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 was honoured when, almost a year ago, Gordon asked me to contribute to the planned exhibition. I thought I’d make something special for it, and at the time I was receiving a lot of press for building the UK’s first nine string bass. Few luthiers in the UK are making “ERBs” or Extended Range Basses, so I decided to build a second nine string, with a relatively modest 24 frets.  My first nine string had 36!

I began with this large chunk of Californian Redwood, which I bought from a guy on the side of the road during a road trip through Humboldt County in northern California.  It became the top of the through neck bass, and the back of the wings.

I also had some pieces of buckeye left over from a previous build.  I used these to make the pickup cover, rear headcap and the chevrons on the rear of the centre block.

In total, I glued 145 pieces of wood together to make this bass.  The species included bubinga, wenge, buckeye, redwood, zebrano and mahogany. It has had good feedback from those who have seen it, which is pleasing.

This is how it looks in the exhibition:

Gordon Giltrap describes the exhibited guitars as “works of art as well as beautiful things to play”, and on opening night I understood what he meant. My fellow exhibitors, who include Andy Manson, Martyn Booth and Roger Bucknall, are all fine craftsmen. Standing in the middle of the large white gallery, looking at the beautifully-worked instruments that line the walls, gave me goosebumps.