A new concert guitar strung up just in time for the 2022 California International Guitar Festival in San Luis Obispo, California.
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classical guitar
They say “variety is the spice of life” and I have to agree. I haven’t posted anything in a while so here is a potpourri of pictures. I have been enjoying a good mix of building and repair work as of late and have had all kinds of interesting instruments in for repair and customers come to me with interesting build ideas.
As far as the builds go, I got a chance to make a romantic era inspired guitar with a internal top or resonating plate (I’m not sure there is an official term for such a thing). It’s not a design that is common and I found it so very interesting as it bifurcated the air resonance into two equally strong notes. This is such a unique guitar in so many ways in that it uses Rickard Cyclone machines, a zero fret and an 18 hole tie bridge. I really love working with European Maple. It works wonderfully and the figure is eye catching.
The other build pictured is a lattice braced design for a customer. The back and sides will be Mediterranean Cypress and it has a new headstock shape as well. This lattice bracing was a sort of amalgam and tweak of things I’ve seen on other instruments. There are many different lattice braced guitars out there and I am hoping this combination of design elements results in something I really like the sound of and continue to pursue. In one of the pictures you can see the sled I made to cut the lattice with an expanding grid pattern.
In all the years of making guitars I have only ever kept my very first. I decided to hold onto this Spartan Model that I made last year to have something nicer to play. It happened to get a fingernail mark on the top and a few sunken pores on the back so it is technically a “second” and it helps me justify not putting it up for sale. I still figure I should post a few pictures as it is a different combination of things that could be interesting to some.
It’s sort of an upgraded Spartan Model with and elevated fingerboard and an 18 hole tie block on the bridge. The Bone Nut and Saddle is dyed with black dye. The bone only partially absorbs the dye so it’s more of a grey color I like. I also did a gradual shading with the same dye on a few lines in the rosette and tail block inlay. I used some black and gold Schaller Grand Tune machines and matched that with Jescar EVO Gold frets. I lacquered the back and sides while leaving the top french polished. The other main materials are Wenge, European Spruce and African mahogany.
This was a Romantic era inspired build that was way too fun making and in the end I wish I could have kept for myself. The guitar itself was an amalgam of ideas inspired by guitars from the Romatic era and not a specific copy of any specific instrument. The template was taken from an anonymous Italian instrument c.1840 and I would say that the bridge and headstock shapes are René Lacôte inspired. It is ladder braced in the fashion of so many instruments of that era. The main materials are torrefied Swiss spruce for the top and European flamed maple for the back and sides.
While being Romantic inspired in look and sound, this plays more like a modern classical guitar. The scale length is 650 mm and the width at the nut is 52 mm. Most of the instruments from the period have much smaller dimensions and this setup is much less of an adjustment for classical players. We also went with a tie bridge with 18 holes instead of what would have more typically been a pin bridge from that era. From afar the 6 pearl dots on the bridge invoke the look of pins. The other very modern addition was the use of some Rickard Cyclone 10:1 tuning ratio machines. They are definitely heavier than pegs or the 4:1 planetary pegs but are very smooth and less finicky in use.
The guitar is shipped and I can’t wait for the customer to get it and get his feedback. Sorry there are no videos or recordings but hopefully some will get posted in the near future. Also, I’m taking orders for guitars to be completed next year so please feel free to contact me if you want to get on the list. Pictures are below.
…and here are some videos thanks to Cameron
No one is actually going out but this guitar is ready to!
This classical guitar is one of the most dressed up instruments I’ve done in a while and it includes a new eighteen hole bridge; which is a first for me. It is an interesting change that makes the top of the tie block a completely decorative element. Usually, the block is bordered in bone to keep the strings from damaging it but with no strings wrapped over the top we were free to adorn it as we saw fit. With the added holes, a veneer of bone was glued to the back of the block for added strength. I also did a more traditional bridge shape so I’m not completely sure if the new tieblock adds any weight. I think it may be a gram heavier than if I had done a standard tieblock.
The back and sides are Macassar Ebony and the top is a torrefied Western Red Cedar. There is a rope / wheat purfling motif carried around the body, rosette, headstock and tie block. It has its customer specific neck dimensions which include a wider than standard nut and a 660 mm scale length on an elevated fingerboard. The longer scale paired with the other design choices make for a stiffer action and a good amount of headroom. I feel like I can really drive the top hard and the sound doesn’t break up. The frets are done in the EVO Gold fretwire up to the 20th fret and then the 21st fret (yes, we went there on a classical) is made of black buffalo horn that just fits on the end of the fretboard! To top that all off we put a gorgeous set of Scheller Tuning Machines with Baker style plates and Black Mother of Pearl buttons on it. I’m going to mail it out real soon so I’ll be excited to get the client’s reaction.
It’s always a joy to string up a new guitar. What is it going to sound like? The anticipation of those first few notes starts to build while your fretting it and cutting the nut and saddle. I was just on some short trips to Montana and California and this guitar was waiting for me and thus in the back of my mind the whole time I was supposed to be on vacation. I’m excited to get it shipped out to the customer for their feedback and response.
This Spartan guitar is by many standards a plain guitar. It has a matte finish on the back and sides with nothing really fancy going on but I like that unassuming quality. It hides the fact that this guitar is everything a concert guitar should be in terms of sound and playability. This guitar has a unique looking Western Red Cedar top and East Indian Rosewood back and sides with a simple ebony binding and Honduran Rosewood accents. The customer opted for some Gilbert tuning machines, an elevated fingerboard and a sound port. This guitar is also the smaller of the two templates I use with a 640 mm scale and a 50 mm nut width.
Teaching is something that I haven’t done much of lately. I used to help teach a continuing education class where students ended up with a finished tenor ukulele. It was fun but more about rudimentary and basic woodworking experience for the students. Just recently, I was contacted by another luthier, who is primarily an arch top guitar builder, wanting to get started building classicals. His range of experience building arch tops is so far from the world of classical guitar that he felt he wanted some help. He wanted to consult with me and brace a guitar top in my signature style. I was a bit apprehensive at first but eventually agreed after a few emails back and forth. He flew in and we ended up having a really great time.
Bracing a top is fun, but more important to getting a handle on building classical guitars was the time we spent tuning two finished guitar bodies and a third partially assembled one as well as evaluating some of the raw materials. Showing him how I tuned the finished guitars was informative for him but talking through the process with him really helped to crystallize it for me as well. I’m usually just “doing it” by myself. It’s another thing to talk about it an explain the “why”.
Like I said, bracing a top is fun but its just one element. The interaction of the resonances of the top, back and internal air resonance are critical to voicing the guitar in a way that produces a guitar with volume, an even response across the range and is pleasing and musical. I usually just tap the guitar to get the specific frequencies but it was fun to throw some tea leaves on the plates and break out a speaker and tone generator to more dramatically demonstrate the modes of resonance. We also got to do the measurements on a guitar with the back off to demonstrate how much the interactions change once you close the box.
We did some basic analysis of the raw materials as well, which isn’t so critical to the makers of heavily built amplified instruments but immensely important on acoustic flat top instruments and especially classicals with the lower string tensions. Calculating the density and doing a simple deflection test is usually enough for me. It mostly confirms what your hands and ears are telling you. I do these tests because I start to doubt my gut and memory and the testing just makes me feel like I can trust my ears again.
Anyway, I was honored to think that someone would see me as any kind of expert and seek out my advice. I am always just making and stopping to talk about it was a different kind of experience. I think I will remain open to the possibility of doing some teaching in the future.
PS: I didn’t take any pictures during this consult so here are a few random construction photos of some guitars I’m working on right now.
