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How To Grow Your Own Guitars

I was at a trade show a couple of years ago, and there was a stand there run by Madinter.  Madinter is a Spanish Luthier supplies company.  Unsurprisingly, it specialises in Spanish guitars, but when it comes to wood, it’s much the same.  A piece of ebony for a fingerboard is just the same, regardless of the guitar.  They have some electric wood, too.  I like the fact that it is a little cheaper, and I don’t mind that the wood comes fairly unprepared.  I can’t mill logs, but I can turn a rough plank into a slotted and radiused fingerboard, so I don’t need to pay someone else to do that for me.

At this trade show, Madinter were giving away packets of seeds.  These seeds were for Cypress, a wood commonly used in the construction of Flamenco Guitars.  The packet had the following statement on it:

With just one cypress tree we can make a hundred guitars.  With a hundred guitars we can plant one hundred trees.

I really liked the sentiment so, once I had settled into my new house, I planted the seeds and waited for them to germinate.  They are growing fast now, and I re-potted them at the weekend.  Four saplings are shooting up.

I think it will be an amazing experience to grow a tree from seed, and build guitars from it. And I figure I’ve got a couple of decades to learn how to make a Spanish heel before my guitars are ready to harvest…

Image credit: Bill Ward’s Brickpile.

Broken Headstocks, Snapped Guitar Necks and My Solution

A lot of thought goes into the feel of a neck.  Its profile, width and depth are always an important consideration when buying a guitar.  What is considered less frequently, however,  is how the neck was constructed.

As a guitar repairman, I glue a lot of headstocks back onto guitar necks.  In many cases the guitar has been dropped, or has fallen from a stand, and the headstock has snapped on impact.  More often than not, it will be hanging on by its headcap.

This diagram represents a side view of a one-piece neck.  As you can see, the grain is aligned with the direction of the neck. So when it comes to the headstock, the grain is very short and can snap easily.  To compound the issue most acoustic and many electric necks are made from mahogany, which already has relatively short fibres.  This means that the area around the headstock is really weak.

Another way to construct a neck is to use a scarf joint.  This way, you have good, long grain in the weakest point. The neck is therefore much stronger.

What I don’t like about this joint is that you can see the “shark’s nose” shape that the joint leaves on the neck.  Most players won’t even notice it, but I’m fussy when it comes to joints. I prefer to hide them.

This third diagram shows the method that I use for the custom guitars that I build. By doing this, I am able to hide the joint with a rear headcap.  This headcap also adds strength.  I figured that if a broken-off headstock often hangs by the  headcap, then a rear headcap is likely to help prevent it breaking in the first place.

I also think it looks great.  This rosewood headcap hides the joint nicely, and really accentuates the contour of the volute.

What do you reckon?

Wenge: the "new Brazilian Rosewood"?

There is an ongoing search for the “new Brazilian” – and there are some great-looking woods out there that have tonal qualities on a par with Brazilian.  African Blackwood is probably the most talked about at the moment.  It is a dalbergia, and therefore a “true” rosewood.  It grows in such a way that its logs will yield very few sets suitable for guitar building. So, like Brazilian Rosewood, it is wildly expensive.

A few months ago I was talking to Ervin Somogyi: a luthier whose guitars I love.  We were discussing various woods and generally geeking out.  Following a tip off, he had produced a guitar body out of Wenge (pronounced weng-ee).  Now I’ve made a few bass necks out of Wenge, and I know how hard it is.

The four neck stringers in this six string bass are Wenge. Truth is, it cost me a fortune in saw blades to cut them.  So I knew that the wood was very dense, but I had never considered building a guitar from it. This was because although Wenge has a dark, rich colour, it has almost no figure.

This guitar body he showed me was just an unfinished soundbox.  No neck attached.  I tapped the back and was astonished by the sound that emanated.  It is difficult to describe sounds in words, but this one was a clear, sustained, bell-like ring.  I don’t profess to predict the sound of a guitar just from tapping a piece of wood, but I do know what I am looking for.  A “lively” sound.  Proof that the wood has the ability to produce a note.  If it can do this, then the chances are that you will get a good guitar sound from it.  This guitar definitely had that – and some more besides.

In the case of Wenge, the properties of the wood that make it look boring are the very properties that make it sound great.  It has very tight, very straight grain, like the grain found in softwoods.  This uniformity means that it lacks the character, say, of a wild curly piece of maple. However, Wenge’s uniformity makes for a great-sounding guitar.

So I decided to experiment. I went out and bought the most perfectly quarter-sawn piece of Wenge I could find, joined it up to make a back plate and thicknessed it so that it would be extremely thin.  It’s a hard, stiff wood, so I can get it pretty thin; this should allow the back to move a lot.  This will add even more to the sound.

Now I’m thinking I’ll put some inlay in the back, to liven this guitar up a bit before it goes on sale.  I like my guitars to look a little exotic and, although I think this one will be perfect for the tone junkies out there, I also want to make it as striking as possible.

Here I’m gluing braces into the back.  I want this back to work as a single unit, hence the asterisk-style bracing.  As usual, I’ll be carving these braces to shape once they are on the guitar.  It’s so much easier to detect what influence your shaping is having on the guitar if they are attached to it when you work on them.

I’ll let you know how it sounds when it’s complete.  Obviously, for an independent view, you’ll have to come by and try it yourself.  The way the woods are sounding when I tap them, I think you’d probably better bring your cheque book if you do…

Custom Guitar: Brazilian Rosewood

I am currently making a 00 acoustic guitar out of Brazilian Rosewood.  The wood was cut a long time ago and looks quite dull; but with a finish on, its rich chocolate browns are accentuated.  I love the look of this sapwood, as I really like contrasts.  Brazilian tends to have a thin black pencil line between the heart and sap, which makes the sap stand out even more.  Beautiful.  It has a bell-like quality when tapped, and I think it’s going to sound pretty good.

Often cited as the holy grail of guitar making, Brazilian Rosewood (Dalbergia Nigra) is highly sought after.  It can be stunningly beautiful, but it is most prized because of it’s tone.

It is impossible to pin down woods and tones: no two pieces of wood are the same, and all guitar makers make their guitars differently.  You can open yourself up to criticism by stating what a piece of wood will sound like, based only on species – because you also have to take into account that everyone listens to tone differently.

It seems to me that when it comes to wood, the only subject upon which many of us are in agreement is that Brazilian Rosewood is the best possible choice for the back and sides of an acoustic guitar.  It is certainly true that my three favourite guitars have been made from Brazilian Rosewood.  (I’m not including guitars made by me here,  because I find it impossible to be objective about them.  I’ll sit there thinking, “Is this guitar too quiet?” when it is deafening.  I suppose being hypercritical is a good thing, but it doesn’t help my nerves…)

The problem with Brazilian is that it is illegal.  Let me explain.  It has a conservation status of “vulnerable” and although this is the lowest grade in the “threatened” catagory, it is still sufficiently endangered for it to be CITES listed (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). As such it is illegal – not to mention unethical – to trade in the stuff.

Having said that, I am a great fan of recycling, and am concious of my moral responsibility as a woodworker to make sure that every material I use is ethically sound.  Such scruples can prove difficult and expensive, but it is possible to buy recycled (or “reclaimed”) timber. If the timber was cut before the wood was banned, you can make guitars from it.  It is likely that many guitars out there made from Brazilian Rosewood were once used to clad the interiors of hotels in the 20s and 30s.

Here’s the prepared frame for my Brazilian Rosewood 00.  I removed the side spreaders so that you can see it.  Once I’ve got the braces on, I’ll glue the top in, then start carving and shaping the braces.

This is one guitar I am really looking forward to hearing.  I just hope I can be more objective about it.

Building A Custom Guitar: Two Acoustic Guitar Tops

I’ve got a couple of new acoustic guitars on the go.

This is the top.  I’ve just glued the x-brace into it.  I carve the braces by hand once they’re glued in.  I can’t shape them first, as I make them tall and thin, coming to an almost-point, so I wouldn’t have a surface to clamp.

So I glue in the x-brace and carve it before any other braces are in, as they would only get in the way.  You can see in the picture the pencil lines where the other braces will go.

I carve a radius into the bottom of the braces before gluing them, which forces a slight dome into the top of the guitar.  You can see from the picture that once the x-brace is in, there is a slight curve to the top.

The rosette and soundhole are cut before the top is braced. I love the look of a simple piece of timber with a rosette and soundhole cut into it.  You know it’s a guitar, even though it’s just a big square of spruce with a hole in the middle.

This sitka spruce top is destined for a wenge dreadnought.  I don’t cut the shape of the guitar out of the top until it’s completely braced.  I make my tops about two thirds the thickness of a standard guitar top, so each one is very fragile until the braces are glued in.  With the shape cut out, the upper and lower bout areas have quite a short grain. They can easily snap if they are handled roughly, so it’s kid gloves until the braces are in.

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