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Old 09-22-2008, 06:35 PM
Eugenius Eugenius is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff M View Post
Grooving the top of a guitar will make it lighter....but so will making it thinner.
Claiming that grooving it improves it's ability to generate tone is just that. A claim.
Luthery is the combination of art and science..neither of which does Blueberry seem to be employing here.
I doubt that the people building these guitars have the background or the experience of voicing tops that established builders have.
Re; the science...
Blueberry notes that they have experimented with grooving the tops to find what works best. It's amazing to me that what seems to work "best" are geometrically symetric designs using straight grooves.

Builders that experiment with how sound is generated by guitar tops have used things like Chiandi patterns and resonance frequency plots....and those show that sound is not generated along linearly along a guitar top. Just as important, no two tops are identical.

What "works best" for Blueberry seems to be more "what design is easiest to carve in the top that looks pretty and will impress people with no experience" rather than what actually improves the function of the top.
And again, WHY NOT GROOVE THE BACK OF THE TOP!!??

There ARE several luthiers with backgrounds in physics/engineering building today.
Kevin Ryan was an aerospace engineer before taking up building.
I believe Al Claxton had a background in engineering. As did Bill Tippin.
Kathy Wingert and Al Carruth (the two I am most aware of) extensively use Chiandi patterns when building their instruments.
I believe our own SteveS has such a background.
Builders are experimenting with ways to improve the strength of the top while also increasing it's function...see folks building double top guitars like Paul Woolson, Tim McKnight, or the lattice design used by Jamie Kinscherff in his bracing.
No grooves coming out from these folks.

I remain a skeptic about Blueberry.
I may be wrong here, but they strike me as another variant of Denny Zager.

I'm also sorry to say that I remain skeptical as to your being unaffiliated with Blueberry guitars.
A bit of a coincidence, despite what you note is your history of lurking here for months, your first ever posts on this forum being on this thread.

Unfortunately, over the years people with financial or personal interests in a brand/builder have disguised presented themsevles as unbiased discussion participants.
Again, I may be wrong...but that's what's going through my mind.
wow, great post Jeff, tough to argue against.