Until today, a variety of instruments are made of wood. Especially in the field of string instruments, wood is the material of choice, due to its good resonance qualities. The requirements on tonewood however are very high compared to ordinary lumber. In order to be used in instruments, wood needs to be very dimensional stable, has to have sufficiently high mechanical properties, and of course its acoustic behavior needs to be appropriately high, depending on the component and the instrument in which the material should be used (Wegst 2006). Due to their superiority concerning most of these properties, tropical woods like indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia [L.]) or cedro (Cedrela odorata [L.]) are chosen over European wood species for the construction of string instruments in particular. Over the last few years however the research on thermal modification of wood have led to the development of processes for the creation of tonewoods derived from European wood species with improved acoustic behaviour (Pfriem 2006, Zauer et al. 2016). One aim of this research is to reduce the deployment of tropical woods in the instrument industry by substituting them with European species. In this study, the effect of three different thermal modification processes on the acoustic properties of four european wood species was examined.
Keywords: thermal modification, tonewoods, acoustic properties
Authors
Tobias Bender
Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Eberswalde, Germany
Lothar Clauder
Alexander Pfriem
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