Need an old bowlback mandolin soundboard

[graham mcdonald]

Folks,

I have to do a talk on mandolin soundboards in a couple of months and I would like to have an old canted bowlback mandolin soundboard to show. Does anyone have a totally past all hope of restoration bowlback with an intact soundboard that is taking up otherwise useful space in their workshop?

cheers

graham

[jackspira]

The only one i have has no soundboard Graham, but I'll keep a lookout and let you know if I come across one, I may well do.
Jack

[Rick Turner]

One of the interesting things on most of those is the bent top which carried over onto a number of "flat backed" mandos as well. There is often a saw kerf there and sometimes some charred evidence of a hot bending iron.

[Arnt]

I have one like that (bought in a pawn shop in Estonia, of all places). Shipping from Norway to Australia would probably be crazy, but if you want it its yours...

[Kim]

I have one like that (bought in a pawn shop in Estonia, of all places). Shipping from Norway to Australia would probably be crazy, but if you want it its yours...

No two ways about it Arnt, your one of the good guys. I would like to share a sheepshead BBQ and a beer with you sometime.

Cheers

Kim

[graham mcdonald]

Thanks Arnt, but I can probably find something locally. We won't ask what you were doing in a pawn shop in Estonia

Bent/canted tops are a much ignored approach to instrument soundboards. I have built one for the new book and it is not much more work than a flat-top and a much stronger structure. Quite fun if a little nerve-wracking (is that spelt right) to saw 1/2-2/3 the way through the soundboard and then put it on a hot pipe.

cheers

graham

[matthew]

OK I'll bite ... why put a bend in a soundboard, and where?

[James Mc]

Matthew… The where is easy (I think), in my youth I repaired a few old bowl back mandolins and they all had the bend at the saddle (see pic). As to why, well a much more interesting question that I wish I could answer. I asked the old luthier I worked with the same question but the answer he gave me was less than satisfying (which tended to happen if I bothered him when his arthritis was playing up). Perhaps someone here will provide a better more satisfying answer, that way I won’t have to wonder if the old bugger was pulling my leg or not every time I look at one.

[Kim]

Matthew… Perhaps someone here will provide a better more satisfying answer, that way I won’t have to wonder if the old bugger was pulling my leg or not every time I look at one.

Let me guess James, he told you it provided a comfy seat for when your using the mando to slide down sand hills...that's what I tell Ovation owners

Cheers

Kim

[matthew]

are they braced inside??

[Paul B]

Wow, never seen that before.

Wonder how a guitar would play and sound with something like that. Sort of like an arm rest that increases the break angle of the strings.

What does the top bracing look like on one of those things?

How does the bend in the top affect the sound?

*edit* there has to be at least one lateral brace pretty much right under the bridge or that tops gonna cave, at least to my way of thinking. What else is under there?

[Kim]

To me the effect looks 2 fold, first the break angle as Paul suggest, but also it looks to provide a backboard to assist in sound projection back into the bowl.

And no, I would not ride down a sand dune on such an instrument, the fibreglass of an Ovation is much more suitable.

cheers

Kim

[James Mc]

The answer I got from him was "so that it doesn't sound like a bowl back lute so that your hand is in the right position to play it and it saves on bracing". I suspect there may be bit more to it than that.

I never had to pull the top of the ones I repaired (just re glue back ribs) but from memory I recall them having a thin brace above and below the sound hole and nothing on the fall away.

As for sound, well I like them... but each to his own so here is a link


youtu.be/

[Rick Turner]

They're "ladder braced" usually with two or three lateral braces in addition to the common but not universal top bend.

[Rick Turner]

The top bend is there to provide strength to the top in lieu of having to add additional braces. It stiffens the top tremendously...for better or worse tonally. Many classical mandolinists still prefer the sound of bowl backed instruments to the more modern carved styles, and the F-5, king of Bluegrass, has never been accepted as a clear winner in the classical mando world where carved alternatives like the Lyon and Healy instruments are very highly regarded.

See Martin Style A as an example of a bent top, flat backed mandolin.

[Arnt]

I would like to share a sheepshead BBQ and a beer with you sometime.

It would be my pleasure, you know you have a standing invitation, Kim! You guys don’t know this, but thanks to Kim I have a nice selection of Aussie timber samples with little notes on each one saying what they are…

We won't ask what you were doing in a pawn shop in Estonia

Thanks, Graham...


I picture the bent top (or "pliage" in French, that's what the Selmer people called them when they used them on their guitars) like a folded paper; without the fold the paper is all floppy, with the fold... well, you all know what folding does to a paper! So like Rick says, it adds tremendous strength without any additional weight. It is so rigid that I imagine this bend "cuts the soundboard in two" in the way it works, and that the tops acts quite differently north and south of the bend that separates the two. At any rate, the sound it produces is quite characteristic.

[graham mcdonald]

The bracing is usually two or three transverse, or slightly angled braces, two above and below the soundhole and the third slightly in front, but not under, the bridge. The bridge usualy sits just in front of the bend/cant/pilage, but I have seen a couple where the bridge is behind the bend. There are no braces blow the bend, other than a re-enforcment strip along the centre line. The transverse braces are arched, some quite gently, around a 15' radius, others quite steeply with a 6mm rise over a 200-250mm width. That can make building one quite compilcated. Robert Lundberg wrote a very interesting article on early Neapolitan mandolin soundboards in American Lutherie some years ago which makes fascinating reading (especially when you try to make one).

There is a canted top guitar in southern Italy called the chittara battente, which may or may not have preceeded the development of the canted-top Neapolitan mandolin in Naples in the first half of the 18th century. It is an interesting way to make an instrument and worth an experiment or two

cheers

graham

[sebastiaan56]

Graham,

I have an 70's Ibanez, still plays etc, If you reckon you can get it back on you are welcome, if you reckon you can get it back on. Then again maybe an old one off Ebay might be the go,



Hi Rick

Vega Cylinderbacks also do it for me,

Sebastiaan

[graham mcdonald]

Thanks Sebastiaan, but all I need is a junker, something with the head broken off or the bowl well split apart with the soundboard more or less in one piece. It is just for a show and tell. There are thousands of them out there, it is just a matter of laying hands on one.

cheers

graham