Sunday, February 2, 2014

About time


I cannot believe it has been a year since I completed my last guitar. I have two in progress, just about finished up with the experimental one shown here, and have a another experiment I'm itching to build (an *exoskeleton* guitar, with all of the bracing on the outside).


The basic idea for this one was a travel guitar with a small body (classical), very sturdy, and can be assembled/disassembled without tools. Bonus points for being cheap, interesting, and sounding good.

Almost the entire thing is made out of a single, cheap, heavily flamed-maple board found at home depot; the neck, the back, and the sides. The top is "craft board" spruce from woodcrafters; they have been stocking reject guitar tops for cheap - great deal if you are willing to sort through a big stack to find a good matching set.

 





The external experiments include:
  • fan frets, with the 5th fret straight; 24.9" scale on the treble, 25.5" scale on the base
  • floating bridge
  • strings attached to screws on the soundboard
  • two "half" sound holes at the top of the body, spilling over the sides a bit to function as a cut-away
  • raised neck, with internal neck mount
  • flat top and back, no radius
 The interesting inside bits include:
  • extremely rigid, reinforced internal neck mount - held in place with thick maple pates on the top and bottom of the upper bout
  • extremely rigid,laminated neck with a graphite core - no truss rod
  • the neck will hold itself in place, but I added two bolts with wing nuts just to be sure
  • the neck can be easily "flipped around", making it airplane carry-on sized (like this one)
  • extremely rigid, three-layer thick sides - it is strong enough that I strung the guitar up and played it before gluing on the back
  • classical guitar-style fan bracing with a pair of much beefier middle braces to handle the extra stress of steel strings
  • light-weight, laminated spruce and maple bridge plate which is a little longer than normal and the rear portion has a couple extra layers of laminate to hold the string screws
  • I didn't take measurements, but the total bracing and bridge configuration "felt" lighter than the X-braces and rosewood bridge I made for another guitar







Now just to break it in... initial impression is good, it has a lot of volume and sustain.