But technology might just hold the answer according to a group at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech. Here, a diverse collection of engineers, acousticians, material scientists, and museum curators have come together with one of Spain’s top luthiers in an attempt to deepen the understanding of what makes guitars sound like they do. They are analysing the vibrational and acoustic performance of concert-grade classical guitar components throughout the construction process, beginning with just the soundboards, and steadily working up through different stages of completion to the final, finished guitar. Then, in a second phase, they are analysing antique guitars from long-dead masters like Antonio de Torres, with the kind help of the Museu de la Música de Barcelona. Since obviously the group cannot unglue these components of Spain’s heritage, the group instead characterises the complete instrument, and then draws revealing comparisons with the results gleaned from modern instruments.
Ultimately, they hope to find relationships between the structural properties and the acoustic performance of the very best guitars, to help understand how to select materials and construction methods better than ever before.
“It’s an ambitious project,” admits Marco, the acoustic expert and keen guitar player leading the effort. “Working with historical instruments in my country is pioneering, and research into guitars has not been done with an interdisciplinary group like this before.” It took considerable effort to bring together: engineers were not used to working with musical instruments, while luthiers were initially sceptical, fearing the engineers’ mathematical ways entering their artistic domain.