Imagine that someone is researching the acoustic guitar and wishes to unveil the secrets of the guitar sound. The tidal wave of academic research on acoustic instruments was in the eighties of the last century and only exercised at selected universities. The results are indispensable, but too fragmented and too brittle to base predictive design on and most of all they are not expanding anymore. They are bricks without sufficient cement. Other sciences come to the rescue, enabling simulation, while respecting established facts. Mechanical engineering, theory of elasticity and physical and physiological acoustics are sourced, applying their established laws to the guitar case. This may result in the prediction of air vibrations, following the touch of a string. Human perception, with its mysterious cross links, is needed to understand what we believe we are hearing. What the brain hears is more than what the ear senses.
Suppose that this can be forged to a consistent system of sound production and musical hearing, how must one build a guitar to cause precisely a certain sound? Here we enter the more practical domain of the luthier. The luthier brings his experience to the table, which is for real but often not completely understood. Searching the internet testimonies and guitar building books reveals that many hold believes which enable them to handle complicated issues, but which are not necessarily true or accurate. It is like a customer of the groceries, who can’t weigh all the factors in his decisions what to buy, because he will never make it to the cash register.
Instead, simple strategies are used to make decisions. Humans do that all the time and for the sake of progression accept the mistakes. A consequence for the luthier is that deviations from a known design cast a risk, until enough experimental guitars have been built to widen the envelope of successful designs. This is a very time consuming process. Knowledge based simulation may speed this up and that is what Knowledge guitars aims for.