Prior to MagicTimber’s creation, we studied several concepts regarding treatments against vibrations, looking for the best spikes currently in production. Almost three years have been devoted to studies, research and listening tests.
Everyone knows that the vibrational issue in audio equipment is one of chief relevance, and sometimes either micro- or nanovibrations are the causes of deep changes in audio reproduction.
We have deeply investigated the way by which such phenomenon takes place, and it’s our understanding that these microvibrations induce feedback in electro-electronic systems (circuits, PC boards, and components mostly) what we call "electromechanical feedback"; This is something that happens in a very subtle scale (difficult to measure) but strong enough in order to change timbre and the musical presentation of ensembles as a whole. Keeping this concept in mind, we could take advantage of such "microphonic" characteristics (caused by electromechanical feedback) by tuning our MagicTimber, in order to transform vibrations and resonances in favor of our psychoacoustic mechanism of perception.
To that end, we went for materials and geometry possessing natural and harmonic states of vibration with respect to our senses.
Among the several materials available, wood is the one material that generally resonates in a natural and comfortable way to our ears, and our psychoacoustic mechanism "understands" that certain resonances and damping characteristics present in the wood sound harmonic to us.
The most experienced luthiers know, e.g., how to choose the most suitable woods for each of a musical instrument’s parts, a magical combination of several variables (wood choice, their ageing, stabilization time and density); all this influences sound propagation speed and also the way vibrations are absorbed into the wood’s internal structure, seeing that the ideal combination creates the rich tone and harmonics we seek so dearly. Therefore, having talked to many Luthiers who are experts in their field, we went in search of unique and special woods which could provide special timbres. After several tests, we decided on a rare wood in order to make this lot.
It’s called “Jacarandá Violeta” (Brazilian Bahia Rosewood or Dalbergia nigra) Referring to this lot specifically, it all started from a "rare find"; quite an old tree which felled naturally at about 130 years ago and which had been exposed to sunny and rainy seasons for over 70 years under the account we’ve been told; such long stabilization period caused the natural resins present in its structure to crystallize, something which makes a great difference in terms of timbre characteristics, this being one of the major reasons which cause this particular wood to have become so special (but which, on the other hand, unfortunately, allowed us to manufacture 100 sets only!).
Our manufacturing process combines high technology (high-precision CNC cutting machines) to the subsequent execution phase through manual polishing, carried out piece by piece in two stages, making use of cotton brushes only; that is, we use no chemicals or varnishes whatsoever (this does not become necessary since wood structure is crystallized). Such process preserves the wood’s best sound characteristics. In addition to the careful choice of wood, the piece’s geometry was determined by auditioning tests, also observing golden ratios.
A Lemurian Crystal sphere was employed for the Spike’s tip, a crystal endowed with special properties which add up subtle differences to the timbre.
