Experiments #2

Second round of el cheapo spruce & plywood. I really like this one.

The main experimental idea behind this one was to see if I could have the sound hole also function as the cut-away.  This helps some, but is not as functional as a full cut-away. It also sounds muffled when playing the guitar (it projects just fine), so I added a small hole on the side - that makes an amazing difference.

Other fun stuff includes a tongue-and-grove neck joint, like a standard guitar, but flipped 90 degrees & bolted through the back instead of from the inside. Easy to make, works well - I may try this again.

I also made the bridge out of purple heart and maple, that should make it obvious how I put those together.

This one went to Jonathan Carter for a short while, but didn't make it all of the way back to South Africa with him. It is now owned by our mutual friend and LTSP hacker Simon Poirier in Quebec.

Experiments #1

I got my hands on several sets of reject spruce sound boards for cheap. Toss in a sheet of really cheap 1/8" plywood and a couple of other scraps and you have the recipe for experimentation.

Up first, I had a brilliant idea for a pivoting, adjustable neck. Reality got in the way of the theory, but it worked more or less. Eventually I'll remodel the neck mount & finish it up.

What did work about this guitar was the sound hole. I really like the "Tacoma" style bracing, but many people think the relocated sound hole is strange. I thought it would be interesting to make the braces go around the sound hole, then I could place it anywhere I wanted to. In this guitar, the sound hole is shifted slightly to the left. The right side (treble) brace is fully in tact. The left bass side wraps around the sound hole.

I also tried a different approach to a cut-away. It is functional, but ugly.

Fence, part 2

One of my favourite guitars is the "Fence" guitar. It was a wonderful, warm sound that is reminiscent of a classical guitar.

We recently went on vacation to Hawaii, so I wanted to bring a guitar for Bully Soares, my buddy in Honolulu. Bully prefers a classical, so making another "Fence" guitar seemed like the logical choice.

The body is all cedar fence boards, with douglas fir bracing. The neck & bridge are black walnut mill ends (I picked up a whole arm-full for $4). Fingerboard is spare Madagascar rosewood I had laying around.

Hopefully this one will age as well as the original fence guitar...

Door frame

This one is a beauty. The photos do not do it justice - the wood has a gold-flack shimmer to it that cannot be captured in a still photo.

Carrying on the tradition of using recycled wood, the top, back/sides, and neck of this one is made from an old mahogany door frame I picked up for a couple of bucks at the ReBuilding Center (http://rebuildingcenter.org/).

Like the previous guitar, it has a shorter scale (24", IIRC), a pin-less bridge, and a hardwood/graphite composite core instead of a truss rod. Since there is no truss rod, I was able to make a thick finger board yet keep the neck very thin. The finger board (purple heart) is strong enough to float out above the sound board.

Both the top and back are 20' radius, which creates a significant drop towards the neck. I used an electric-guitar style neck mount with a cut-away, and sanded down the corner of the body to make it especially comfortable to reach the high notes (see photo to get the idea).

Fingerboard and bridge are purple heart (left-over scraps from a friend), sound board bracing is douglas fir (my favorite home depot 2x4), otherwise everything is mahogany.

Now owned by the Arrizon family.

Not dead yet

My oh my it has been a busy year or two. I have built several guitars, but never got around to posting the pictures. I've also done some rather significant repair work including a complete failure of a sound board (post coming soon to a blog near you).

So here is some of the back log.... hopefully more coming soon.

Playing with new ideas

Every now and then I'll grab a pile of scraps and try something new with it. In this case, I tried a couple new ideas:

* shorter scale
* no truss rod in the neck, it has a hardwood/graphite composite core to keep it straight
* pin-less bridge
* old-school style head

Turned out to be a playable guitar, so it ended up in the hands of Max Young

Cherry

Back to playing with recycled/reclaimed materials.

This one uses Douglas Fir siding, two doors off of a Cherry cabinet, and a Maple floor board (see photo on bottom left of the raw doors & siding). All the wood comes from the Rebuilding Center (http://rebuildingcenter.org/).