08/15/2026
To follow up on my last post, this really isn't about what a person does to achieve their sound. Whatever method a builder uses, and whether or not they can explain exactly what they're doing, doesn't really matter if the result is the guitar they intended to build.
In a sense, we are all modal tuning. We may use Chladni patterns, tap tones, measurements, intuition, or simply decades of experience, but we're all interacting with the same physical system.
To me, the movement toward measurement isn't about replacing those methods. It's about creating a common language so that, as a craft, we can begin to document and archive generational knowledge.
Does an experienced builder, trained in a traditional way and producing the results they want, need a new system of measurement to show them that what they're doing is "right"? Of course not.
Many of my friends who don't build empirically have chimed in on this discussion, and I think this is an important distinction. I might be able to measure what they are doing and explain why their process consistently arrives at a particular result, but the method they developed over decades has already told them that. The measurement may simply become a neat observation about something they already know.
I think of it like music theory applied to an amazing ear player. You can explain the harmony, identify the intervals, analyze the substitutions, and put names to everything the musician is doing. That's useful knowledge, particularly if you want to communicate it to someone else, but to the player it may amount to, "That's neat, but I already knew how to do that."
The measurement doesn't make the result more correct. It makes the result more describable.
That distinction matters.
I remember reading a passage in a classical guitar book describing a dinner attended by Antonio de Torres. At one point, a guest who was also a priest asked Torres the secret of his guitars. Torres' response, to paraphrase, was something like, "I'm sorry, Father, but it's in my fingers. I can't explain it to you."
That may have been true then. It doesn't have to be true now.
We have the knowledge and tools to begin putting names and numbers to what was once only a feeling in a builder's fingers. We can measure things that previous generations could only experience intuitively. That doesn't diminish their knowledge or accomplishments, and it certainly doesn't mean that a builder needs those measurements in order to build a great guitar. It gives us a way to describe, communicate, preserve, and build upon knowledge that might otherwise remain locked in an individual's experience.
Explaining the underlying nature of something has always generated resistance from tradition. There is an understandable discomfort in discovering that something we have understood one way for generations may actually work differently than we thought. History is full of that tension, but it has never stopped progress.
And there is an important irony in all of this. Being able to describe or measure what was once an esoteric feeling does not guarantee that you will build a great guitar.
Imagine that, Matrix-style, you could instantly download everything humanity knows about guitar making. Every relationship between mass, stiffness, damping, modes, materials, geometry, bracing, and acoustics. Every "secret" suddenly available to you.
You would still have to answer the most important question: What do I want the guitar to sound like?
Science can't answer that for you. Measurement can't give you taste. It can't give you an opinion. It can't decide what you value in an instrument or what compromises you're willing to make to achieve it.
That part remains the craft.
Ultimately, however you get there, understanding what you're doing and having an opinion about where you want to go are more important than any measurement. The measurement is simply a way of understanding how you got there, communicating it to others, and giving yourself, and perhaps the builders who come after you, a better idea of what to change the next time.
