Engineering the Guitar: Theory and Practice

Amazing Read, Applying many of the principles that I learned from this book as I am working slowly to start designing some Guitars from scratch. This book is more theory, If you want a book that has practical information for actually building guitars I recommend getting an actual book on being a Luthier and techniques.

An excellent book, Clearly written and interesting . Great photos and diagrams. Some freshman math is assumed, but is very well explained so not a large barrier to enjoying this book.

I am impressed with the book. I know Dr. French is a fine educator. The book is purchased as a gift. I am not an engineer so I cannot judge the contents. The recipient of the book will be a better judge of the appropriateness and strengths of the book.

I've only looked at the first few chapters, which are a rehash of what you would find in any book on musical instrument acoustics. So I can't say yet if the content will be worthwhile. But what is striking is how poorly the photographs are printed. Fuzzy, no contrast, dark and light bands across them, impossible to make out any detail; really unacceptable even in a book costing 1/4 the price. I'm amazed they let it go to press like this.

Excellent!

never used. wanyed to take back purchase, could not. useless information i dont need at all regarding the physics of musical notes

I will start with my advice: do not by this book. Why? Because of the photographs. Photographs are very important for understanding the different subjects in this book. The text continuously direct you to photos and when you get there… a bad surprise is awaiting for you, they are so poor and totally not readable, something with the printing went wrong and many of them are blur and covered with white vertical lines but shamefully they decided to publish the book as is (and by the way, even the "successful" photos are not on the good side of quality and even few pages were found with vertical blur line). If you are not familiar with guitars you are not able to understand the text without the photographs and you waste your money and time.

Neat book but very in depth and technical. Definitely want to delve into it more deeply when I have the time. This book should be in any serious luthier's library because there is a lot of useful information once you sift through the technical mumbo jumbo.

Useful, interesting book.

A good read for those with engineering or science backgrounds. Might be a tougher read for the casual builder.

I am doing the final thesis of the Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering about designing and building an electric guitar with digital tools.This book was very helpful for me to understand the guitar in a more theorical way.

Il testo e' volto ad esaminare il lato tecnico teorico da considerare in fase di progetto dello strumento. Molta teoria e tanta matematica avanzata. Poche spiegazioni pratiche.NON E' UN TESTO PER CHI VUOLE REALIZZARE UNA CHITARA

This book is great if you are interested in the engineering and physics behind the design of stringed instruments. It is not light bedtime reading but is superb if you want to know how a guitar (for instance) works and how the shape and size came about.