Studies on the vibrational modal analysis of solid woods for the violin making II, Effect of annual ring width and cutting direction on the resonant frequency of the bridges

바이올린용 소재의 진동모드 해석에 관한 연구 -제2보. 소재 연륜폭 및 절삭방향이 브릿지의 공진주파수에 미치는 영향

European maple is famous for the optimum solid wood for making bridge which is the most important part in violin acoustics. This study was carried out to investigate the variation of main features, i. e. annual ring width and cutting direction of costly imported violin bridge blanks and to examine the effect of these features of the blanks on the vibrational characteristics of bridge blanks. Imported violin bridge blanks had somewhat large variation in major macroscopical and physical properties and there was little relationship between annual ring density and weight of maple blanks. Resonant frequency of violin bridge blanks had some positive correlation with weight, however, damping having negative relationship with frequency was seldom affected by any physical properties of the maple blanks. Deviation from the radial cutting of tail side(ray direction from top toward feet on the edge of bridge blank) lowered the resonant frequency. Consequently, weight and ray direction should be taken for the critical quality decisive factors(QDF) of incoming bridge blanks by not only inspectors also luthiers who tune the bridge by shaping and are responsible for the final timbre quality of this complicate instrument.