Sutton Hoo

Sometime in the 7th century an Anglian King was buried in his ship on the banks of a river in Suffolk, England. Most people will remember the Sutton Hoo helmet (which is on display at the British Museum.)

There were also sufficient fragments to reconstruct a lyre. Unlike the Greek Kithara with the separate crossbar this is a compact rectangular instrument that gives the appearance of being made from a single plank.

The historical playing style, as reconstructed by Master Dofinn-Hallr Morrisson, is that it is strummed with the right hand (plectrum or backstroke with the nails) whilst the support hand mutes selected strings autoharp style. It can also be plucked from the right hand, and a modern master has demonstrated drone plucking with the left thumb as well as pinch harmonics.

Acoustically, it is a cigar-box guitar without a fretboard. Which I expect would make it relatively robust to changes in dimension and shape. Most people who have made a Sutton Hoo-style lyre have modified them in various ways for ease of play and ease of construction. I borrowed several elements from other lyre builders for this my first build, relying largely on instructions made freely available by David Friedman/Cariadoc.

And, yes, I dream about grain-matched sapele and torrefied sitka spruce but I decided to make this a budget build; fast and cheap.



MATERIALS:

White Pine: a short plank of 1 x 12. The most common (and cheapest) lumber at any store.
Basswood (linden): an eighth-inch thick hobby board (8" x 24") from Orchard Supply Store.
Red Cedar: another OSH hobby board, quarter inch thick and 2" wide.
Brass rod: one eight inch, also from OSH's hobby supplies.
A pack of cheap acoustic guitar strings from Starving Musician.

Total materials about fifteen bucks. (Staining and finishing adds a bit, but the instrument plays fine without all that).


BODY:

First step was drawing out. I scaled Cariadoc's outer dimensions (8" x 30") to the wood I had, then after drawing it checked to make sure I could still get a hand inside. In case you are wondering, I went for 6" x 17", with 3/4" side rails (cut back to 1/2" inside the soundbox). That gives it roughly the scale length of a ukulele.

There's two basic ways to make the soundbox on this; either cut out a hole and cover front and back with solid pieces of wood (quarter inch for the back...and I'll discuss the soundboard soon enough). Or you can carve out the cavity. I chose to do it the quick and dirty way. The two long boards in the picture here are guides to keep the router from flying through the side walls should I slip.

(Later in the rout I added a top board and adjusted the plunge; otherwise the unsupported router can tip into the gap you are carving and ruin the piece.)

Three passes with the router, and a tiny bit of clean-up with a wood rasp, and the soundbox is made.

Next was cutting out the hand hole. Typical jigsaw work. (I'm spoiled; I also have bandsaw and scrollsaw available.)

After all the holes were done I used table saw and chopsaw to take the original plank down to dimension, bandsaw to rough out the ends, then bench sander to round things off properly. The interior cut, alas, had to be approached with hand rasp.

White pine is strong enough in these dimensions, especially for "gut" (nylon) stringing. The go-to wood is ash, although spruce, maple, cedar, yew and others are all nice alternatives. Plywood will work as well; again, this structure is under small enough stresses that regular plywood will handle it. It won't sound as good, of course, but it can sound good enough.


SOUNDBOARD:

Rough-cut the soundboard to slightly over the dimensions of the body, and pre-cut a sound hole. The Sutton Hoo lyres did not use a sound hole but several modern versions do.

I made mine an arbitrary size and position -- I went for roughly a third, as the third has magical properties in musical instruments (directly center you risk amplifying the primary resonance node of the body. And, yes, you can calculate the resonance frequency of the cavity. There's a simple formulae many luthiers use for sound hole size but it is based on an ideal Helmholtz resonator. Later papers show the critical factor is actually the length of the edge, not the area of the hole (which is why rosettes work, and why a violin has f-holes).

Basically, soundboard is like the head of a drum, and is where much of the volume is coming from. Cutting a hole allows the air inside the sound cavity to communicate with the outside, raising the volume but also changing the timbre (favoring the lower frequencies).

This is why you want a nice wood for the soundboard. Basswood is technically a hardwood and has been used for tonewood, but the best vote for it is that it is better than plywood.

There's an extra bit here. Pine and basswood are softer woods and might not support a tuning pin. As with other builders, I reinforced the crossbar with another wood (the red cedar). Routed down the thickness of the plank, stuck it in, glued down everything. I could have used more clamps.


TAILPIECE:

There are a number of different ways you can fasten the dead end of the strings. I followed another Sutton Hoo builder in carving a simple tailpiece out of red cedar. For simplicity in build I drove a dowel (actually, a piece cut off the end of a cheap foam brush) into the heel (where I'd intentionally made the wall a little thicker just for this. The tailpiece is fastened to this heel peg with a loop of steel wire.

The original tailpiece had this decorative hole. For strength I replaced it with a solid tailpiece. I've seen a bunch of different ways of tying on the strings but I haven't found one I like yet. Also, the test fit used leather laces. Those snapped. I tried a braided cord and that creeped. So now it is steel wire.

TUNING PINS:

The go-to for amateur luthiers is the zither pin; cheap, easy to install, holds well and doesn't take up a lot of space. It is what harps use, even the harp inside a piano. I was in a hurry and wanted to see if this could be done on a budget so I went for hand-fabricated brass.

Simple; cut out lengths of rod, pounded one end flat on the anvil, drilled a hole, the chucked it in a drill and "lathed" a rough point on the other end. Drilled a size too small and pounded them in with a block of wood.

BRIDGE

The bridge is also carved from that same budget-stretching chunk of red cedar.

Actually, three bridges. Basically, all sound comes from the vibrating string. But a string has a small cross-section. It moves very little air. To get a performance-level sound you need an impedance matcher. It's the same thing that causes a trumpet to have a bell. The soundboard provides the large area to shove air. The bridge acoustically couples the string to the soundboard.

And it is a dance. The violin bridge is thin and flexible because it is designed to steal the maximum energy from the string. A violin string is continuously energized and has very little sustain. Volume is a trade-off for sustain.

So my first bridge was too low. The second used a nut-and-saddle arrangement like a guitar bridge; the hard contact point steals less energy from the string meaning longer sustain but less volume. But that didn't sound good. So the final bridge was raw red cedar, and I'm shaving it down to be thinner and more responsive today.

Position is also critical. Unlike a guitar, I chose a captive bridge arrangement; it is held in place only by the tension of the strings.


STRINGING:

Yes, this is out of order. You don't need to stain and varnish your instrument in order to try playing it. Period instruments weren't. Well, not really (a little linseed oil at least).

For this build I put a knot in the end of each string and passed them through a hole in the tailpiece. Next build I'll try a bridge knot. Then wrapped around the tuning pin and through the hole. Get them all on and then stand up the bridge under them.

A nice benefit to the short scale length is I could get two courses from each guitar string. So this is strung with the top three strings of a nylon acoustic set; the G, the B, and the E (Gather Before Elrond).

The lyre is tuned diatonically, often omitting the second scale degree (aka for C Major you'd tune C, D, E, F, G, A) Also often inverted, starting on the third or fourth degree. I tuned mine to A Major, included the second, and since like all my examples it only has six strings that means I have no seventh.

Seven strings is better. Seven strings means you can play many melodies (just transpose down the octave) and you can "fret" all the triads of the major scale (with the appropriate inversions).


FINISHING:

This is more a "lessons learned" for me. It is really hard to tell when you've got the scratches out on softwoods. I sanded like heck, stained, and only then discovered a bunch more scratches. Sanded out the scratches, tried a different stain, and it made a lovely ancient-wood look but in the end I went for a darker serious instrument look. 

And really, I hurried too much. And no -- polyurethane is fast but it deadens the sound a little. Shellac next time.

Next time. Hardwoods, perhaps tuning pegs. Seven strings or better (historical depictions show a break around seven strings; either they have fewer and are played strum-and-block, or they have more and are played plucked like a harp, front-and-back-hand style). 

Rosette because why not (when I have a laser, after all). 

But, really, I've learned what I need from a Sutton Hoo. It is time to build a different lyre, or perhaps a proper harp...