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Internal acoustic soundboard

I have been a violin maker for a number of years and in 2013 I was reading about Orville Gibson and the creation of the archtop and came up with the internal soundboard design. I wrote the idea in my book of ideas and pretty much forgot about it until the beginning of last year when I had a little time to build a prototype. It was just a simple box with the soundboard inside but it worked so well I went straight to the office of a patent attorney and filed for a patent.
Simply put, it's a quality tonewood soundboard that can be installed inside of any kind of instrument, in combination with a bridge that doesn't touch the top at all but passes through the top and rests on the internal soundboard.
The advantages:
1. The tall bridge gives more leverage to the strings making the resonance even more dramatic. (especially the bass strings)
2. Simpler lighter bracing can be used on the soundboard. (like an archtop) again making it louder.
3. String angles can be increased as well.
4. Probably the biggest advantage is that you can separate the acoustic sound producing qualities of an instrument from the box. To put it crudely you can stick a soundboard inside of anything and make it sound pretty good. If you look up my website uhlandguitars.com you can see my prototype of the internal soundboard being used inside of an instrument no larger that a Les Paul with quite remarkable acoustic sound. Bear in mind that the soundboard inside this instrument is completely flat and therefore the tone is kind of like a resonator. However another advantage of this design is that you can customize the sound of the instrument by customizing the internal soundboard without changing the look of the instrument at all.
What are your thoughts?
I would greatly value any input.
Thanks

I tried looking at your website but couldn't really find enough details. Perhaps I am not looking in the right place. Could you just cut and past a link that will describe exactly what you are talking about?

http://www.uhlandguitars.com/#!photos

There is one picture that shows the internal soundboard in the QR 165 while I was putting it together. This is the flat soundboard that sounds like a resonator but you could do a radius with the bracing on the bottom and it would sound much more traditional

So this is more like a double back guitar, in that it's a floating sound board just off of the back?
I believe I've read where Contreras built some guitars in this style.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

No, it's firmly attached and the bridge sets on it. Direct drive you might say.

I've really been puzzling over why it works so well. Its sort of counter intuitive in some ways. I realize that it will never replace a straight acoustic (although I've played with a few drednaughts and they really sound good) it will do some things really well.

So, more like the bridge post attach to the inner top and the bridge sets above the outer top? I'm obviously having a difficult time picturing whats going on here.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Bridge doesn't touch the top at all.

It's an interesting idea. From your web site it looks like you are using this approach on semi-hollow body electric guitars. The guitar in the videos on your web site certainly sounds like has a resonator-like tone when played unplugged. I'm wondering what the goal is though since semi-hollow bodies are generally not played unplugged. In the second video when it's played plugged in, it sounds pretty much like a semi-hollow body to my ears and I don't hear much of the resonator quality then (with the usual caveats about listening to something on youtube through computer speakers).



I'm wondering why this is an advantage. Do you mean that it allows you to add in an acoustic tone with some usable volume that would otherwise be absent?

Do you know what Orville Gibson's intent was with his internal soundboard?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

In 1897, Benjamin McLaughlin patented a banjo that had a similar internal soundboard. In fact it had an internal second body. The inside body was a carved top, which the bridge sat upon. The primary outside body was a flat top, which was also coupled to the bridge but didn't support it. I have one of the instruments and it's fascinating if not particularly practical. Here's a link to the patent drawing:

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pages/US591288-0.png

Dave

That's great! I hadn't seen that before.

As far as the function of the ones I'm building, they really do have a powerful and nice sound unplugged. I certainly think there will be an appeal to being able to get it out and play it without dragging out the amp.

Here is my feedback, for what it is worth:

The information on your website is really only about electric guitars. Electric guitars are meant to be listened to plugged in. No offense, but your electric guitars unplugged sound like most semi-hollow electric guitars that are not plugged in. Maybe the videos don't convey something that you experience in person. But more to the point, for an electric, which is meant to be listened to plugged in, any acoustic enhancements need to be aimed at making it sound better plugged in, rather than sound better unplugged. If your enhancements make it have a better plugged in sound, that's great. But I didn't notice anything about the plugged in sound that made it stand out. Again, maybe the videos are not conveying something that is experienced in person.

If your goal is to create an electric guitar that really can be left unplugged and used to perform unplugged, I'm not seeing where this design works. Yes, it appears to produce more sound than a solid body, but the tone doesn't jump out at me as being pleasing. The similarities between what I heard on the videos and a resonator come from the narrow bandwidth of the tone. Does that mean a performer will use this guitar instead of a real resonator? Probably not.

As for your experiments with truly acoustic guitars, I look forward to seeing and hearing what you come up with. I have nothing to go on other than your comments at this point.

Sorry if this comes off as negative, but when people come up with something new that they have fallen in love with, and they start making business plans around this idea, I think they need to hear the negative stuff early on. Not everybody is going to love this idea as much as you do. I'm not in love with your idea. Why do you think that is? Is it because you didn't sell the idea better, or is it just not as revolutionary (or, frankly, as good) an idea as you thought it was? Food for thought. I hope this is helpful; I really do.

Good to see someone going "outside the box", looks really good and well made
No offence intended, but my personal impressions -
1) sounds more like a slightly muffled banjo than a resonator unamplified (may be audio recording)
2) seems very counterintuitive to take a soundboard and then enclose it inside a box (albeight with decent sized soundholes)
2) Stick decent pickups on almost anything with strings and putting it though a good amp can sound good, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9-ltPsbw9g

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Hey, I really appreciate your candor. To be perfectly honest that's why I posted this here because I knew there would be critical (not in a bad sense) people with lots of knowledge looking at it. I built that electric acoustic guitar because I needed something that looked nice to show people my idea. All I had before were some Frankenstein looking things I know if I figure out what to build I'll be able to sell them. Anything that can get as much acoustic sound out of a smaller box as this (especially when that seems to be the trend towards smaller instruments) will certainly be interesting.
It is just a video I took with my phone, so the sound on the video doesn't really show what it will do.
I love the shovel!

A comment on your site.... Have you tried opening it up with your iphone? There seem to be formatting functions that prevent people from moving around the page or zooming.... All I can see is half pictures when I click on them because they go outside the limits your site lets me scroll.....

It's unfortunate because you do have some really nice pictures... I just can't click them or they jam up everything.

That's strange. What kind of phone do you have?

Ok I think I see what you did there now. IDK if that would transfer any tone through pickups and amp either but I do play my electric guitars unplugged quite a bit actually. The best sounding electric guitar I ever had when played acoustically had a thick redwood top. It sounded great. I like to play unplugged because I think it's a good thing to do for practice. I think hearing the notes on the guitar and learning how to get a good fretted sound unplugged makes me a better player, plus my wife approves when she's trying to take a nap If it works well for that then some people might actually appreciate it.

Jose Fernandez did something like that with his 'camera' guitar except his internal soundboard had a large hole in it. IIRC he said the guitar was more quiet but had a great tone.

Welcome to the forum, Jim, and thanks for sharing your work with us. Good luck with your new endeavor. It looks like fun!

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George :-)

Thanks

Internal sound chambers and soundboards of various sorts have been tried many times over the years. The most successful was probably the Maccaferri design that was manufactured by Selmer, and has been revived in recent years. Gibson used the Virzi 'tone enhancer' in their high end archtop guitars and mandolins for some time. Most of those have, as I've ben told, been removed since; some folks call them 'tone destroyers'. Most of the others I've heard of have been one-offs, or maybe two-offs, by individuals.

The acoustic problem with an internal sound board is that it's less effective at communicating with the outside than one that's just out on the top. Since there's very little energy in a plucked string you really can't afford to waste any of it. Partisans of the design tend to point to the fact that it's' protected from contact, and hence damping, by the players arm. Whether that's enough to make up for the other drawbacks is debatable. As you multiply moving surfaces and sound chambers things rapidly get more complicated. This in not inherently a bad thing: the guitar is designed to be complicated, since that's what makes the tone interesting. It does make it harder to get any sort of control over things though. It also unavoidably adds to structural complications. As the home built airplane folks say: " If it's not there, it doesn't cost anything or weigh anything, and it can't break so you don't have to fix it". Selmer seems to have altered Maccaferri's design to leave out the internal sound chamber as soon as they could.

Does the bridge actually sit on the transverse brace of the internal top with no fixation to the actual top? Is it fixed to the brace or just held by string pressure? Tailpiece is fixed to the top I assume.

Kind of like a biscuit bridge on a reso except the cone is wood.

It sounds like a reso acoustically and like a reso with a magnetic pickup plugged in.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Separate from your structural idea, I would respectfully suggest that you reevaluate the content of your web site. Those old sayings like "You only get one chance to make a first impression" and "First impressions are the most lasting" have a lot of merit. This is especially important when attempting to generate interest (and hopefully sales) in something that is unconventional and requires people to accept your unconventional approach. To put it simply, what I saw after looking at all the pages on your web site is quite a few seemingly extravagant and even over-the-top assertions (most versatile acoustic electric guitar in the world, for example) with little or nothing on the site to back them up. When I see something like this, my snake oil detecting neurons immediately and involuntarily start firing. It may not be fair, but that's what happens.

If you want people, especially potential buyers, to take your idea seriously based on your web site, you need to establish credibility that your idea has real merit and that you are a capable builder of quality instruments. Both of those may very well be true, but you need to provide as much evidence of both as you can on the web site. That's just not there now. Try as best you can to go through your site as if you were someone who knows nothing about Uhland Guitars and see if you think it makes a compelling, solid case that would get people so interested in your guitars that they want to have one in their hands to try out and possibly buy instead of one of the multitude of well known semi-hollow bodies out there.

Photos of other guitars with the internal soundboard would be good. Right now, it appears that only one exists.
Under Custom guitars it says "If you can imagine it, we can build it. Any photos of custom guitars you have built?
Have you built a guitar with an internal soundboard that is not flat? Any photos/description of how it sounded?

My overall impression is that you may have the cart before the horse by putting up an incomplete web site now especially if you are still in the "gearing up for production" phase. I admire people who try something different and and are willing to create a new business of their own, but it's important to get the introduction of your unconventional idea to the world right if you want to have a real chance of making a go of it.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Thanks.

It's sometimes, no often frustrating because no one believes it. Seems it's pretty hard to communicate. I plan on being at the summer NAAM show and it will really help to have people be able to really hear it themselves. When I say that this little Les Paul size body is making more acoustic sound than an ES335 I've not stretching anything but rather understating it. It might be stretching it to say that it's twice as loud as a 335 but it's amazing that it's louder at all. If you played the new Gibson hollow body Les Paul's they hardly even do anything.