• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.17-23
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• 2005

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.

• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.47-55
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• 2001

Violin bridge blank cut from maple wood with good quality has typical pattern of the radial direction in the side edge with minimal dispersion. This experimental study was designed and carried out to examine the effect of the physical and macroscopical characteristics on the compressive creep of violin bridge blank which had been imported from European manufacturer. This research arose from the idea that the maple solid wood with heterogeneous wood density and ray direction in the side edge would have uneven rheological property of violin bridge blank which is supposed to be pressed by the tension of strings. Experimentally, the compressive creep of bridge blank became smaller with the higher density of imported maple wood and showed clear density-dependence for the duration of load under the string tension of 5 kgf. Every bridge blank showed the behavior of primary creep stage(stress stabilization) having logarithmic regression creep curve with high correlation coefficient under the designed stress level. Even though the relationship between compressive creep and ray direction on the side edge of bridge was not so clear contrary to expectation, we could conclude that wood density and ray direction should be the quality decisive factors affecting the acoustical characteristics and performance of the bridge, the core member of violin-family bow instruments.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.11-23
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• 1990

In order to investigate the acoustical characteristics of the Hae-keum (Korean traditional musical instrument) tone quality, the spectrum and wave form of Hae-keum sounds were analyzed by the FFT Analyzer. The analysis was carried out by the varying of the tension of Hae-keum strings, the positions of bridge and the top plate's thickness of Hae-keum respectively. According to the experiment, the following results are obtained ; the over tone's amplitude nearby the top plate resonance frequency is greater than the fundamental tone's amplitude because the top plate resonance frequency is higher than the fundamental tone's frequency. Tone qualities are better when the bridge is situated in the middle of top plate and the tension of strings is larger. The inharmonicity coefficient of the Hae-keum's second string is 0.049 cents/$n^2$. The brilliance and richness is poor, because we seldom found the over tone over 5kHz and the inharmonicity of the Hae-keum is greater than that of a violin. Also we confirmed that we are able to get the best tone quality in 4.5mm thickness of the Hae-keum's top plate.