Thread: Body volume

Malibu,

GALs big red books have lots of articles on the subject of instrument acoustics and what controls same.

My knowledge of the science of it all is limited but I do know that body size and shape of a sound chamber and diameter of soundhole will all effect resonance of the instrument....all to do with something called the Helmholtz frequency. Thickness of top will also affect the helmholtz frequency.

Thanks, I've done a bit of browsing on helmholtz resonators and the science behind guitar acoustics in general. It can all be boiled down to a collection of maths formulas and proven on paper (not that I'm a mathmatician by any stretch) and it's fascinating to see how a guitar works.
From what I can gather, everything you said makes a big difference to the final result; even down to the shape and position of the soundhole on the soundboard.
Being that it's not an exact science, I couldn't find anything anywhere to indicate volume vrs tonal quality of the guitar.
Here's an interesting site on it all anyway (plus a few other instruments too)

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/guitar/