Acousonix Calculator
Selecting quality materials is essential for achieving a world-class build, adhering to the principle that quality-in leads to quality-out.
Many tonewood grading systems lack oversight and standardization, exempting them from these considerations. Furthermore, conventional methods appear illogical concerning tone or stability, as they heavily rely on appearance and species titles for their evaluations.
The Acousonix™ Sonic Calculator™ (patent pending), places decades of data-driven lutherie science at your fingertips. It not only provides a precise rating baseline but also includes a tempered mode, enhancing its sonic accuracy. Furthermore, its stiffness calculator utilizes the compressed tri-dimensional tempered mode, allowing superior control when selecting plate dimensions. Lastly, the calculator is offered in both imperial and metric-based calculations for ease of communication between luthiers worldwide.
The Acousonix™ Sonic Calculator™ places the power of tonewood control in the hands of the end user, making it an exceptionally valuable resource. For luthiers, the benefits are evident, but for wood sawyers, it enables direct communication with customers, maximizing the potential of your tonewood inventory.
All developments are currently protected under issued patent #11668678, (materials selection system and methods for constructing musical instruments).
Our Story
The Galloup Instrument Making System, Wood Management, and Sound Profiling Software was founded on over ten years of research and was officially launched in 2014.
It represents one of the more significant advancements in instrument making and tonewood management. In its tenth year of applied quantitative advancements, version 13.0.1 has been enhanced to include archtop billets, guitar necks, brace stock, and electric guitar bodies. The Galloup Software possesses what is likely the most extensive database of instrument-grade tonewoods globally additionally featuring sonic profiles of new projects from Galloup Studios. Furthermore, it boasts the largest sample group of vintage acoustic guitars making it a formidable database for tonewood management and instrument development.
Our observations prompted several decades of research within the Galloup Guitar shop, leading to numerous breakthroughs.
Two critical advancements were establishing a unified rating system and a standardized method for selecting plate thicknesses.
Although these combined methods were powerful, they had certain shortcomings that needed to be addressed. Specifically, they failed to consider the issues from a tri-dimensional perspective, their musicality stretch was incomplete, and they did not provide a comprehensive approach for managing wood in its entirety, not merely as tone wood but as a precious resource.
Through the use of the Tone Wood Management™ and Sound Profiling™ software, the database approach built a formidable library of new guitar builds, vintage guitar specs, and what is likely the largest database of musical-grade tone woods. This transformed the issue from a math problem into a programming issue. Once the outlying issues were isolated, the remaining obstacles were remediable internally through programming. This was a significant advancement in evaluating tonewoods and understanding their role as musical instruments through the application of programming. This has always been the ultimate objective.
One of the principal outcomes was the Acousonix™ Sonic Calculator™ (patent pending).
Data Collection and Input
Data collection and input for the Acousonix Sonic Calculator is comparable to many other methods of quantifying weight-to-strength ratios.
Firstly, standardizing the sample to a uniform measurement is recommended. For an acoustic guitar soundboard, a typical size is 22 inches long, 8.5 inches wide, and 0.150 inches thick. The Acousonix Sonic Calculator will accurately quantify any data loaded into its fields but the closer to uniformed standardized dimensions the more accurate the calculations.
Next, the board’s density must be established. By measuring the entire board’s length, width, thickness, and weight and entering the data into the system, its density per cubic inch is automatically calculated.
Finally, the resonance frequencies of the board for the length, width, and twist bending modes need to be gathered. This can be achieved using any well-configured FFT analyzer to capture the frequencies, which are then entered into the appropriate fields as required. Once calculated, the Acousonix Sonic Calculator will then display the sonic rating and the stiffness value spread for your project.
Note: The accuracy of any ratings is directly related to the information entered into the calculator’s fields. Although precise preparation of tonewood for data collection is essential for generating accurate ratings, the process is straightforward and not time-consuming. Moreover, once the tonewoods are dimensioned for rating, it provides a superior method of intuitively sampling your tonewood supply, as you are now comparing products of equal dimensions.
Contact us
Acousonix Assistance: info@acousonix.com
Galloup Guitars: 1 (231) 796-5611
Bryan Galloup: bryan@galloupguitars.com
Galloup School: school@galloupguitars.com
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