Notes and Observations

Here are a few photos of two new baritones i've finished recently. Both of Honduras mahogany, one is a 20" scale 13 fret instrument tuned in G and the other is a 19" scale, 14 fret instrument tuned in B flat. Both feature ebony fingerboards, faceplates, binding and bridges and are fitted with PegHed™ geared tuning pegs. Both are finished in lacquer. The 19" instrument has a 16" radiused fingerboard, a simple wood ring rosette, a tie style bridge and a B-Band XOM system installed. The 20" instrument has a paua abalone rosette and a pin style bridge with ebony pins. Both baritones are strung with strings chosen from the custom gauge Savarez Alliance KF single string offerings at Stringsbymail.com.


By the way, mahogany is a wood that darkens naturally on exposure to the UV radiation in sunlight, something we have in abundance here in Texas . These are already a shade darker than new after hanging by the bench for a few weeks. Over time, they will continue to darken and will eventually acquire that vintage mahogany color found in old Martin mahogany instruments.

I've spent most of the week rubbing out, setting up, shining up, stringing up, tuning up and adjusting new ukuleles. Here are a couple of new mahogany baritones i've just finished today, ready to go. Tomorrow i'll do a photo set with the baritones, but for now here is a shot showing them hanging next to the bench with the new claro soprano and the new claro tenor. They are #1 and #2 in my model A2 series, one a 20" scale in G, one a 19" scale in Bflat. They're both strung with custom gauge strings from the Savarez Alliance series, together with a wound D'Addario 4th.

Its the end of the day here. We've been suffering triple digit temperatures (106 yesterday) for a few days, so its good to have an excuse to sit on this side of the big glass window in my studio, central air running full blast struggling to keep up with the heat, finishing up a few new instruments.

Stay tuned !

Pics of two new mahogany baritones coming up in the next day or two.
Stay tuned !

Here are a few pictures of a R&D soprano in curly California claro and Adirondack spruce i finished recently. It features a 14 fret long (concert size) scale Honduras mahogany neck with an ebony fingerboard and faceplate, a decorative wood banding rosette, ebony pin style bridge, ebony bridge pins, curly maple body bindings and a bone nut (~ 1 3/8") and saddle. It is fitted with PegHed™ geared tuning pegs, finished in gloss lacquer and strung with Worth fluorocarbon strings.

Its the first 14 fret long scale soprano i've built and it has a loud, bright and crisp voice !

Here are a few pictures of a new tenor in curly California claro and Adirondack spruce i finished recently. It features a 14 fret long scale ebony fingerboard inlayed with customer designed and provided gold, turquoise and coral position markers, a slotted headstock, an ebony faceplate with a customer designed and provided inlay in gold, turquoise and coral, Honduras mahogany neck, abalone rosette, ebony body bindings with top, back and side purfling, an ebony pin style bridge and a bone nut and saddle. It is finished in gloss lacquer, fitted with Gilbert tuners and strung with Worth fluorocarbon strings.

It has a very distinctive bright, clear, nuanced and articulate voice. It'll be on its way to southern California soon !

I wanted to take and post some photos of a classical guitar i finished recently before i ship it to Massachusetts today. This guitar has a western red cedar top with modest bearclaw figure and quilted maple back and sides. Over the years, and with exposure to sunlight, the maple will turn a warm golden color and the mahogany and cedar will both darken, providing a striking countenance.

The plantilla was taken from a 1931 Santos Hernandez in a collection of an acquaintance and the soundboard bracing is similiarly in the Santos style, with the addition of a 2nd diagonal cross brace below the sound hole. The soundboard started off an even 2.6mm thick and was graduated around the bottom of the lower bout and in several other areas. You can see a photo of the bracing in this earlier note.

The guitar has a Honduras mahogany neck, an 650mm scale African ebony fingerboard with a 52mm bone nut and Macassar ebony trim, including the faceplate, bridge and body bindings. It is fitted with Gilbert tuners, finished in lacquer and strung with Hannabach Goldin strings. The bridge is drilled with double string holes in the Gilbert style to improve the string break angle over the relatively low saddle.

The guitar has good sustain, loudness, intonation and playability. The bass strings are solid, slightly dry and edgy and the trebles are clear and soaring. The overall effect is an articulate, nuanced, measured, dark and singing voice, most suitable for Bach or the Spanish dances. I'm looking forward to receiving a mp3 for my website from the new owner someday !

The back is ready to be glued on this claro and adirondack spruce tenor. You can see the style of bracing i've been using recently on my tenors in this photo. A thin ( ~ 1mm) Mediterranean cypress cross brace spans the widest part of the lower bout, thinning at the ends as it nears the sides. Three spruce fan braces are notched to fit over the cypress brace and glued in place. The cypress and spruce braces work to hold the top in a very slight domed shape, provide effective stiffness in the central part of the lower bout and providing compliance in the important areas of the lower bout edges.

After inlaying the rosette, the soundboard is sanded using my Performax drum sander to approx 1.75mm and is then graduated around the lower bout a few tenths of a millimeter, sometimes before bracing and sometimes after the instrument is strung during top tuning. The fan braces start off in the range 5-6 mm wide by 2.2-2.75mm thick, depending on ...

The neck is carved after the back is on, the binding and purfling done, and the fingerboard inlayed, glued and fretted. Its one of the very last things that happens before finishing, when building in the Spanish style.

While the weather in central Texas has been fixin' to get warm, its been cookin' around the workshop too.

I have a classical guitar in cedar and quilted maple in the final stages of finishing. It has solid, somewhat dry and slightly gravelly basses with clear soaring trebles. The instrument has great presence and the tonal constrasts tend to lure the listener in. The overall effect is one of a somber, dark and measured feel with a singing voice over the top, perfectly suited to playing Bach. In my classical guitar building practice, i've been in a spruce groove for a while so i found it a nice opportunity to revisit the cedar tonescapes. Its easy to get lured into the respective merits of each of these two tonewoods when building with one or the other for an extended period of time. There are those who will say that cedar lacks the lyrical and sweet qualities of spruce and there are those who will say that spruce lacks the presence and dark qualities of cedar, and there are those who will agree that each has a beauty of its own ! The pairing of cedar with maple is particularly auspicious in a way, because the purity maple often lends to an instrument moderates the stridency often found in cedar, contributing a very nice balance and interesting body effects to the tone. I'm particularly pleased with the way this guitar turned out.

I also have a 14 fret long scale soprano in claro and adirondack spruce and a 14 fret long scale slothead tenor in claro and Adirondack spruce almost ready.

After receiving a request for a 14 fret 19" baritone from a player in Hawaii, I've spent quite a bit of time on R&D for a new baritone model. I now have two new baritones in Honduras mahogany nearly ready. One is a 20" scale and one is a 19" scale. There is a short but interesting story associated with the R&D of these two baritones. The first, originally intended to be a 19" scale 14 fret baritone, became a 20" along the way. Its body was based on a traditional island style tenor scaled up about 15%. Half way through construction, it became obvious to me that with the standard sound hole placement distance from the bridge to the bottom of the soundhole would be too short and the loudness and bass response might suffer. I therefore made a 20" scale fingerboard for it, converting it to a 13 fret to the body 20" scale instrument.

For the second try at a 19" scale 14 fret baritone, i used a traditional island style tenor body scaled up about 10% (somewhat smaller than the 1st try) and moved the soundhole up, providing a better placement of the bridge on the soundboard. So the 19" 14 fret baritone became a 13 fret 20" baritone, and the 19" 14 fret baritone i now have seems optimal for this scale length and body size. The 19" one will be going to a customer in Hawaii RSN (real soon now)' and the 20" one will be available for purchase later this month. They are both sweet ! I'll write up some notes and publish some photos of them together for comparison purposes when they are done.


Lastly, i have a classical guitar in spruce and rosewood and several tenors, two of which are set up with RMC Acoustic Gold™ saddles and are MIDI-capable, in various stages of completion. They should all go into the finishing stage later this month.

Here are a couple of photos of a classical guitar in western red cedar and quited maple in progress. The first photo shoes the macassar ebony binding being held in place with tape while the glue dries. The second photo shows the fingerboard being glued. I use a fingerboard caul which distributes clamping pressure to the edges of the fingerboard. The ebony fingerboard is held in position by two small bamboo pins, one at the 1st fret and one at the 12th so it doesn't move around while being glued. I use hot hide glue for the binding, purfling and fingerboard on my instruments. I also use it for joining bookmatched backs and fronts and for gluing the back on the instrument.

I follow two separate build threads which occassionally merge at points in time then wander off in their own separate directions for a while, only to come together again at a another point in time.

One build thread is my custom work, instruments built to order to customer specs, which incorporate my current 'best practice' in design, graduation, bracing and so on.

The second thread is my R&D thread, where i build in order to test ideas, develop new models, and generally refine my current standard practice. At times, when appropriate, the lessons learned from the R&D thread are incorporated into my custom thread and become standard practice for me. Once in a while i build an instrument in this thread not to test a new method or refinement, but just because i feel like it. Recently i've been doing this with sopranos, hoping to decide which of a number of different soundboard construction and bracing styles i've used in the past i like the most and how repeatable the results of each style are in different materials. I have a 14 fret long scale soprano going right now in this R&D thread. It has a curly claro body and an Adirondack spruce top. I'm using a method similiar to that found in tablas to control the compliance of the soundboard in specific areas.

I've had a couple of requests for baritones recently. Here is baritone #1, its back ready to go on. Its all mahogany and has a 19" scale. The body style is a tradional island shape in the general style of a Leo Nunes tenor, enlarged a bit. I'll know which thread it belongs in after i string it up and get to hear it.

That is a B-Band 1470 AST transducer attached to the soundboard in the photo.

Here are a few quick photos taken around the workshop today. I'm trying out some postprocessing techniques to make the best of unstaged snapshot type photography using the DSLR. Its an indoor environment with a mix of incandescent and natural light so a tripod is required and white balance issues are present. I need to develop a camera white balance preset that works here in my workshop.

1) The back is ready to be glued on a cedar and maple classical guitar. I use hot hide glue on my backs and on my binding and purfling to make removal of the back easier. The plantilla is taken from a 1931 Santos Hernandez guitar in the collection of an acquaintance. The bracing is a Torres/Santos pattern with a lower diagonal cross brace taken from the practice of Fleta and others.

2) The back is on. Its held in place with tape while the glue dries. The gluepot is on the right. Some binding and purfling, finish sanding, a fingerboard and a bridge and we'll be in good shape !

3) A 2001 Fujihiro calendar hangs on the wall. It features a nice collection of photos of Japanese gardens. Fujihiro makes traditional style Japanese wood chisels (nomi). That is a Delta 50-760 dust extractor hooked up my Performax 16-32 drum sander in the foreground.

Unlike many builder's, i don't run a build schedule out into the far future. When i have enough work for the year, i close my build list until i make significant progress on the work at hand or the end of the year, whichever comes first. One of the reasons i do this is to avoid getting over-committed. Another reason is that it gives me more pricing and product development flexibility. A third reason is that its entirely possible at any given moment that i decide i want to do something different next year. We luthiers are all a bit like gypsies on the road to we know not where and enjoy life's twists and turns and many callings.

I'm closing my 2009 build list now. If you've spoken to me recently about an instrument, you have until the 'good until' date on the build sheet quote to make a decision and get in a deposit. If you have spoken or corresponded with me recently and would like a quote, please ask for one soon.

Thanks for the click and stay tuned !

I spent yesterday well into the late evening making necks, one for a classical guitar and one for a ukulele. I thought i'd try taking some impromptu workshop shots with the DSLR and set up the tripod behind me, put the shutter on the timer and took a few.

I never let a router near my headstocks. Routers eat wood like nobody's business. One slip of the hand and its all over with. I drill the mortice slot ends and peg holes on the drill press and cut the top of the headstock on a scroll saw. The rest of the work is done without power tools. Each one comes out a little different which gives things a handmade look, for better or worse. We're all used to seeing such perfection in factory made musical instruments, where large and expensive CNC equipment is used to produce thousands upon thousands of identical necks. The results often have a perfectly lifeless feel.

I have an ebay auction ending for a 2008 model demo flamenco guitar today. Its going for a pittance. If you're looking for a guitar, this is your chance to get a nice one for a silly price. You know, this lutherie stuff would make a nice hobby ! Forget trying to support a family on it.

Who is Chiyozuru Sadahide and what is a kiridashi ? Check this out.

Here are a few photos of a koa tenor i finished recently. It has a select dark curly koa body, an Adirondack spruce top with a decorative wood banding style rosette, a 13 fret standard scale Honduras mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard with 38mm bone nut, ebony pin bridge with snakewood bridge pins and a bone saddle, curly maple body bindings, top purfling, and a bone inlay on the heel cap tip. It is fitted with PegHed™ geared tuning pegs, finished in a gloss lacquer finish and strung with Worth fluorocarbon strings.

It has a bright, crisp, clear and resonant voice with good intonation, sustain and loudness.

Here are a few pictures of a R&D soprano i've just finished. It features a Honduras mahogany body, curly claro walnut body bindings, a wood rosette, an ebony faceplate, fingerboard and pin bridge and a bone nut and saddle. It is finished in a soft and natural looking tung oil and wax finish, fitted with PegHed™ geared tuning pegs and strung with Worth fluorocarbon strings. Over time the mahogany body will naturally darken to a deep warm brown color.

This soprano ukulele has a clear, bright and ringing voice with good sustain, intonation and loudness. It is available from stock for $1050. Shipping and case are extra. Thanks for the click.