Instruments

There are many different musical instruments, and they use different materials. Traditional instruments use the materials available at hand locally. Modern instruments have replaced natural materials by synthetic ones to improve their characteristics.

Each instrument has its own particularities: Design, materials, decoration, dimensions, tools, etc. Everything that is specific for an instrument (or for a small family of them) has its place in this section.

• Accessories

  • Carrying Cases

• Ergonomy

  • Tendinitis Among Bass Guitar Players: An Instrument Builder's View Bass guru Ed Friedland wrote a great article on tendinitis in the January 2003 issue of Bass Player magazine. I started to write a letter to the editor with some more info on the subject, but the letter got out of hand and turned into this article. There is some info here for anyone suffering from tendinitis of the fretting hand, and for those who would build instruments for those with short arms, small hands, and thin wrists.
  • Acoustic Guitar Body Outline Design Tool A downloadable tool for Windows PCs that can make the job of designing guitar body outlines fast and easy.
  • Calculating Downforce on the Bridge The tension of the strings exerts a down force on the bridge and top of an archtop instrument. The force is a function of the string tension and the angle at which the strings bend over the bridge. The formula for calculating down force is included here.
  • Calculating Heel Displacement for a Neck Reset Resetting the neck of a guitar requires removing some material from the heel to effect a new neck angle, thus lowering the action. The amount of material removed is always small, even for big changes to the action. The formula for determining how much material to remove from the heel for the desired action is presented here. There is also a Javascript calculator for those that don't want to do the math.
  • Bass String Length Data The lengths of the parts of bass strings are important to bass builders, especially those that build archtop bass guitars and electric upright basses. Tables of length data are provided for both bass guitar and double bass strings.
  • Deriving Archtop Plate Contours (.pdf) The description of the surface of the top or back of an archtop instrument (archtop guitar, violin, etc.) is quite complex, but experienced builders generally just wing it when carving these, maybe checking progress with some simple gages. But first time builders and designers typically have a difficult time visualizing the transition from a rectangular blank to a fully carved plate. This article, originally published in American Lutherie #69 has step-by-step instructions for deriving the contours of a plate from the outline and a few parameters.
  • The action is the distance from the strings to the fingerboard.

• Performance

  • Playing Historical Musical Instruments

• Taxonomy

  • Musical Instrument Classification
  • Musical Instruments by Category
  • Modern Western Instruments and their Families
  • Historical instruments
  • Who is who
  • The Names of Musical instrument
  • Voice classification
  • The picture index of our historical instrument catalogue

• Aerophones (winds)

  • With keyboard

    • Organ

    • Portative Organ

  • Woodwinds

    • Cornetto

    • Dolzaina

    • Flute

    • Gemshorn

    • Pífano

    • Recorder

  • Reeds

    • Acordeon

    • Bagpipes

    • Baroque Bassoon

    • Cornamusen

    • Curtal

    • Crumhorn

    • Dulcian

    • Fagot

    • Glastonbury Pipe

    • Rackett

    • Rauschpfeife

    • Shawm

    • Sordune

  • Brasswinds

    • Trumpet

• Chordophones (stringed)

  • With keyboard

    • Cembalino

    • Clavichord

    • Harpsichord

    • Hurdy-Gurdy

    • Piano

    • Spinet

    • Symphony

  • Bowed

    • Bowed Psaltery

    • Cello

    • Double bass

    • Fiddle

    • Rebec

    • Viol

    • Violin

  • Plucked and Hammered

    • Appalachian Dulcimer

    • Bouzouki

    • Cítara

    • Citole

    • Cittern

    • Guitar

    • Guittern

    • Hammered Dulcimer

    • Harp

    • Lute

      • Frequently asked questions about lutes made

    • Lyre

    • Mandolin

    • Plucked Psaltery

    • Ukelele

  • Struck

    • Hammered Dulcimer

• Electrophones

  • Theremin

• Idiophones

  • Limberjack

  • Sanza

• Membranophones

  • Bodhran

  • Drum

  • Nakers

  • Tabor

  • Taboret

  • Timbrel

  • Timpani