By Teja Gerken
Although the last few decades have seen some radical departures from the blueprints of such luminary guitar builders as Antonio de Torres, C.F. Martin, and Lloyd Loar, most people still expect flattop guitars to have a round soundhole pretty much in the center of the top and archtop guitars to have an f-hole on either side of the bridge. But more and more respected and experienced individual luthiers are experimenting with alternative locations for the soundholes on their instruments, and several large manufacturers have adopted these concepts and are giving acoustic guitars and basses with unusual soundholes a new visibility.
Experiments in soundhole shape and placement have been conducted throughout the history of the guitar. They often resulted in apparently random designs, such as Martin's Paramount guitars, which featured small holes all along the edge of a separated outer body, and Gibson's late-'20s HG-24, a flattop with quadruple f-holes in addition to a standard round soundhole. It wasn't until Kaman's aerospace-inspired developments for the Ovation Adamas and the research done by Dr. Michael Kasha and late luthier Richard Schneider (who influenced several of the builders featured in this article) that the move away from the single soundhole took on a more scientific approach.
It is important to remember that while an unusual soundhole may be the most striking feature in these instruments, it's only one factor in the overall sound. Anyone who has ever played one of Alvarez-Yairi's DY88-series guitars--which feature a closed-chamber construction with no soundhole--or has covered the hole of a guitar with a feedback buster, knows that most of the sound comes through the top, not the soundhole. So, why rethink the soundhole at all? In flattop guitars, the most obvious benefit of an offset soundhole is probably structural: the luthier can brace the top to achieve a desired sound rather than worrying about supporting the generally weaker area between the traditional soundhole and bridge. In archtop guitars, the move away from traditionally shaped and placed f-holes may have also been inspired by some of Gibson's early models, which featured a single oval or round soundhole. Luthiers began to wonder what new shapes, sizes, and placements would do to the archtop's tone and volume. A wonderful cross-section of unusual archtops came together in 1996, when collector Scott Chinery commissioned 22 blue archtops for his Blue Guitars Collection. The show also featured some of the first examples of another offbeat construction trend: openings in the side of the guitar.
I asked a number of luthiers about their work in soundhole design, including Steve Andersen, Steve Grimes, Steve Klein, Linda Manzer, Richard Mermer, John Monteleone, and Mark Wescott. I also spoke to Terry Atkins, director of product development at the Tacoma Guitar Co., and Don Johnson, engineering, R&D, and quality control manager for Ovation Guitars.
Seattle guitar builder Steve Andersen makes both flattops and archtops but is best known for his archtops, most of which incorporate traditional f-holes. He was looking for ways to create an instrument with more overtones, greater sustain, and a bigger bottom end. "A lot of my customers are coming from a flattop steel-string background," he says, "and you could put that really good-sounding archtop in their hands, and they'd want to hear some of the [bass and sustain] that they hear in their D-28 or whatever they play. You can pick your favorite old archtop, and it does what it does really well, but it doesn't do what they want to hear. My idea was to come up with something that kind of bridged the gap."
By "a leap of logic," as he explains it, Andersen figured that a modified soundhole might be the way to achieve the desired results. His initial idea was to put an oval soundhole in the top in the usual spot at the end of the fingerboard, but he quickly realized that it didn't make much sense from a structural point of view. "The top of an archtop bears the string tension by converting it all into a downward force at the bridge," he explains. "If you put an oval soundhole in the traditional place, you'd be right in the position where the top is carrying the majority of that downward pressure. The only logical place to put a soundhole in a cutaway archtop guitar is in the upper left [bass] side of the face."
Andersen believes that if it wasn't for the cutaway, it wouldn't make much difference whether the hole was in the bass or the treble side of the upper bout. But he'd still choose the bass side simply so that the hole would be in closer proximity to the player's ear, allowing him or her to better hear the instrument. Andersen notes that while he puts pickups in about half of his f-hole guitars, he has yet to be asked to put a pickup in one of his 17-inch, oval-hole guitars. He's even built one of his small 14-inch models, which he originally designed as an electric guitar for Bill Frisell, without a pickup. His customers seem to buy the oval-hole guitars purely for playing acoustically.
California guitar maker Steve Klein has been bypassing traditional designs for most of his 30-year career. He was one of the first luthiers to embrace Michael Kasha's radical top-bracing ideas and is consistently on the forefront of modern steel-string design. While the majority of his guitars sport a single round soundhole, Klein's new Model 43 and the Taylor bass (which he codesigned) have openings on the treble side of the upper bout. "The Taylor bass is a cutaway," explains Klein, "so we moved the soundhole into the treble side because that portion of the top in the upper bout is a very small, tight, confined area, which would be very hard to move. Rather than trying to drive it, we just put the soundhole there and tried to drive the rest of the top." On the noncutaway Model 43 guitar, Klein is considering moving the soundhole to the bass side, closer to the player's ear. "The difference is not nearly as evident out in front of the guitar," he says, "but that's not where the player sits."
New Jersey luthier Mark Wescott was a student of Richard Schneider's when he began experimenting with the offset soundhole concept. His introduction to the design was a baritone classical guitar that he and Schneider built for Kurt Rodarmer, who used it to record J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. "It worked so well," Wescott recalls, "that we both decided we would never put the soundhole in the 'normal' position again." Wescott appreciates the design's superior bass response, which he feels is especially crucial in his seven-string instruments. He also feels that the offset soundhole allows his guitars to remain very stable in varying climatic conditions. "I'm able to build a top with a nice low action that's not going to go haywire every time the humidity goes up or down," he says. "It doesn't deflect [or warp] much over time, either, so I think it's a good long-lasting design that is not going to require a lot of maintenance."
The Tacoma Guitar Co. is one of only a couple of large-scale guitar manufacturers that are producing guitars with offset soundholes. The unusual design is a major part of the relatively new company's identity. Terry Atkins says the idea originated with the Papoose, Tacoma's travel-size guitar. "We were trying to maximize the soundboard area for a very small body. It just happened that some of the principles that we used translate into a larger guitar as well." Echoing the voices of other luthiers who are adopting similar designs, Atkins says that by moving the soundhole into the upper bout, the top's bracing can be optimized for sound production rather than having to reinforce a weakened area. "It gives us a dynamic effect like a speaker cone," he says. "A speaker cone is very stiff in the center and has a flexible rim on the outer edge. That's how it maximizes the amount of air it can push. It works on a guitar box as well. We can lighten up the braces so they vibrate more dynamically, and we get a lot more volume out of a smaller guitar."
While Tacoma's soundhole may be the only unusual design element noticeable to the casual observer, Atkins notes that it's only one part of the big picture. "You really need to use it in conjunction with your bracing design to get everything you can out of that principle," he says. "We've used different bracing designs as well. On our C1C Chief we use basically a mandolin pattern, which has some offset parallel braces, and on the DM8C, which is our dreadnought version, we use an X-brace, because people playing a dreadnought are going to expect a dreadnought sound."
A pioneer in experimenting with soundhole design and placement is Ovation Guitars, which has been turning traditional guitar design on its ear since it was founded in 1966 by Charles Kaman. When Kaman's designers were developing the Ovation Adamas guitar in the mid-'70s, they were concerned with structural integrity. Not only did the Adamas feature a futuristic carbon-fiber top, it also introduced the multiple soundhole design that has became the instruments' trademark. According to Ovation's Don Johnson, the original concept was to have the sum of the 22 openings equal the size of the four-inch-diameter soundhole found on the company's more traditional guitars. The lack of a center soundhole allowed the top to be braced lengthwise, resulting in increased volume and low-end response. These principles have since made their way into many of the company's wood-topped guitars, including the entire Elite series and several of the inexpensive Celebrity models. Kaman offers special plugs that players who like to experiment can use to close some of the soundholes.
On a much smaller, more customized scale, Maui's premiere luthier Steve Grimes offers several models with double soundholes. The guitars were inspired by slack-key guitarist Keola Beamer, who was looking for an instrument to accommodate his low open tunings. "The guitars have this incredibly rich sound in the bass," says Grimes, who cautions that there are advantages and disadvantages to multiple soundholes and that they're not right for every player. "Someone who plays with a flatpick and plays hard, like a bluegrass player, needs that soundhole right under the strings," he says, "because the pick goes down far enough to hit the top." Grimes realized that greater clearance would be necessary for all guitars with offset soundholes, so he raised the bridges on his double-soundhole guitars and compensated by putting more curve in their tops. Instead of a lower-bout radius of 30 feet and a relatively flat upper bout, his double-soundhole designs have a 30-foot radius in the entire top. The double-soundhole models are also braced differently. In his steel-string guitars, Grimes shifts the double-X pattern slightly to the treble side in order to balance the guitars' huge bottom end with the appropriate treble response.
Another custom builder who uses offset and double soundholes is Florida's Richard Mermer, who makes standard flattops as well as Weissenborn-style Hawaiian guitars. Mermer firmly believes in the new soundhole designs but doesn't think that the market is ready to completely abandon more traditional designs. "If I go to a guitar show," he says, "I make sure that I have instruments with both. If you have all offsets, then you can be a little bit out on the fringe, since we're still educating the public." He also mentions that players who like to use magnetic pickups will have to stick with guitars with centered soundholes. Access to the interior, for under-saddle pickup installations or future repairs, can also be difficult in guitars with nontraditional soundholes. Mermer uses trap doors in the butts of most of his instruments, which he says add cost but allow access for making repairs and mounting electronics.
Renowned Long Island mandolin and archtop guitar builder John Monteleone was one of the luthiers commissioned to build a blue guitar for the Chinery collection. He came up with the Rocket Convertible, the first in a series of instruments featuring two ports in the side of the guitar closest to the player's ears, in addition to an oval hole in the top. His basic idea was that openings in the side would enable the player to hear the instrument better. The Rocket Convertible features panels that can be opened and closed, demonstrating the effect each opening has on the instrument's tone and volume.
The guitar proved to be "a brilliant learning exercise," according to Monteleone, who adds, "It did its job of projecting the sound to the player admirably. It's like sticking your head in the guitar. There is a very direct focusing of sound to the player. I thought it would sacrifice forward projection to the audience, but the real surprise was that there was almost no change at all. It was working both ways." Monteleone found that the best position of the panels was completely open, and his later experiments did away with the closable panels and eventually led to his current design, the Quattroport.
The Quattroport features a third hole in the side, located almost under the player's arm. Monteleone's intention was to remove as much wood as possible from the bass side of the instrument without sacrificing structural integrity. "Not much is really known about the effect of the instrument's sides on the sound," he explains. "That goes for violin, guitar . . . anything. I do know that the structural integrity between the top and back at the side's juncture is extremely important. You cannot sacrifice that edge and allow it to be detached. A perfect example is an older guitar where the glue seam has let go on that side edge. The instrument loses 70 percent of its sound. It's like short-circuiting the soundboard somehow. So it's important that the rim of the top and back be firmly attached."
The Quattroport also sports an elliptical soundhole in the top, which, according to Monteleone, gives the instrument the tone of a guitar with a round soundhole combined with the projection of a guitar with f-holes. "All those holes raise the air resonance so that you don't have that low thud that you'd normally get with a big body," says Monteleone, whose Quattroport is 18 inches wide across the lower bout. "I thought that I would lose the bass response of the instrument, and I didn't. I got a cleaner and clearer definition that is more spread out throughout the instrument--more like a piano."
Another unconventional soundhole appears in the otherwise traditional Absynthe archtop that Toronto luthier Linda Manzer built for Chinery's collection. Manzer has long been known for her adventurous designs, including the 42-string Pikasso guitar she built for Pat Metheny in 1986 (Metheny has since had Manzer remove one of its necks, giving it a mere 30 strings). The bass side of the Absynthe features a sliding panel. "When the panel is closed," Manzer explains, "the guitar projects forward as one would expect an archtop guitar to. But when it's opened, the player hears more from the playing position. From the front, the open panel makes my archtops sound more open, more harmonic, more like a flattop." Manzer believes that opening the panel does sacrifice some forward projection, but she likes the versatility it affords.
While the round, centered soundhole and the archtop f-hole still reign
supreme in the acoustic guitar world, these luthiers are providing more
and more evidence that nontraditional designs offer innovative, workable
solutions to age-old problems regarding tone and volume. Some makers are
inspired by the desire to provide a richer tone. Others are attempting to
create a hybrid of archtop and flattop sounds. Still others are concerned
with improving the listening experience for the player. Whatever their initial
drive, these makers are creating instruments that have left the experimental
phase and are serious contenders for pickers who are willing to step away
from the traditional and into the radical.