Tonholz (musical instrument making)

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As sound wood (also Tonholz ) refers to wood that is suitable to the nature, quality and storage for the construction of musical instruments and is critical to the overall sound of the instrument. Wood is mainly used, which has grown slowly and therefore has narrow annual rings . Furthermore, it must have grown as straight as possible , have few knots and its speed of sound should be as high as possible. Different types of wood are preferred depending on the intended use . Tonewood is stored and air-dried for many years to ensure that as much tension in the wood as possible has been relieved.

Violin making

In stringed instruments normally is the ceiling of spruce ( Picea abies L.). The quality of the wood for the ceiling is determined by both optical and physical parameters. The wood should have an even and narrow growth ring spacing and only a small proportion of latewood. In addition, the wood for the ceiling should have high elasticity and high speed of sound. The hazel spruce, a growth variety of the spruce in mountain forests, is known as the best tonewood. In the older literature, especially from the mid-19th century, the use of fir ( Abies alba Mill.) As ceiling wood is often described. In dendrochronological examinations, however, only about 5% of the instruments were found to be fir wood. The back, sides and neck are made of sycamore maple ( Acer pseudoplatanus ). Because of the high stress caused by pressing the strings , the fingerboard is usually made of ebony .

Plucked instrument making

The soundboard of classical acoustic guitars is traditionally made of European spruce ( Picea abies ). In addition to the European spruce, American spruce species such as Sitka ( Picea sitchensis ) and Engelmann spruce ( Picea engelmannii ) as well as Adirondack ( Picea rubens ) and sometimes even Douglas fir ( Pseudotsuga menziesii ) are used. Japanese guitar makers used the indigenous Sakhalin spruce ( Picea glehnii ) for their guitars , but this is only available in very limited quantities. In the 1960s, the Spanish guitar maker José Ramirez III began experimenting with Canadian red cedar ( Thuja plicata ) as a tonewood for the soundboard of his guitars. He was successful with it, and this type of wood established itself as a popular resonance wood for both classical and flamenco guitars.

Guitars with resonance tops made of red cedar sound a little louder and warmer or darker compared to guitars with spruce tops. Guitars with a red cedar top sound more mature when new than new guitars with a spruce top. Guitars with a spruce top have to be played in over a long period of time so that their full sound potential can be developed. Compared to red cedar tops, however, spruce tops are able to reproduce a much wider range of timbres, provided that the instrument is well constructed. Spruce tops can develop positively in terms of sound over decades, while this is not the case with cedar tops, which are usually somewhat thicker than spruce tops.

Recently, American guitar makers in particular have also used redwood ( Sequoia sempervirens ) for the soundboard of classical guitars.

Piano construction

Keyboard instruments such as pianos , harpsichords and others have a soundboard made of spruce ( Picea abies L.) for sound generation or amplification . This is composed of several slats of different widths and brought to a defined thickness. The lamellas run either parallel to the edges or diagonally. The bridge with the strings stretched over it sits on the soundboard. The quality of a soundboard is determined by the choice of spruce wood. This should have an even growth ring spacing and a straight growth ring and must also be free of knots, resin pockets or other changes. The string tension on concert grand pianos is several tens of kilonewtons.

Woodwind instrument making

Woodwind instruments such as clarinets and oboes are often made from grenadilla , boxwood , or ebony . Deep woodwind instruments are made from rosewood , maple or sycamore maple . Flutes , which are also woodwind instruments, are made from metal alloys, but also from ebony, grenadilla and other types of rosewood.

Other types of tonewood

In the 19th century, the following types of wood were mainly used in Spain to manufacture the back and sides of classical guitars:

Occasionally, however, other exotic types of wood were also available which were imported from Spanish colonies.

Today, a wide variety of wood types are used in the construction of classical and flamenco guitars. Here is a list of the most commonly traded tonewoods for modern guitar making:

Ecological aspects

Compared to the global demand for exotic types of wood for the furniture and luxury goods industry, the demand for tonewood only accounts for a relatively small proportion of around 3%. Often, however, it is precisely those types of wood that are in great demand not only by instrument makers due to their attractive grain and excellent physical properties. Some types of wood are becoming increasingly scarce, and a few types of wood such as B. Rio rosewood and Cuban mahogany were fortunately placed under protection just in time and are now on the CITES species protection list .

Exotic tonewoods, which are preferred for back and sides in guitar making, often have a high density, i.e. That is, they are heavy types of wood that have grown slowly. Some tree species take several hundred years to reach a trunk diameter sufficient for the production of tonewood for guitar making. Most of these types of wood come from third world or emerging countries, where there is still no awareness of the need to conserve natural resources, partly for economic reasons. The increasing lack of availability of some types of wood makes them even more popular, and this drives up the prices of these types of wood. In many places this still leads to irresponsible overexploitation of nature.

It is not easy for the instrument maker to forego traditional types of wood and to switch to types of wood that come from guaranteed sustainable forestry. There is FSC -certified wood, which is perfectly suitable for tonewood, but the selection is currently still very limited and the types of wood have different acoustic properties than traditional tonewoods.

Traditional exotic tonewoods also enjoy great prestige in the market. Many instrument makers are skeptical about switching to alternative tonewoods because they fear that they will not have the same chance on the market. Nevertheless, there are some larger tonewood dealers who have added FSC-certified tonewood to their range and are trying to expand their range on an ongoing basis.

literature

  • "Things about the guitar" Author: José Ramirez III
  • "Making master guitars" Author: Roy Courtnall
  • BARISKA, M. 1996: On the history of the use of wood in musical instrument making. Swiss Journal of Forestry 147 (9), pp. 683–693
  • BEUTING, M. 2004: Wood history and dendrochronological studies on resonance wood as a contribution to organology, Remagen-Oberwinter: Kessel-Verlag, 219 pp.
  • BUKSNOWITZ C, TEISCHINGER A, MUELLER U, PAHLER A, EVANS R: Resonance wood [Picea abies (L.) Karst.] - evaluation and prediction of violin makers' quality-grading (2007). The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121 (4): 2384-95
  • DOPF, K. 1949: Something about resonance and tone woods for musical instrument making. Internationaler Holzmarkt 40, pp. 14–15
  • HOLZ, D. 1984: About some connections between forest-biological and acoustic properties of tonewood (resonance wood). Wood technology 25 (1), pp. 31–36

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerd Bossems and Birgit Möllering: “I couldn't imagine a better job than making plucked instruments”. Interview with the guitar maker Gerold Karl Hannabach. In: Guitar & Laute 4, 1982, 1, pp. 19-22; here: p. 20.