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===Resonance-wood===
Resonance wood or tonewood refers to the harmonic table of many types of musical instruments, including those of the plucked, struck and bowed string type, such as guitars, lutes, keyboard and violin family instruments.  The species used is almost always Norway Spruce ([[Picea abies]] (L.)Karst), though some firs such as [[Abies alba]] have occasionally been used.
In January 2009 I had a discussing with Olivier Bouriaud about crossdating of a violin-type instrument:
Olivier wrote:
As a rule, radially cut timber is used on harmonic tables.  That way, the growth rings are easily visible and the distance between each other measurable, either microscopically, or via high high resolution photos. Large amounts of tonewood have been traded over the centuries, emanating from several European mountainous areas, from the Alps towards central Europe. 
Dendrochronological results strongly suggest that some areas associated with large musical instrument production, such as [[Mittenwald]] and [[Markneukirchen]], mainly used wood grown fairly locally.  There is also good evidence that wood from these areas also found its way into other European countries.


"There are very few coniferous forests in Hungaria and the ring series are more likely to come from Romanian Carpathians (there are quite many known resonance-wood spruce sites), or maybe from Slovenia. It is common that Hungarian factories import wood from Romania. This is why I am looking at the Romanian sites, they are just much more likely. But there were also famous resonance-wood sites in Italy.."
Good tonewood, besides having good acoustical characteristics, often displays a fairly steady narrow or narrowing growth, with an average ring width of about 1 to 2mm, occasionally narrower, with a straight grain. Low density associated with stiffness across the grain is also a desirable attribute.
Some harmonic tables also display slight ripples of the grain, known as “bear claw” or “hazel-fichte”. Some people associate this feature with high quality resonance wood, as it is found on several master instruments.


So question from me: what is resonance-wood? - A concept I've never heard of. Got this interesting answer:
Violin fronts are most commonly made out of two “book-matched” pieces.  Logs are split or cut into wedges, these wedges are again divided and jointed so as to show a symmetrical pattern on both halves.  The youngest rings (which will often be narrowly spaced) will be situated in the middle of the table by the center joint. In this case, correlation analysis between the two sides will result in highly significant values.  Although this is the commonest situation, many other permutations occur.  Fronts made out of one single piece, fronts made out of two piece, not book matched but showing the signs of coming from a single tree, and also fronts out of two pieces of completely unrelated wood, sometimes showing no statistical or graphical correlation. 


As you can guess, resonance wood is whenever a set of sometimes contradicting characteristics are present in the wood.
More than one condition is needed to qualify as resonance wood - from what I know:
* large ring width (say around 5 mm),
* shallow cell walls (reduced density), and a
* radial growth with as little variations as possible. Things like this.


That should lead to a wood with a large ultrasonic velocity in fiber direction. Trees growing in high elevation are more prone to containing that so-called resonance wood. The regularity in rainfall amount during summer is a key and places Romanian Carpathian in a good position.
===See also===
<br/>[[User:Lars-Ake|Lars-Ake]] 20:12, 14 June 2009 (UTC) (Copied from our forum. Original date 5 Jan 2009)
*[[List of references useful for violins]]
 
[[Category:Wood Anatomy]]

Latest revision as of 01:24, 24 November 2010

Resonance wood or tonewood refers to the harmonic table of many types of musical instruments, including those of the plucked, struck and bowed string type, such as guitars, lutes, keyboard and violin family instruments. The species used is almost always Norway Spruce (Picea abies (L.)Karst), though some firs such as Abies alba have occasionally been used.

As a rule, radially cut timber is used on harmonic tables. That way, the growth rings are easily visible and the distance between each other measurable, either microscopically, or via high high resolution photos. Large amounts of tonewood have been traded over the centuries, emanating from several European mountainous areas, from the Alps towards central Europe. Dendrochronological results strongly suggest that some areas associated with large musical instrument production, such as Mittenwald and Markneukirchen, mainly used wood grown fairly locally. There is also good evidence that wood from these areas also found its way into other European countries.

Good tonewood, besides having good acoustical characteristics, often displays a fairly steady narrow or narrowing growth, with an average ring width of about 1 to 2mm, occasionally narrower, with a straight grain. Low density associated with stiffness across the grain is also a desirable attribute. Some harmonic tables also display slight ripples of the grain, known as “bear claw” or “hazel-fichte”. Some people associate this feature with high quality resonance wood, as it is found on several master instruments.

Violin fronts are most commonly made out of two “book-matched” pieces. Logs are split or cut into wedges, these wedges are again divided and jointed so as to show a symmetrical pattern on both halves. The youngest rings (which will often be narrowly spaced) will be situated in the middle of the table by the center joint. In this case, correlation analysis between the two sides will result in highly significant values. Although this is the commonest situation, many other permutations occur. Fronts made out of one single piece, fronts made out of two piece, not book matched but showing the signs of coming from a single tree, and also fronts out of two pieces of completely unrelated wood, sometimes showing no statistical or graphical correlation.


See also