Baby Boom!

It's a happy birthday again. This time it's my friend Dave's Koa/Malaysian Blackwood Grand Concert. When I brought this over to Addam's shop to get lacquered everyone over there said "Hey, you can't have a koa-topped guitar that's not all koa!" Then they said "It sure looks cool though." Well today I brought it back over there and they said "Sounds great...I guess you *can* do that!". Of course you can. The koa top provides a great percussive woody tone and the Malaysian blackwood (aka Asian Ebony) is very hard and dense so it really bounces that sound back out of the hole. Dave's a strummer, and I've always thought koa-topped guitars sounded so wonderfully blended and organized under a flatpick. He'd already picked out the back and sides, so, we broke the rules a little. I play fingerstyle and it works equally well for that, so I'm glad that Dave seems to be out of town these days...it'll be hanging on my wall for a little while.

Happy Birthday!

Time of birth for Mike O's guitar was about 5 pm yesterday. Friend and inspector Dave Hilyard came over to help me celebrate the occasion. The back and sides are mahogany and the top is Adirondack spruce. The fingerboard and bridge are cocobolo, something I feel will become a bit a trend in my upcoming guitars. This guitar is pretty unique, the frets are fanned and the bridge is slanted so that the bass strings are longer than the treble strings. Also, the strings are quite long. The treble-side scale length is 28.25" and the bass-side is 29". It's just like having two extra frets beyond where the nut usually is, so with a capo at the second fret, it's just like an ordinary guitar. Mike and I decided on the longer scale because he wants to play in CGCFGC (DADGAD down a whole step). Dave and I had it tuned at DGCFAD (standard tuning down a whole step). The instrument also features a side sound-port that gives the player a front row seat and creates a beautiful stereo field anywhere within ten feet of the guitar. I really love the sound of this guitar and hope to make more like it. I'm planning on having one for people to try at the next Healdsburg festival.

Mike O's Fan Fretter Nearing Completion

Mike's fan-fretted semi-baritone is very near completion now. On Saturday I installed the frets. In order to accommodate the binding on the fingerboard, the tang of each fret is cut short and the underside of the crown is filed smooth so that it can overhang the binding. The fret ends are then uniformly bevelled and shaped with files and then smoothed with fine abrasives. On Sunday I made a custom bridge, which is skewed in accordance with the fan fret design. To begin laying out the bridge I taped a piece of graph paper to the top of the guitar and then, carefully measuring from the frets, drew a line for the compensated saddle, and also the slightly less angled line for a hypothetical uncompensated saddle, which I then used as the angle of the forward edge of the bridge. Then I was able to lay out the pin-hole locations on paper, mapping out what pin-hole spacing would produce the desired perpendicular string-spacing. I like the way the grain orientation gives the finished bridge a bit of a swoopy look. It's getting real close to another guitar birthday! :)

A Busy Day!

I just got back from picking up Mike O's Fan-Fretted Semi-Baritone from being lacquered at by Addam Stark. Next week I'll be getting this one set up. Also, this afternoon Jeffrey's Sitka spruce/zebrawood Deep Baritone was born. Over the next two weeks or so I'll be revisiting the setup on this and getting things dialed in just right for him.

Jeffrey's Zebrawood Baritone is Back from Lacquer

On Monday I picked up Jeffrey's Zebrawood/Sitka Spruce Deep Baritone from Addam Stark's where it was expertly lacquered. On Tuesday (yeah, I worked on July 4th, but it's not really work) I put in the frets. Next I'll be making a bridge and gluing it on, attaching the neck, installing the tuners, truing the frets, setting it up with a bone nut and saddle and enjoying the inaugural strum. Clifton was my customer who originally dreamed up this zebrawood/bloodwood look for his Deep Baritone, and it must've been a good idea because Jeffrey saw it and wanted the same (but with some koa as well). I've gotten so many emails from people interested in zebrawood now, even a request from a publihser to send in photos of Clifton's guitar to be included in a coffee table book. That's fun!