Thursday, May 21, 2009

Mark's Sitka Spruce and Brazilian Rosewood 8-String is Ready for Lacquer


Last week I made the neck and bridge for Mark's 8-String Guitar/Bass and completed a final round of finish sanding and surface preparation for lacquering. As you can see, the fingerboard is enormous! I was quite careful here to create a very slim and shallow neck profile to make the neck as comfortable as possible. With 8 strings on the bridge I felt there was not much room for the traditional thinned "wings" on each end of the bridge, so I changed the height profile of the bridge and I'm very happy with the look and feel of the final result. It has me thinking about this aspect of design on my conventional steel string instruments. A couple of weeks ago Mark came down from Berkeley to Santa Cruz with his two kids to enjoy the beach and they stopped by the shop to check on progress. Fortunately they were just in time to pick out a headplate for the instrument and Mark was happy to delegate this to his very young daughter, who took quite interest an interest in the matter, much to my delight. CUTE! Well Mark, she made a fine choice...don't you think?

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