The reason why I am a bass player and a luthier goes all the way back to when I was 13.  My parents had just got Sky, and I was flicking through to MTV.  The channel was showing a European festival, possibly Rock Am Ring; the first thing I saw was Les Claypool, eight finger-tapping a solo in “Tommy the Cat”.

Now I knew nothing of guitars at the time, but I was astounded.  I turned to my friend Knuckles – who played guitar astonishingly well even back then – and asked, “What’s that he’s playing?”

Knuckles replied: “It can’t be a guitar, because there’s the guitarist behind him. It has strings, but no frets, so I guess it must be a six string fretless bass.”

“Well, I guess I’m just going to have to play six string fretless bass”.

And I do.  What this has to do with my luthiery is that Les was playing his Rainbow Bass.  A stunning piece of work by Carl Thompson. Some years later, as I put down a £1000 deposit to have a six string fretless made by Carl (already owning the Ken Smith shown in the picture) I realised that I had better start making them, because this hobby was getting too expensive.

I digress.  A customer brought in a six string for me to defret, which I am always delighted to do.

First, I remove the frets.  Gently does it: I don’t want to chip the fingerboard.  The gaps aren’t going to be covered up with new frets, so special care is required.

Here you can see that the frets have all been removed, without any issues.

Now I insert ash veneer, the same thickness as the fret slot.

Here the veneer has been scraped and sanded flush.

Then I sand my customer’s fretboard, using 1200 grit sandpaper, and polish it with lemon oil.

Nearly done.  Lastly, because there are no longer any frets, the nut is too high. So I file down the slots and set up the bass, to give it the really low action that fretless players like.

Obligatory “down the neck” shot.

Now the customer has a real instrument.  First thing I do when I play I six string fretless is play the intro to “Fish On” by Primus.  It’s my favourite bit of bass playing.  I still can’t make it sound quite like Les, though.

Then again, here’s a clip of Les playing it live and making so many mistakes (be warned, genteel reader: he does use an expletive at one point).  It reminds us all that we’re all human.

Martin Guitar Soundhole Rosette

This is a Martin rosette. It’s an example of what you may find on many guitars, with a few rings surrounding the soundhole.

Spanish guitar rosettes tend to be more elaborate, with beautiful marquetry patterns. You almost never see this on a steel string.

Baroque guitars were extremely elaborate, with three dimensonal “roses” going into and covering the soundhole.

This rosette is the work of Master Inlayer Larry Robinson, and appears on the 750,000th Martin. Check out the 1,000,000th Martin for more of his stunning rosette and inlay work.

Here at Jim Fleeting Guitars my simple hardwood rosette, with a couple of rings around it, is very fashionable. However I have decided that there is so much more that can be done.

I spent a week with Ervin Somogyi in Oakland, California. Ervin’s guitars all show his high level of skill, and his wonderful eye for design.

His interrupted rosette idea really struck a chord, and I decided to try a mix between the simple hardwood rosette and this interrupted design. This rosette is bolivian rosewood with a little of the sapwood showing, matching the headstock, back and sides.

This is what I came up with. It has inlaid mango, again to match the back and sides, and the Jim Fleeting Guitars’ ‘F’ logo.

This is my latest creation. The top hasn’t been cut out yet, but you can see the drawing of the shape of the guitar on the spruce. I put a fingerboard on there, to get the look of it. I am obsessed with the Art Deco designs from the twenties and thirties (probably because of their use of exotic woods) and I think this really shows that style. What do you think?

With more than two million views of his YouTube video, it would seem that musician Dave Carroll has finally persuaded United Airlines to listen to his complaint.  They have arranged a meeting with him.  I guess it’s because he has the sequel to this song in production, and a third in the planning stage.

The serious point of this is that since September 2001, most airlines won’t allow you to take a guitar case into the cabin of an aircraft.  They insist that you check it.  This is a frightening prospect.  The important thing is to make sure that your guitar can’t move in its case. It is the headstock hitting the end of the case as it goes down the chutes that causes it to snap off.  If you pad that at the shoulders, then the guitar can’t move.

However, if it is thrown or dropped so that the case is crushed and the guitar damaged, there is little preventative action that can be taken. Remember though: I can glue headstocks  for a modest fee, and can undertake any number of structural and cosmetic guitar repairs.

Do your worst, United: I’ll get the guitars back up and running.

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?

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…

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.

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.

Plenty of bear claw in that Sitka spruce top, not to mention lots of mellow bass and clear, ringing trebles.  A great piece of wood.

The top is Sitka spruce; the back is Bolivian rosewood; the ebony bridge and fingerboard are both bound with high-flame koa.  That’s koa on the headstock, too.

This two-piece rosewood back has a great bookmatch (a mirror image, straight down the centre). I love the look of sapwood.  That’s the live part of the tree – and in rosewoods it tends to have a lot of contrast with the heartwood.

The neck is a five-piece laminate construction: Honduran mahogany, purpleheart, sycamore, purpleheart and Honduran mahogany again.  Between the purpleheart and mahogany there is also a contrasting ash veneer.  Quite a complex thing to put together!  The heelcap is koa, with Grover machine heads installed.  I normally use Waverly machines, but this was a customer preference.

This is a very art deco guitar, and I wanted to reflect this with the bridge design.  It is bound with koa and inlaid with the crest of Essex, in mother-of-pearl.  Both myself and the customer hail from a fantastic part of Essex, so the inclusion of our native seaxes seemed fitting.

What do you think?

For a bass nerd like me, it was great to be in an enclosed space with so many amazing instruments, talking to so many musicians about what they like best about their basses. I also got to geek out on some great rigs.

Some of my customers were in attendance, and they brought some of my custom basses along.  It was nice to see people enjoying my instruments; it’s always  great compliment when you see someone rocking out on a guitar that you have made.

Ross, one of my regular customers, decided that one was not enough.  Three Jim Fleeting Basses: 24 strings in total.  That should be sufficient for one man, surely?

The planned slideshow was not to be, but I think I managed to entertain this hairy crowd with my talk on luthiery.  It was technical in places, but I think I managed to keep the crowd.  I figured that an internet forum meet-up would produce at least a few people who are as nerdy as I am on the subject.

Dare I say it, these people seem genuinely interested!

The whole event was extremely well-organised and supported.  I am looking forward to the next one, and if you are a bass player I recommend that you get on Basschat.co.uk and see if you have a good local representation there. If if there isn’t a regular meet-up in your area, why not organise one?  They are great fun – but expect a throbbing headache the next day.

The online version of the Guardian article is here.

I like the picture, too.  A bit scary, though.