Getting the most from these books

You can ask questions here about Trevor and Gerard's exciting new book on Luthiery.

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jjh
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Getting the most from these books

Post by jjh » Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:23 pm

I treated myself to the books for Christmas and must admit to not really understanding the design book and was wondering if there were any others like me and how you've all got on with it. I'm really looking forward to the current build thread hoping that it'll help reveal some of the books secrets to me in ways I can understand and more importantly use in my builds!

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jellicorse
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Re: Getting the most from these books

Post by jellicorse » Fri Mar 28, 2014 7:57 pm

I was in a similar situation to you when I first got the books. While it's possible to get by passing over most of the maths and reading the chapter summaries, I felt there was a lot of stuff in there that I would like to understand.

You may well be able to pick enough up from here to apply the ideas of the book to your own builds but you'll get a much better overall understanding of the concepts if you put it to one side for a bit and study some maths. Depending on where your current level is, you'll want to get the High School level pure maths down, and then go a bit further into calculus... One book which actually covers all of this (extremely well and clearly) is Engineering Mathematics by KA Stroud. It takes you from the basics right up to a level which will enable you to get a very good picture of what's going on in the Design Book.

(I have to say, there's still derivations,etc in The Design book I don't understand but I've got an infinitely better picture of its contents than I had before I brushed up on the maths and consider that studying well worthwhile!)
John

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jjh
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Re: Getting the most from these books

Post by jjh » Tue Sep 29, 2015 8:05 pm

No there are more owners of the books I thought I'd bump this thread and see how others were tackling deciphering these tomes.

seeaxe
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Re: Getting the most from these books

Post by seeaxe » Fri Oct 02, 2015 4:36 am

I bought the books a couple of months ago and have read through the first one, but not yet the second, at least not in any detail. So I am in a similar position to you. I am familiar with the maths and can see what Trevor has done but don't claim to fully understand it to the point that I could produce the model on a spreadsheet as others have done, at least not yet.

The main things I am hoping to do are
Check out any guitar I can get my hands on to do the bridge tilt test. No maths involved but a very direct measurement of soundboard stiffness, a key factor.
Weigh all the guitars and try to work back to what the sound board might weigh. This will involve a fair bit of estimation and might not be worth the effort...we will see.
Do the tap tests on them and just try to get a few plots out and attempt to understand what's going on. I've got the VA software, very easy to download if you haven't done it yet.
I have a few soundboards in the stash so can check them out too.
I'm going to try to be a lot more careful about measuring stuff.
Going to maybe make some test soundboards with different bracing patterns to check them out too.

So I think lots you can do. I do want to back over the maths and read it again. Ultimately that for me at least is what differentiates these books for all of the others. If I understand that part better I can check my next build as I go and hopefully end up with a better end product next time.

Of course, now I'm retired I have less time to do all this. All the cliches you hear are true!!
But I will get there. Rome wasn't built in a day, so maybe try one aspect and focus on that, gradually work your way through?

Anyway good luck.
Richard

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Re: Getting the most from these books

Post by printer2 » Sun Oct 04, 2015 12:36 pm

I just skimmed the books, will go over them in detail when I have time. The most important thing to me is the knowledge of how to change the frequency where the resonances fall and to get them in between scale tones. Would be cool to get a spreadsheet to do the figurin' for you, my Excel chops are a little rusty.

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Re: Getting the most from these books

Post by JamesO » Wed Oct 28, 2015 7:14 am

The first time I bought Design, it went right over my head and I sold my copy. After picking it up a second time, I took a morning to sit down in the coffee shop with a yellow pad and pen, and wrote down my take-aways from each chapter. After coming back to them a few times, the basics are committed to memory, like the back should be pitched four semi-tones higher than the top.

I still have questions, but sitting down with it the old fashioned way helped a lot.

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kiwigeo
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Re: Getting the most from these books

Post by kiwigeo » Thu Oct 29, 2015 8:27 pm

JamesO wrote:The first time I bought Design, it went right over my head and I sold my copy. After picking it up a second time.......
That Trevor is a very clever man....he's co-written a book that people buy twice!! :D

My "Design" volume spends alot of it's life in my dunny......it's the quietest part of my house and the perfect place to sit and wrap your head around some of those Godzilla equations.
Martin

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