For those amongst us who play guitar and are fairly adept with their hands, the thought of building your own guitar must have crossed your mind at some point.....go on, you know it's true! Probably, like me you shrank back from the very thought of having to work to the peak of perfection to a standard that you never dreamed you could achieve. But there are a few secrets, and the best one I reckon is that each stage of the build must be approached with precision, each stage an individual project in itself.
This includes the planning of the whole project and that includes the selection of all of the components that go to make up the guitar itself. Dont worry about, for example, the tools at this point in time....do a seperate project when it comes to those...see where I'm heading? In this series of articles I will discuss the various requirements of the build and naturally, one of the critical aspects of your guitar will be the selections of exactly which tonewoods you will select for your creation. There are a couple of ways of going about the first build. You can decide that this guitar will be crafted from the finest of timbers that money can buy, thus creating the 'ultimate guitar" you know, the kind of Maton or Martin, Guild or Gibson that you will never be able to afford ( not in this lifetime anyway).the best of everything, spruce bracing, brazilian rosewood guitar sides, or classical tonewoods for your guitar, Japanese maple , ebony fingerboard or a Japanese or even Australian maple back and sides. Some of the more mentally afflicted amongst us may dream of Koa, the ultimate luxury I'm told. I even have a friend who owns a Koa Martin,how dare he?
On the other hand, there are many that think in a kind of negative way. "I'll knock the first one up out of Mahogany plywood, If I stuff it up, it wont be such a disaster,will it?" Well, personally, I reckon that's a built in attitude that will definitely put the mockers on it right from the word go. Use the best you can possibly afford but dont be blinded so that you pay out thousands from some unscrupulous mother that sees you coming, half a block away. Do some serious enquiring before you spend out those hard earned dollars. Even to the point where you may well, with the help of the internet, source your rarish timbers from another country or another State. They may well be a hell of a lot cheaper than you would ever begin to realise and many suppliers are keen to do business with you. You would not believe the difference in prices that I found when I was pricing up the timber for my Weissenborn acoustic lap steel guitar. It varied from about two hundred bucks for Mahogany to a thousand for the same thing!
So what are we looking at? The traditional tonewoods depend on the type of guitar you want to build. It will be very different for a Spanish style classical , different again for a weissenborn or slide and different again for a standard steel string guitar. A typical scenario would be close grained spruce for the soundboard, no imperfections or discolourations. Brazilian rosewood guitar sides or even East indian rosewood sides, Mahogany will also do very well here. I own a lovely little guitar made for me by a friend who just lives and breathes guitars. It is built from Californian Redwood, lock stock and barrel apart from the fingerboard which is rosewood. It sounds as sweet as a nut and looks so pretty too. So be prepared to encompass some different ideas too when selecting your wood. I was interested as to why the bridge should always be rosewood, ebony or a derivitive. I wondered why I couldn't make mine from Maple. I enquired found no reason why not and therefore did it. It works perfectly, the only thing I have to be careful of is that because it is sofeter than tradition hardwoods normally used, it can be dented when changing the strings. TIP: use a small spoon to lever the strings out of the peg holes.. it doesnt dent so much as when you use something else.
So, the finger board is also traditionally made from East indian Rosewood, A harder mahogany, Obeche or similar. However, for a weissenborn as the fingers never play on the timber, therefore wont wear it away over the years, a softer wood is an option. Usually a darker one is preferable as they do get dirtier quicker. Then again look at the blond Fender necks that are so popular of late! One thing I do urge you to do, look outside the square when selecting your timbers for your guitars. The timber that has been raped to death for guitar building are supposed to be in terrifyingly short supply nand therefore the prices are at a premium and the remaining trees are being threatened. I'm no greenie but good sense should prevail here! You can achieve a couple of blows for good sense at the same time if you choose alternative timbers that may well do the job required of them. Talk to people in the business, hear their views on certain timbers and reason out your choices. The internet is a great option here, just look under Australian Maple for example, its a great timber and I'm a stout flagbearer for it, Blackwood too, close cousins of the very rare and expensive Koa that seems to be disappearing fast. dont get sucked in or get in a rut, think outside the square, you will be amazed at what you can find! You can have a look and listen to the Weissenborn made of Australian Maple on my site buildaweissenborn.com see what you think!
Terry Buddell is a freelance journalist and a Marine surveyor, boat designer and shipwright, He lives on board his yacht "The Nicky J Miller' that he built himself on The Gold Coast Australia and has sailed his yacht up the East Coast to the beautiful Whitsunday Islands. He is currently resident in Gladstone Queensland where he is building another boat for his collection of plans for sale on the internet.In his spare time(what spare time??) Terry, a keen guitarist has builtd a Weissenborn lap steel guitar!
Pictures for most of the articles can be viewed on the website below. ! Terry can be contacted on arcus1@bigpond.com or http://www.dolphinboatplans.com
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