Why are the holes shaped like that?

Give it time. Unlike on the BG side of the forum, these aren't nearly as busy. Just letting you know I don't know why they are shaped that way and am interested but not overly into why. That's all and one of the resident equipment people will be around sometime. Have Fun and relax.

 

I doubt if you can find anyone here who can give you a definitive answer the "Why" question. I can tell you that the use of "ff" holes predates the invention of the violin in 1500s. Some modern makers have made instruments with different shaped sound holes and apparently they have not suffered acoustically as long as the total surface area remained about the same as traditional "ff' holes. In instrument making, it is the beauty of the "ff" holes and the scroll that distinguish the master makers from the ordinary craftsman. To the untrained eye, all "ff" holes look about the same, but in truth, there are a large number of styles in common use today. Most date back to the violin making giants of 300 to 500 year ago.

 

Actually, it's all a 500-year-old joke. You see, the soundhole is an "F". The underside of the bridge forms a "U". The center bout of the instument is a "C". And the strings crossing the bridge, when compared to the imaginary line extending from the plane of the neck/fingerboard joint, form a "K". So there you have it. Gasparo and Antonio would sit in the piazza drinking grappa and laughing their heads off everytime someone would pull out one of these whacky instruments...little did the poor musician know!

 

It was only recently that we were taking about frontier strip clubs in bass bungholes. If memory serves me there's more than a few divergences such as these posted on TB. Mebbe we can make a collection and get Chris to lock a thread when he gets back.

 

The f-holes appeared on instruments of the viola family in the 17th century and replaced round, gridded soundholes (rosette), flame-holes and C-holes.

http://luthier-gheerardyn.hypermart.net/Historyg1.html

 

Here some interesting (?) history, apparently f-holes (or pre-cursors) have been around thousands of years...

http://www.theviolin.net/en/section/1/1+.html

 

Here's one with C-holes:

 

HEY, BOLLBACH: DIDN'T YOU GET THE MEMO? I'M IN CHARGE HERE. Chris told me so.

 

When I first started double bass in orchestra class, my friend Christian (a drummer, no less), started at the same time as me. Neither of us knew anything about double bass, but we both wanted to learn.

So one day in class, we asked the teacher, "Why are the holes on all basses, violins, violas, and cellos shaped like the letter 'f'?"

His response, which made Christian and I laugh our asses off for a good 10 minutes (totally disrupting class), was, "It's not the shape of the hole, its the location that matters."

Needless to say, we both can be very immature at times.

 

I'm glad you got your bass okayed, but I'm surprised nobody made the really logical argument... The ES-1 has an ebony fingerboard, and ebony is much more durable than rosewood.

If you keep the bass long-term, the rosewood could need dressing enough extra times to cost the entire difference in price between the EM-1 and the ES-1 just in Luthier Labor.

Also, a board can only be dressed so many times before it becomes too thin and needs a $500 replacement!

When THAT is put into the equation, you've not only broken even on the extra cost, you have SAVED long-term money by getting the extra durability of ebony!

You don't really have to mention that you need to keep the bass for the rest of your life to realize those savings, but aside from that little detail, it's pure truthful fact.
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Actually, I believe that the F-shape DOES affect the sound.

People have tried all different shapes, from diamonds to BATS (the flying kind) on a bass I once saw in a photo.

Regal made a bass in the 1930's that was shaped exactly like 6-foot-tall guitar, complete with a round soundhole in the middle.

I talked to someone who played one, and he said it was quiet, couldn't be heard through a couple of acoustic guitars.

You can figure that about 90% of the builders through the last several hundred years put F-holes in a certain shape and location because "We've Always DONE it this way".

If there weren't a good reason for them to be that way, though, then SOMEONE in that other 10% would have started a revolution in design, and we'd see whatever his "better idea" was, on almost all basses after that point in time.

It might be interesting for you to contact http://www.michaelkellyguitars.com

They used to make a mandolin model called the "Dragonfly" with F-holes that were diamond-shaped.

After a relatively short period, I think about 1 year, It was replaced by the "Firefly", which has regular F-holes, like the other mandolins they make.

It's pretty much un-changed from the Dragonfly, other than that.

You might ask them why they abandonded the "Dragonfly-style" F-holes.

 

They have the Legacy, with a standard mandolin F-hole, shaped very similarly to a bass F-hole.

Then they have the Firefly's "S-Hole", but the Dragonfly had the holes shaped like the picture below. The Firefly and Dragonfly also had their "S-holes" farther apart than normal. In the attached picture, notice that the holes are not only shaped different, but the "standard" holes are farther in from the edges, closer together.

Primarily, the "S-hole" doesn't have the large round openings at the ends, like a standard F-hole does.

 

I think they went with the f hole because both p-pole and a-hole induced far too many snickers from pre-pubescent boys.

I do find them visually preferable to the sound hole of my guitar, which I will hence forth call the o-hole.

Chas

 

I've heard that the Church of St. Domenico was across from Andrea Amati's workshop, in Cremona. He'd stare out the window, thinking, and one day got inspired by the curves on the facade. If you google images of the church, you'll see that those curves are indeed very similar to those on the violin. Gotta love architecture

 

Do DB threads need to remain dormant longer than BG to be considered *zombie*?

 

Most of the curves that have inspired me have not usually been anywhere near a church.