Oh Yeah, Happy Birthday #39

Help me wish a very happy birthday to my new Italian Alpine Spruce and Macassar Ebony Concert Nylon Cutaway. I'm very happy with this instrument. It offers deep rich basses and strong singing trebles and strong volume across the board. Some people wonder if the tone of a fine classical guitar can be had from a fourteen-fret cutaway design. If you find your way up to Healdsburg Guitar Festival this coming August I'd love to put this guitar in your lap. I'm certain your answer will be "Yes!". :)

Cedar/Koa Baritone for Healdsburg

Last week I brought Addam, who does the lacquer finishes on my guitars, a very beautiful baritone guitar built with a cedar top and dazzling set of AAAA curly koa sides. The binding is bloodwood, and the rosette is thuya burl. This guitar will be on display and available to try at the great Healdsburg Guitar Festival in Santa Rosa, California this coming August. If you've never been to the festival you ought to consider going. It's a breathtaking experience for people who appreciate the finest acoustic guitars.

Cocobolo Nut and Saddle? Sure!

There was a interesting online discussion recently at the Acoustic Player Magazine Forum (a really friendly place to chat about all things relating to acoustic guitars), about the possible effects of using ebony for a nut versus the usual bone or other material. This really picqued my interest. I've recently finished a Grand Concert with a cocobolo bridge, fingerboard and headplate, so I thought I'd use this guitar to test the suitability of cocobolo as a material not just for the nut, but for the saddle as well. As I was working on it, I could very quickly see that this was gonna look really, really nice, so I wanted it to work. To my delight, when I strung it up, I heard the same beautiful tone and volume as I was hearing with the bone nut and saddle. I'm going to be showing this guitar at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in August with the cocobolo nut and saddle, so if you'd like to try it out, by all means come by and hear for yourself. Of course the bone nut and saddle will be in the case as well. It would be interesting to get a little group together together one night during the festival for some comparitive listening, to see what various people hear.

Rune's 7-String Multi-Scale Nylon Is Ready for Lacquer

Over the last few days I've bulit the neck for Rune's 7-String Multi-Scale Nylon. The neck on this guitar was really fun to work on, with the 7-string slotted peghead and wide fingerboard. I also had fun today making the skewed bridge. I started out by putting some graph paper on the soundboard and drawing on it the location of the saddle slot. Then I drew the shape of the bridge around that so that I could use that drawing as a guide, with respect to getting the proper string spacing and overall geometry. The scale lengths on this guitar are 28.25" on the bass edge and 26.25" on the treble edge. The lower bout of the body is 14.5", so that's a big neck on a small and very light mahogany guitar. I used the lightest mahogany neckstock in my stash, and the Gilbert tuners are remarkably light as well. I really can't wait to play this one!

Rune's 7-string Concert Nylon Sounbox Complete

I've just completed the soundbox of Rune's 7-String Concert Nylon Cutaway. Here are the latest pictures...
Gallery 2
Gallery 3

I have so much arranging the bracing patterns on custom guitars like this one. It's an intuitive process based on past experience. You can see where I've drawn the location of the saddle slot and the leading edge of the bridge. For me, that's the first step in arranging a bracing pattern. A main priority with this guitar was an especially thin soundboard and plenty of cross-grain flexibility, to prioritize the the bass in support of that low 7th string.

Rune's 7-string Multi-Scale Concert Nylon Underway

I've begun construction of Rune's Engelmann spruce/Honduran mahogany 7-string Concert Nylon. This will be a twin for the Adirondack spruce/Honduran mahogany steel 7-string I'm building for him as well. Rune's target tuning for both guitars is A-DGCFAE (bass to treble), so we agreed on a multi-scale design, with the bass edge of the fingerboard having a 28.25" scale and the treble a 26.25" scale. Rune is a very accomplished and creative jazz-and-more player, so I can't wait to hear what he'll be doing with his new twins.