Physicist fine-tunes guitars
and other flawed instruments


By Ron Matus
Special to the Florida State Times

Florida State University biophysicist Michael Kasha didn't have to hear a classical guitar to know its sound was flawed. He could tell just by looking.

"My gosh, that's not how things work," he said, recalling his thoughts the first time he peeked inside a guitar using the mirror from his son's bicycle.

What didn't work was a symmetrical series of wooden bars on the underside of the guitar top -- a standard feature of guitar design for more than a century. Kasha, who is better known for his work on lasers and chemical bonding, first noticed that shortcoming 30 years ago.

Soon after, he began redesigning the guitar and other classical instruments, using science to "open up" the instrument's magic. The changes have turned the tradition-bound world of classical music on its ear.

"All his guitars have a much higher level of musicality than anything I've heard," said Kurt Rodarmer, a concert guitarist in San Francisco. "There's no doubt in my mind this is the standard guitar design that will be followed in the future. But there's resistance to change."

Kasha, 75, began teaching at FSU 45 years ago. He's the Lawton Distinguished Professor of Physical Chemistry at FSU and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. "He's in a premier group," said Ray Sheline, an FSU nuclear physicist who's known Kasha since they were doctoral students at Berkeley.

Kasha began fiddling with guitars in 1964 -- the year some other musical revolutionaries, the Beatles, came to America. Kasha bought a guitar to accompany his 8-year-old son, who was learning guitar on a baritone ukelele. It sounded great to his untrained ear, he said, until he looked inside.

"When I saw the guitar, and I saw the structure, I said, `This is strange,' " Kasha said. "This cannot be optimized for the perfection of the instrument."

Kasha knew, based on vibration theory used in physics, that the guitar's design couldn't possibly produce the best possible sounds, or what musicians call "brilliant tones." He could tell the symmetrical pattern of coupling bars -- developed by a Spanish designer in 1845 and used ever since -- inhibited certain frequencies produced by the vibrating strings.

The same principles used in developing new lasers, Kasha said, apply to musical instruments.

"Principles of mathematics and physics are universal," Kasha said. "So if you learn how a molecule vibrates and how a theoretical plate vibrates, you can explain how a bridge will vibrate, how a submarine will vibrate, how a guitar and a piano soundboard will vibrate."

Kasha said a series of accidents led him into the music world soon after his initial "discovery." He began working with established guitar designers and musicians, including renowned guitarist Andres Segovia. Once he developed a guitar that earned Segovia's approval, Kasha said, "I was launched."

Kasha, working with Seattle guitar maker Richard Schneider, has made 70-plus changes in three decades. The pair reconfigured the coupling bars into an assymetrical pattern; moved the sound hole from the middle of the guitar to the bottom; elongated and rounded the base; and redesigned the bridge and neck, among other changes.

The result, said Rodarmer, is a guitar that produces sound as if "under a magnifying glass."

"It has both enabled me to do things I wanted to and couldn't, and challenged me to make better use of the instrument's facilities," he said. "I have an expanded repertoire of sound qualities, a much larger grab bag of musically useful sounds."

Besides Rodarmer, other concert guitarists who play the Kasha guitar include Carlos Barbosa Lima and Ricardo Cobo.

Kasha has also focused attention on other "flawed" instruments -- including violin, viola, cello and double bass. And he's designed an echo-free chamber at the FSU School of Music that may be the best of its kind in the world. Kasha would not offer details because the patent is not yet filed.


Kasha said half-jokingly that he'll turn to structural defects in the piano once "the musical world says this guy knows something and we should listen." So far, the music world has responded with caution to Kasha's research. His guitars are made and advertised in Europe, but elsewhere many musicians and designers remain "suspicious."

"It's like a car company that designs cars that get increased gas mileage and are more efficient but look like something out of a science fiction movie," said Dylan Schorer, music editor for Acoustic Guitar magazine. "It's not marketable yet. It's not mainstream yet. But he's been very influential."

Rodarmer, who's been playing a Kasha model for 15 years, said the musical world responded to Kasha's efforts to improve the guitar as "an offense against antiquity." But he said it's just a matter of time before acceptance."Everybody has this image of a guy in a white lab coat with little beady eyes," he said. "But (Kasha) was doing it for his love of music, not his love for physics. That needs to be doubly emphasized. He's very much into art and music, and just happens to know a lot about physics."