Tone Bars

Sunday, October 16, 2005

I haven't had time to work on my mandolin in a while, so I was glad to get some time today. I pretty much finished carving and shaping the top, and sanded it as smoot as possible with 220 grit sandpaper. Tonight I started working on the tone bars. I did some research on the Cafe, and some reputable members said they spoke with or heard from MacRostie (I think it was him), and he did some experimentation with tone bar placement and moving them a little bit didn't seem to make a difference in the sound. Based on that info, I took several measurements from the tone bar drawing in my Siminoff book, and traced the tone bars on the inside of my mandolin top. I took only 3 measurements for each tone bar, but if you eyeball my picture and look at the drawing in the book, they look pretty much the same. I started sanding on one of them (the top one, according to my pic) and I can tell this is going to be a fairly time consuming process. The good thing is, it's not very stressful. You just work on it, check it, and work on it some more.

****IMPORTANT- Please do not pay attention to the tone bar placement on this picture and the following pictures. I misunderstood the view of the diagrams in the first Siminoff book and did them in reverse. The bass side tone bar should be the one that's closer to the F hole, not the treble side tone bar. Thanks, Darren Kern 7/28/06