Designing new plucked-string musical instruments is a sometime hobby of mine. As a teenager I would hodge together parts from various less-than-perfect instruments to make new ones, but it wasn't until 1989 that I learned to build one from scratch.

That came about when luthier Al Markasky, Jr. at Sylvan Music in Santa Cruz, California took me in as an apprentice. He guided me through building the above 8-stringed classical guitar (with scalloped fretboard -- utterly useless with nylon strings, but I had to try. I wanted 8 strings because I was listening to a lot of Egberto Gismonti at the time). Anyway, there was a massive earthquake in Santa Cruz in October of '89 and I couldn't keep it together afterward to stay in town and finish the apprenticeship (or even the guitar... Al did a lot of the finish-up work in the end). It was the first and last time I tried in earnest to build an instrument, but I still like to design them in the hope that (after winning the lottery, etc.,) I'll be able to hire someone who takes luthiery seriously to make them for me someday. The rest of the instruments on this page are virtual (except this ud toward the bottom); they only exist in the land of PhotoShop and on this web-page. The designs and images are all copyrighted 2008 by Eric Ederer, but if you're interested in making one I won't stop you... I'd just like to hear about it.

This one I call the "Nautilauta." It's a mixture between Fred Carlson's (unfortunately discontinued) Dreadnautilus and a Turkish lavta. Actually it has more frets than a lavta; this and all the following instruments are designed to have the same frets as a Turkish tanbur but with a shorter scale length. It might also be called a tamir, which more or less means "fixed" in Turkish, to contrast with the bozuk or bouzouki, which means "broken" (...and what's broken about it? Can't get all the notes, of course!).

If you're interested in making an instrument with this fretting (which is in effect a selection of frets from 53-tone equal temperament, very closely approximating Just Intonation), please don't copy them from these designs; it'll sound awful! What you should do is take a look at this fretting chart (which for better or worse is a whole-step lower than it would be in Turkey, where the tone yegah should be A. But that doesn't matter; tune it where you like) then plug your instrument's vibrating string length into this fret calculator and use only those frets that are highlighted in grey on the chart (the first tone being an open string).

These are in effect flat-backed, 6-course Nautilautas, but the body is more in the shape of a Fibonacci spiral, expressing the Golden Mean, which in my mind goes well conceptually with Just Intonation. Who knows what it would sound like, but it makes sense to me to have a larger resonating area for the bass side and a smaller one for the treble. The designs without sound-holes would have a "floating" soundboard with a space between the edge and the face, like Carlevaro's guitars.

The place where the upper bout meets the neck marks the octave, and the highest fret marks an octave and a fifth from open strings. Looking at it here I notice that the ratio between the width of the nut and that of the bridge should be slightly greater; here it's about 2:3, but I'd want it to be around 4:7, like on a cümbüs.

The design question here was, "what would the acoustic effect of a nautilus' chambers in place of bracing be?" The skin head could be optional -- the whole face here needs redesigning, actually -- but it would be nice to be able to see the chambers. (Note Turkish tanbur fret names; "unnamed" frets are needed for certain transposed makam-s.)

This elektro-cümbüs-lavta is just a tweaking of Australian luthier Graham McDonald's electric Irish bouzouki.

Finally, this rash of instruments flooded out after an e-mail exchange with Cypriot sculptor and luthier Leonidas Spanos, who made his own cümbüs-like instrument (whose headstock and basic shape I used in the one second from left in the top row). Credits for bodies/body shapes go also to the Cümbüs Musical Instrument Company, Remo Drums, and to National Reso-Phonic.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

On August 8, 2009, luthier Mustafa Copçuoglu finished this experimental ud that he made for me: cedar top without sound holes, floating 'Iraqi-style' bridge, back etc. of alternating juniper (plain brown) and macassar ebony (tiger striped). It's still settling in as of the time of this writing, but has a unique sound to it - a little ud, a little fretless classical guitar, sometimes a little cümbüs, even. Originlly the idea was to have the rim open, like a Carlevaro-style classical guitar, but for whatever reason Mustafa gave it a completely closed top (there's a tiny hole in the end block to let some air in and out, but it doesn't channel sound). A little quieter than his normal ud-s but still quite ringy, and has plenty of bass. In addition to the interesting tone, I like that the lack of soundholes also means a lack of feedback from microphones!

A few guitar luthiers such as Batson and Tom Bills build guitars without soundholes, though they have "sound ports" on the upper side, right under the player's nose, but Mustafa hadn't seen these websites (and structurally such a "sound port" poses problems on an ud, anyway) and I am pretty sure this is a first in ud making. Thanks Mustafa!

(I hope to put here a little video clip of me playing it, so you can hear the sound, but I can't seem to put one finger in front of the other today; check back again soon!)

ederer@umail.ucsb.edu  

Site Map