designs that incorporated intonation-correction notches.
As the company furthered the development
of its models, it learned that increasing the down pressure on the soundboard
provided greater amplitude and tonal clarity. To achieve this, the neck pitch
was increased to 4° enabling taller bridges to be used (second from the top). On instruments with
fingerrests, a hole was drilled on the treble side of the bridge to accommodate
a fingerrest support pin. This was to be Gibson's first U.S. Patented bridge
design, and the patent was issued on September 21, 1909. A major fault in the design of the
one-piece bridge is that it was not adjustable. For Gibson, the solid bridge
ate up a great deal of production time requiring significant hand work to
properly fit and adjust the playing action of each bridge to its respective
instrument. Around 1918, Gibson engineers began
working on bridge saddles with adjustable intonation saddles (not shown). These were made
in the form of inserts that fit into a groove on the top of the bridge and
could be interchanged or turned around to achieve the ideal intonation. Aside
from the fact that the parts were fragile and occasionally got misplaced, the
movable insert system left too much up to the musician, and frustration in
using it caused the design to have a very short life in Gibson's accessory
line. It is not clear what role Lloyd Loar
played in the development of Gibson's two-piece adjustable bridge. On January
18, 1921, Gibson received its second U.S. Patent for a bridge design. This
design had an adjustable saddle that sat on two posts, and thumbwheels were
used to adjust its height. The first version of this bridge featured an
aluminum saddle (you can see one on the A-model mandolin on Lloyd Loar's workbench).
It was believed that an aluminum component was needed to span the distance
between the two posts and support the download of the strings' tension. The aluminum saddle was used for about a
year, but it wasn't long before it was replaced by an ebony saddle (bottom). The ebony
was just as strong, was the same weight (63 grains) as the aluminum saddle, and
had superior tonal properties. Most importantly, the adjustable bridge provided
players with the ability to change the bass or treble action with ease as well
as be able to compensate for any settling of the soundboard with age. |
Product Highlights
 · H4 Rosette - Now that we are gearing up for our
H4 Mandola Kit, you'll see various components begin to appear in our on-line store.
The first of these is the H4 Rosette. This rosette is slightly larger than the
one used on the F4 mandolin and features a few additional black rings. Our
rosettes are made of maple, ebony, real ivoroid (celluloid), and black fiber.
The H4 rosette is part #420-H and is $31.25 plus P&H.
 · Templates and Fixtures Drawings - Our ProSeries Drawings include
full-size blueprints for the F5, A5, and F4 mandolin, and for the H5 mandola
(we will soon be adding a ProSeries Drawing set for the H4 mandola). To complement
the construction of the F5 mandolin, we have a set of full-size Drawings for
the fixtures and templates used for building this instrument. The set includes drawings
for a peghead cutting fixture, V-joint cutting fixture, truss-rod slotting
fixture, dovetail marking templates, dovetail cutting fixtures, scroll carving
template, and more. The part number is #DTF5 and is $24.95 plus P&H.
 · Siminoff's Luthiers Glossary - The world of luthierie has its own
language and one component of developing as a luthier is learning the proper
terms of the industry. There is a difference between a "pickguard" and a "fingerrest"
as there is between "book-matching" and "book-leaving." "Quarter-sawn" is not
the same as "quartered-grain." The word "isotropic" describes the difference in
the speed of sound across and with the grain of wood. These and many more terms are
included in the Siminoff's Luthiers Glossary. The
Glossasry is a 235 page, heavily-illustrated book that contains definitions of
more than 875 luthierie terms. There are a dozen tables that include string
loads, string tensions, tunings and recommended string gauges for more than 50
acoustic instruments, and much more. The book also features 32 color plates of
luthierie woods in both their natural and lacquered state. The part number is
#509 and it is $26.95 plus P&H.
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Luthier's Tip: Save on Wipes
Here's a really great idea that our
production manager, Ken Roddick, set up for our benches. We go through a lot of
paper towels and they are mainly used for removing excess glue. Somewhere along
the way, Ken realized that we were grabbing full sheets of paper towels to pick
up a little gob of squeeze-out, and that we were throwing away a lot of paper
towel when we just needed something larger than a Q-Tip® (which we also use a
lot of).
His solution was to run a roll of paper
towels through the bandsaw and cut it into three sections. Then he built a few
of these hangers so that our benches would be provided with one-third rolls. A
small and easy way to do our part to save trees. |
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The Siminoff Binding Routing Attachment
was designed in 1964 and was the first tool of its kind on the market. Our
tools