Rune's 7-string neck ready for final shaping

I've assembled the neck for Rune's 7-string multi-scale guitar, and now it's ready for final shaping. I'll be gradually shaping the neck using rough grits of sandpaper, and carefully monitoring progress by stopping often to "play" along the neck. This neck is going to be particularly fun since I'll be doing everything I can with the neck profile to make the extra wide fingerboard feel as familiar as possible.

Good Progress on Rune's first 7-string

Rune's 7-steel-string is coming together great. It's so fun creating the bracing on these unusual custom instruments. I start out by laying out the x-braces so that they catch the corners of the bridge, and from there I follow my intuition, thinking about stiffness both along and across the grain. As you can see, the body's been assembled and I've routed channels to receive the curly koa binding. After I finish laying in the binding I'll move on to building the neck. More soon! :)

7-String Guitar!

I've just begun building a seven-string guitar for Rune Mandelid, a very creative and highly accomplished jazz musician from Norway. The instrument will have a heavy gauge seventh string. Rune's target tuning, from low to high, is A-DGCFAE, and so we've agreed upon a multi-scale design, with the 7th string having a scale length of 28.25", the 1st string having a scale length of 26.25", and bridge, frets, and nut "fanned" out so that everything is kept in proportion. Confused yet? Here's a picture of an 8-string instrument that I built for Jim Saxa with the same design concept. The top on this instrument will be Adirondack spruce, and the back and sides are Honduran mahogany. I'll also be building a nylon string "twin" with the same specifications for Rune. What fun! Thanks, Rune! :)

Healdsburg-Bound Concert Nylon

Today I detailed and finish-sanded a Concert Nylon Cutaway that I'll be bringing to show at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in August of next year. This guitar features a beautiful top of Italian alpine spruce. The back and sides, as well as the fingerboard and bridge, are of Macassar ebony from eastern Indonesia, and the trim is curly koa from the Hawaiian islands. The purpose of this Concert Nylon model is to offer the full rich tone of a classical guitar combined with a slimmer 14-fret neck that will more comfortable for guitarists who are accustomed to playing steel string.