A Concert Nylon for Healdsburg

Here are some pictures of the Concert Nylon Cutaway I'm building with Italian alpine spruce and Macassar ebony that I'll be displaying at the 2007 Healdsburg Guitar Festival. I'm using an interesting bracing scheme on this guitar, a hybrid design using elements of very minimal x-bracing and lattice bracing.

Happy Birthday Grand Concert #36!

Happy birthday #36! I built this latest Grand Concert so that I could offer it at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in August of 2007 in California. The top is real pretty piece of bearclaw Sitka spruce, the back and sides are African mahogany, the binding is curly koa, the rosette is thuya burl, and I picked out some nicely figured cocobolo for the bridge, fingerboard, and headplates. Despite all these woods, I feel that the guitar has a beautiful overall visual theme. I'm very happy with the tone, it resonates very freely despite having been played for 3 minutes. The bass is very full, and the instrument responds fully to a very light touch.

Chris' Multi-Scale Baritone Ready for Lacquer

Today I finish sanded and detailed Chris' Chris' redwood and ziricote multi-scale baritone, so it's ready for me to bring it over to Addam Stark's shop, where it will get a thin coat of expertly applied nitrocellulose lacquer. Luthiers' Mercantile certainly did get us started on the right foot with all that lovely wood for the back and sides, and it's really nice, solid wood. I like the way the ziricote headplate, fingerboard, rosette and (as yet unmade) bridge tie in so nicely to the look on this one. Tonight I'll be keeping it in the living room, looking it over from time to time for the tiniest hairline scrath to remove...neatness counts! :)

Building Chris' Multi-Scale Neck

I've finished assembling the component parts of the neck for Chris' multiscale neck. This includes assembling the back-veneered headstock and heelblock, laying in the dual action adjustable truss rod, binding the ziricote fingerboard with bloodwood which matches the body, gluing the fingerboard to the neck, gluing the faceplate on the headstock, gluing on the bloodwood heelcap, and putting abalone dots into the side of the fingerboard. Next I'll start carving. :)