News And Updates

Mark Davis, from outside Melbourne, Australia, had a busy last winter building a very interesting and innovative carbon fiber guitar. He recently purchased a second EGS bridge, so I am looking forward to seeing what is in store. Mark is active at the Aussie Guitar Gear Heads forum and has a thread documenting this whole build there.

This guitar has a core of Australian pine-like wood King Billy and is fully carbon fiber. It has several fairly unique features, such as pickups mounted out of view from behind (to give an un-interrupted CF top) and glued on frets (again to not ruin the fibers of the CF weave).

Mark writes:

The total weight of this guitar is 1.3kg or 2.875lbs. Pickups are Adeson Icendiary in the bridge and a Fenton Weill in the mid position. Switching is single / single and split h/b in series , and bridge h/b. Frets are hardened SS and glued on. Nut is home made to suit purpose as are the knobs. I new exactly what I was aiming for from the beginning with the hidden P/U’s this was due to the fact that I wanted uninterrupted fibers running all the way to the bridge This creates the problem of getting the strings close to the body so as the P/U’s work. A simple mold was made that creates the top of the guitar, and a mold for the fret board. Its a piece of laminex bent and reinforced on the sides, with a bit of design work the center forms a 16 in radius. The rear of the blank was then laminated with a combination of uni and woven cloth. Peel ply was applied over to control wet out. The face will be laminated in the mold.

The Aussie Guitar Gear Heads forum thread documents the build steps and show off Mark’s impressive design skills and creative solutions.

Chris Letchford has purchased #5 (which has been in the works for some time) and taken the opportunity to have it built to his specifications. He insisted on having a wenge top, although I had run out building #3. I was lucky to find some just a few kilometers away thanks to a tip from SwedishLuthier over at Project Guitar Forum. It has been in store for over 20 years, making it about as old as my previous batch.

When this is bookmatched, it should give a result very similar to #3. I bought enough for at least 4 instruments. I also got some incredibly light Sapele Mahogany: I have never used this before, but am very excited. It is very resonant and this particular piece felt like Swamp Ash in weight but with a very even color close to maple.

I also cut up the neck blank for #5 and #6 today. This has been the subject of a previous post. The original intention was to make #6 an 8-string, but I might make both of these 7-strings in order to leverage working on several instruments at a time.

#5 (Chris Letchford) specs:

• 7 strings headless EGS design
• Mahogany back with maple neck-through-body center
• Wenge top
• Semi-hollow construction
• Belly carve + arm bevel
• 2 x Lundgren M7 pickups
• 2 position mini-toggle switch (neck/bridge)
• Master volume, master tone
• EGS fixed bridge, custom color blue
• String spacing at bridge 10,5 mm and nut 7 mm
• Rosewood fretboard
• Stainless steel Medium/High frets
• 24 frets
• Double-acting truss rod
• Zero fret
• 25.75″ – 25″ scale, with neutral fret at approximately fret 9 (12 mm difference between outermost bridges)

I met up with one of my customers, Gareth Parry, in London the other day. His band, Monkey See Monkey Do, had a gig at the Roxy Bar and Screen with a live re-score of the 1966 surrealist Czech film Daisies. It was a very fun (albeit hot) evening, the music blending with the film perfectly.

Gareth took #3 for a spin and enjoyed it a lot. His own project, featuring a Klein-type body, chunky Tele-style neck and EGS tuners, is all but ready. I hope to have pictures here soon when it is completed.

Next up is Washington, DC. I will be there between 13 and 17 of June. Please let me know if you are in the area and would like to meet up.

I was fortunate enough to be in the neighborhood of Watson Guitars, who I have mentioned before the week that passed and Alex and Tere made some room for me and my family in the middle of the final crunch of NAMM preparations.

We had a wonderful lunch, and a nice drive up and down the mountain although we didn’t have much luck with the weather. Idyllwild is situated in the most amazing surroundings, but due to fog, we didn’t see much farther than our noses reached. I did get to see the customer build that Alex is finishing:

Above it, you can see the second EGS tremolo build for Alex – a fitting operation for a customer.

In the above picture, you can almost see how stunning the inlay and finishing work is. In addition, there are so many nice touches on Watson Guitars’ instruments that you have to see to believe. For example, custom pickup covers cut from the top to match the grain, ditto control covers on the back, inlays, and so on. Watson Guitars are, like I said, exhibiting at NAMM so make sure to pay them a visit. The guitar pictured featuring the EGS Tremolo will be there, so it’s a great opportunity to try one out.  Alex and Tere also told me about some of their plans for 2010 which are very exciting, but I will let you follow that story on their home page or in person at NAMM, obviously.

One more thing that you need to see in real life is pictured above – a semi-hollow 7-string bass. It will feature both a magnetic and piezo pickups and looks absolutely stunning already! Alex’s fingertips proved the amount of work that has been put into it and it had to be ready for applying finish the night I left… (I hope you got it done in time, Alex!)

Lastly, above is a picture of one of Watson’s CNC machines – very nice!

I am happy to be able to present another customer project, this time from Toni Stosic from Zagreb, Croatia. Toni saw David Thorn playing a Klein guitar in a Hendrix tribute on TV more than 12 years ago and has been dreaming about one since. The body is ash with a maple/ebony neck. Pickups are hand-made by a friend of his. (Feel free to post back here with more details about the pickups, Toni!) Toni reports that it sounds great and holds tuning perfectly. The trem stopper was installed as a personal preference and adds to the tone. Congratulations Toni!

The week that passed was very exciting. First of all, there was the Scandinavian Guitar Show in Stockholm last weekend. I visited and met many good friends and made further connections. I also saw more than one ridiculously expensive guitars…

Then I met up with my good friend Michele Benincaso, luthier based in Stockholm, with whom I have been collaborating for a few months. With him was Paolo Tofani and they had brought his Tri-Kanta Veena that Michele built for him. A truly amazing instrument and two amazing individuals. I encourage you to follow the links above and explore the music and history of Paolo and the Tri-Kanta!

The picture shows Paolo with the Tri-Kanta. The top neck hosts 13 strings that are typically played as a “back-drop”, the middle has 8 regular guitar strings, out of which 2 are on a fretless part of the fretboard – and there are 2 additional reference strings for the “raga” (apologies if I don’t get the details 100%) that sits underneath these strings. The bottom neck has 13 additional strings that can be plucked and played in a harp manner. The guitar-like fretboard is played both conventionally and in a tapping manner. The topics of our discussions, I hope to get back to soon.

Also this week, Ane Brun, one of my absolute favorite artists, played at Cirkus in Stockholm. Supporting her were Rebekka Karijord and Jennie Abrahamsson. A magical evening that was also visited by Anna Ternheim and Elin Ruth Sigvardsson as guest appearances and I spotted Nina Kinert in the audience.

I have had the privilege of supplying a custom colored bridge to amazing luthier Michael Spalt. Michael himself is a bit pre-occupied with relocation plans and website overhaul, but until something more extensive can be arranged, here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Oh, and did I mention that the complete instrument weighs 1,9 kgs (4 lbs 4 oz)?

As covered in a previous post, I have a client that wants to build (among other things) a nylon stringed headless guitar. His name is Tobias Neumann, and I travelled to Ystad in the south of Sweden to meet with him last week. We had a “fika” (pronounced ~fee-kah), which is a unique Swedish word for having something to drink, e.g. coffee, and something to nibble on, e.g. a cinnamon roll, until we were kicked out because the establishment closed. We continued brainstorming in the shopping street, pictured below with Tobias on the left.

Tobias, who is more of a musician than a luthier, started to develop the ultimate guitar for his personal needs. In the process, however, he realized that there should be more musicians out there with similar requirements. What they are, we will hopefully come back to in a later post! Meanwhile, I am looking forward to working with Tobias in developing the hardware for this line of instruments.

I am very pleased to bring you the first customer project report! For convenience, here are a couple of pictures:

Looks fantastic Jesse, congratulations, and thanks for sharing your experiences.

Here are the words of Jesse in Oz:

I got my guitar back yesterday; it’s wonderful. I’ve nothing but praise for every aspect of it. The bridges worked out wonderfully. Apparently there were some issues grounding them (anodised aluminium being non-conductive) and mounting them properly (routing would have been a pain, so they drilled an extra screw in each of them and flat-mounted them), but it has worked out very well. The tuners aren’t sticky like some headless tuners I’ve tried and I like the precision. Some photos follow:

Full-guitar shot
Body shot

The light bridges really helped bring the weight of the guitar down (it’s about 2 kg). I can’t thank you enough for providing such a great product .

Take care,
Jesse

I shipped a couple more units today, making the customer map look like this:

I intend to follow up with the builders of Jesse’s guitar to sort out the grounding issues so that any necessary design updates can be made.