Post your invention ahead of time ideas here on bass design and manufacturing.

Let me tell my 1995 , disclosure document idea.
As you know there is 300 years of reseach on stradivari.
Latest idea is to make wood loose its lignin and hemicellulose structure. Nagyvary said that there are % 60 loss of hemicellulose and lignin of wood at strad instruments.
It make a strad wood piece a empty cellulose natural space frame , something surreal.
I think we can test a instrument with modal analysis , stress analysis and decide to remove material inside of 3d mass.
How can you remove or change the material from the inside ?
Focused radiation beam is a answer for making violin , acoustic bass , double bass top.
Polymers cant withstand againts heat or pure uv.
With this method , you can read the material and write on it.
Volumetric memory is something like this.
If you go more , you can place a lcd screen in the place of instrument top and change the crystal structure with changing the screenplay.

Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac

write on it and in it to the material

Does the radiation beam (what kind of radiation?) selectively vaporize the lignin, but not the cellulose? How is the unwanted material/lignin, after conversion (whatever it may have been converted to), removed?

How has it been determined that Stradivari have cellulose only? If it is true, what was the mechanism that resulted in this state?

Does the radiation beam (what kind of radiation?) selectively vaporize the lignin, but not the cellulose? How is the unwanted material/lignin, after conversion (whatever it may have been converted to), removed?

How has it been determined that Stradivari have cellulose only? If it is true, what was the mechanism that resulted in this state?

lignin is removed from wood fibres everyday to produce paper...the process there involves "cooking" the wood in hot caustic...
the Kraft process is fairly agressive and if applied to a piece of wood, it cause the wood to completely break apart...however, I'm sure that with enough experimentation, there may be ways to use alkaline vapours to soften the lignin in a more controlled manner and then remove it via a chemical bath.

Obviously, this can only be accomplished on relatively thin sheets of wood and would be quite expensive and time consuming.

Then, I'm not sure if the pay-off is even there for a non-acoustic type instrument...it's really MUCH easier to tailor frequency and envelope response using digital algorithms.

I believe that we are in a situation nowdays where we are inventing applications to meet the technology that is already there. Until about 10-15 years ago, it was quite the other way...we were still developing much technology to meet the desired application.

I think we should focus on things like finding inexpensive, sustainable, yet-superior materials to build instruments from. Materials like luthite, ebonal, carbon fibre, for instance are just now beginning to find their way into modern instruments. Other materials are also being explored, such as filling hollow cavities with PU foam, also the use of HDF for semi-hollow instruments

I believe that pickup and electronics can also be improved quite a bit from the way things have been done over the last 50+ years.

I'd love to see instruments that feel and sound like the $5K custom instruments, but can be offered to the general public at <10% of that price....in fact, we are already starting to get there.

make a hollow body shell out of hard rubber. Get that old time dead string tone all the time no matter what.

What about those salvaged logs they pull out of the water after 100's of years of being submerged. I've never looked into it too much, but I believe that some logs were lost 100's of years ago when they became water-logged, after they lazer-blasted all the lignin from the wood fibers like you're describing, and now they supposedly make great sounding instruments.

Those submerged logs were "cleaned out" by the very water they were submerged in, not lasers. Adrum company (Pearl, was it) used this type of wood. Their drums were almost prohibitively expensive to market.

Didn't sense the joke angle in that? :crying: I thought I made a funny!

Those submerged logs were "cleaned out" by the very water they were submerged in, not lasers. Adrum company (Pearl, was it) used this type of wood. Their drums were almost prohibitively expensive to market.

The drum company was DW. They called it "Timeless Timber", and were even more outrageously-priced than their standard Collector's series!

I was not talking about engraving wood but plastic.
Radiation can be light , sun light , or uv laser. At israel , operators make surgeons with the focusing sun light to a cutter , i think fiber optic. There are many very powerful lamps and you can focus them to selected material depth and move the table and write in to transparent plastic.
I think best material for fast manufacturing is polyurethane foam expanding method.
Researchers say , dirty waters of venice eat the lignin and hemicellulose part of logs .
And they believe , the metal oxides used for protect the wood from bugs , created the excellent woods. They say , the metal treatment - may be borax - ended with stradivari and this was his open secret. They tried the boiling effect on wood and sound and they say boiling is no good for wood as they do at bosnia now.

The drum company was DW. They called it "Timeless Timber", and were even more outrageously-priced than their standard Collector's series!

Bet they sound amazing though. Although all DWs sound amazing. If you want old wood, find someone that is tearing down an old barn and take the beams. Often massive (I'm talking 20 feet long 12"x12" wide) cherry, walnut, maple ect. Whatever wood you see growing around your area, there are old beams of that in barns. 100+years old.

lowsound

Many violin makers tried hundreds years old wood taken from swiss chalettes. Nagyvary , used thousands years old logs collected from forests flooded and stayed at under lakes at north america and alaska. He tried many ways - including peeing in to the liquid which logs stayed in it. Nothing solved. He used 250 000 dollars worth of cnc machine specially made for violin making .Only correct method is applying the same environment of microbe loaded venice waters , mineral waters of po river and antiworm treatment of log sellers with metal oxides - big possibility borax -
Why poststrad makers could not produce the same sound ? This is the biggest question.
Some say bug attack to logs was stradivari era problem and with the death of stradivari , log sellers stoped the treating wood with metal oxides.
Some say there are many low and high carving behind of stradivari violin tops. They say some violin restorers carved of these high low profiles and instrument death.
They say stradivari holding the spruce top againts to sun and he sees the dark and light patterns. Than he carved the back until all back lighted and balanced.
I dont believe in dw method , no fresh water , clean water add or remove from the wood.
And you must find a wood really growed in cold , may be siberia or alaska - same thing -
I read years ago at Time magazine that korea and japan were buying wood from siberia for instrument making. May be you can track the siberian wood and buy that stuff.
Some american researchers reported that north italy alpine mountains lived a micro climate and very cold weather 300 years just before stradivari and guernieri.
If you really want western cedar without cuting it , the method is polyurethane foam and carbon cloth composite.

Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac

Other stradivari secret is cracks of varnish. If you can crack your varnish and free the top like stradivari , it counts.
When you play a violin at white - without varnish - it plays harsh and treble. Varnish mute it. And after 100 years , varnish harden with time and cracks from the most played , vibrated areas. If you keep yoour instrument tuned , played correctly , if you are lucky , your grandson have a treasure.
No free meal !
May be you can age your violin under uv lights and speakers or you can crack the varnish with focused uv, light ,etc.
And metal parts in the varnish , may be you can create a varnish formula with adding inside nanoparticles or cover the top with solgel !

Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac

"Timeless Timber" is a company in northern Wisconsin (Ashland) that harvests sunken logs from the bottom of Lake Superior. At least the last time I checked. They'll sell wood to anyone.

thats interesting Mustafa, I heard something similar too, apperently Europe was at the end of an 'ice age' or somethin, so the trees would grow a lot slower resulting in tighter grain, making it sound better than today...... I wonder.

www.timelesstimber.com