About The Michael Dunn Wall
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In Michael Dunn's own words...
I have been making stringed instruments for more than 4 decades.
I started out by being lucky enough to be able to spend 3 years in Spain working with 2 third generation guitarmakers. I went there in 1965. As I was going through my apprenticeship in Classical and Flamenco guitar construction, I discovered the music of Django Reinhardt one day. This in turn led to the discovery of the unusual guitars he and his fellow musicians used. Having never encountered anything like these, I set about trying to obtain details about their design and construction.
While visiting London in 1967 I located one of these guitars in the possession of Mr. Lou Gallo, a musician and teacher. A crusty old guy, he begrudgingly allowed me exactly a half hour to get all the measurements I could take of the guitar. It was a "D" hole with the internal resonator and reflector. I gleaned all that I could that day and went off to the British Patent Office with the number that was stamped on the guitar. I obtained a copy of the patent specs and drawing by Mario Maccaferri.
Armed with my new found info, I returned to Spain determined to try and build on of these instruments. I had no real way of knowing how accurate the patent drawings were as they have to illustrate the principle only and do not have to be dead accurate. So a lot of guesswork was in order for sure. I did make some of these guitars but without the resonators just to get the feel of how these would go together.
Upon returning to Canada, I began in earnest to figure out this type of guitar and constructed a fair number of them before I had it all figured out ( or so I thought anyway) Back then there were no books, no info on any of this in my end of the world. Anyway through many trials and experiments, things took shape and it was really because I was a reasonably skilled player, I learned an awful lot by just playing my guitars in my various bands.
I developed my Mystery Pacific model in about 1977. It differs from the originals in 2 basic ways. My interior sound box is smaller than the original Maccaferris and my reflector is attached under the top part of the D hole instead of to the back. Heres the principle.....The higher frequencies begin to resonate more efficiently in the smaller chamber as you play up the scale. Since these frequencies tend to dissipate more quickly as they cross the room, the reflector helps focus them straight out from the guitar.
The result is that a typical Mystery Pacific guitar will actually get louder the higher you play especially past the 10th fret. There is no fall-off at all.
Now the original Macs were considered to be great rhythm guitars and I believe that this is because the interior soundboxes were bigger nearly filling all of the available space inside . They would have resonated more efficiently in the mid range where one plays most of the chords.
This is just part of the story...I will add more to this as time passes. Stay tuned..
Hope you enjoy my new Wall assembled by Jeffrey Brown and The Guitar Wall. I am always available to answer any questions you may have about any aspect of my work
— Michael Dunn
