Roger Siminoff has been writing books and how to manuals on musical instruments for as long as I can remember. I first ran across his work in the legendary Frets Magazine (of which he was publisher) in the late 70’s.
Siminoff’s website has posted a range of information sheets dating back to the publication of Pickin’ Magazine and his first construction book from the early 1970s. Roger’s latest newsletter acknowledges that sharing information has always been an important focus of his work thus, he has posted all of the instruction sheets that come with his many products on his website as free PDF downloads.
In addition to product instruction sheets, there are several other documents of interest including a white paper entitled “What Was Loar Hearing?” that provides information on the concert pitch that was in use when Loar was tap tuning F5s and H5s in the 1920s.
Lloyd Allayre Loar (1886-1943) was a performing musician in his day as well as a, composer, acoustical engineer, and musical instrument designer. Loar made numerous major contributions to the world of music.
He worked for the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Company from 1920-1925. At that time it was located in Kalamazoo, MI, While there Loar introduced the process of “tap tuning†to ensure that all parts of the instrument contributed to the whole of the sound.
There is also a Frequency Calculation Chart (Excel) that you can download, which allows you to enter any frequency for concert pitch and find the frequencies for all the notes of the common seven octaves. here is also a Fret Scale Calculator that provides you with the distances between the frets for any scale length and number of frets you choose.
Check out the Siminoff Website
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