First draft of a classic

 

In the fine tradition of posting new guitars shortly after they are roughed in and first strung up.....  I give a couple crappy photos of my first crack at building a proper classical guitar.

The basic specs are an Engelmann Spruce top braced more-or-less following a Torres/Hauser'ish design.  Nothing too crazy yet. Back and sides are Mulberry, which is uncommon, but hey it sounds great and is very pretty.   Natural tap-tone of the body is F# -- while studying how to construct these things many of the luthiers say that is a good thing.

After that I started to get adventurous. The neck is a essentially an "I-Beam" design.  Thick (1/4") Pau Ferro (a.k.a. Bolivian Rosewood or Morado or Santos) finger board, then a layer of Douglas Fir sandwiched between another 1/4" bit of Pau Ferro.   I more or less took this from the Ken Parker (RIP!) Archtop neck design -- a Douglas Fir core lamented inside hardwoods.   In my case I left the Fir exposed, I really liked the look of dark / light / dark.

For mounting the neck, I did an "internal box" design like many of my other recent guitars. Since this is my first real classical guitar, I assumed I was going to get the action wrong and thus wanted it easily adjustable.  With the "internal box" design I've been using, I can easily put the mounting bolts on the front of the guitar, on the back of the guitar, or inside the sound hole.   This one I opted to do on the front of the guitar & add a new adjustment feature:

The top bolt is basically the "structural" one, and it creates a pivot point that allows the neck to be tilted up or down.  The middle one pulls the neck up (with the string tension), the bottom one pushes the neck down (against the string tension).  So when you want to adjust the action, you loosen the middle one a bit, use the bottom one to set the action, then tighten the middle one again to lock it all in place.  Very quick and easy.  Only gotcha compared to some of the more complicated designs (such as Ken Parker's) is that it does affect the tuning a bit when you adjust it.

A recent "Not a Luthier" video works on a guitar with the same basic adjustment design.  Levon notes that the 1800's Martin, Stauffer, etc guitars were designed to use clock keys to make the adjustment because everyone in those days had wind-up clocks that needed a clock key.  I used the modern equivalent, aka a set screw compatible with the ubiquitous Ikea allen key. 

The mounting bolts are also 1/4" hex keys.  So anywhere you go where *anyone* has ever shopped at Ikea, you will find the tool needed to adjust the action AND you can also completely remove the neck.  I have not tried it with this guitar yet, but I did recently take a steel string version built on the same classical body mold on a flight across the country. Disassembled it easily fits inside a standard carry-on bag.

So how does it sound you ask?  It sounds *way* better than my first classical guitar.   It sounds really good in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing.

The first person who got to play this after it was strung up knows what they are doing. They said that once it breaks in they'll record something on it.  So hopefully more to come.

Manuel Rodriguez e Hijos Caballero 11 Bubinga

I just finished gluing the bridge on my first "real" classical guitar build and couldn't find where I had stashed my nylon strings....  so I stole the strings off my original classical guitar. This is the second guitar I had bought when I was first learning to play:  a Rodriguez e Hijos Caballero 11 Bubinga.

More to come on the new classical guitar, in the meantime I thought I would document the Caballero while I had the strings off it.

If I remember correctly, I paid around $250 for it new, probably around 2008, I vaguely remember it may have been on sale.  It was between this one and a spruce top one from a Canadian luthier, I don't remember much more than I went with the Caballero because if I was going to buy a Spanish guitar, I might as well get the one made in Spain.

The Rodriquez e Hijos guitars have a reputation for being pretty good guitars for the price.  The price on this specific model is rock bottom, so that is a pretty low bar to clear.  It is a great guitar for $250, but you probably won't be mistaking it for a $2500 guitar.

The natural tap tone resonance is A#.  The top is 2.83mm thick, at least the parts I can easily measure -- it might be thinner in the lower bout but at $250 I assume it is uniform thickness with no attempt at voicing what so ever.

Bracing pattern is five straight, uniform cedar braces with two smaller angled braces on the outside. Doesn't appear to have been voiced, which again one would expect at the price point.

Here is a short video of the whole soundboard. The dust bunnies are an aftermarket addition.

One interesting bit is that braces have a big dab of hot glue (the "glue gun" variety, not hot hide glue) at each end.  I peeled one off just to be sure it was indeed what it looks like:

Generally speaking the build quality is good. I spotted only one quality control item, which is not visible w/o sticking a camera down through the sound hole:

An interesting note is that the string holes in the bridge have just enough variation that they may have been drilled by hand. The two on the right especially stand out, the lowest one is #2/B and the highest is #1/E.

I can't quite squeeze my arm far enough through the sound hole to reach the back of the braces. If I could, I might be tempted to thin them down a bit.  I can easily reach the tone bar.....