Jacob is a ladder braced Harp guitar based on "Jack the Lad" with a hollow neck added for the sub-bass strings. The top is Lutz spruce and the back and sides English walnut. Bindings, bridge and headstock overlays are cocobolo. The main strings have a scale length of 624mm and the sub basses are around 710mm. You can follow Jacob's build here and hear a soundclip here.
Lughnasa
Lughnasa is the last of my Celtic Festival Series. It's a 15 fret clear of the body, multi scale, Manzer wedge with adjustable neck and “woofer/tweeter” sound-ports . From a guitar-bouzouki commission I ended up with a lovely bearclaw Euro spuce top that developed a tiny crack in the bottom of the treble lower bout and had to come off and be replaced. It had a great tap tone and I didn’t have the heart to bin it. I already have my own guitar bouzouki, but in my search for the “ultimate dropped tuning fingerstyle guitar” I wanted to experiment with multi-scales and also wanted to see how the Linda Manzer wedge style would work out. So this instrument was conceived and finally born around the already braced top. Removing the top opened up numerous opportunities for "creative inlays" and a final twist of fate on final sanding allowed the formation of the “tweeter” sound port in the tops bass-side upper bout just down from the side sound port.
The specs are as follows:
Bearclaw European spruce top, East Indian Rosewood back and sides. Flamed koa bindings with bwb side and top purfling. Mahogany neck with bubinga heel. Old Rio rosewood headstock veneers, end graft, heel cap and nut Kingwood bridge with bone split-saddle and koa bridge-pins Ebony fretboard bound with curly koa. Gotoh tuners with ebony buttons. Finish is pre-catalysed lacquer (over Z-poxy on back and sides) and Tru-oil over Z-Poxy on the neck. Scale length: 630mm to 657mm
The fanned frets are easy to play and you forget all about the odd shape pretty quickly. The guitar has a really lovely "reverby" quality from the East Indian Rosewood and great volume and sustain. The top “Tweeter” sound port definitely adds something positive to the sound and the guitar sounds and feels much more full and open when I uncover it. You can hear a soundclip of Lughnasa here.
Orthus
Inspired by the Greenfield brothers in Canada in the 1920-1930's and modern builders such as Paddy Burgin, and nagged by my daughter Martha to make her one as soon as she saw the clips on Youtube of Paddy Burgin playing the instrument he made, I made a double necked acoustic lap-slide. As usual I did this my own way and in my own style. After playing around with different concepts, I decided to make it a similar size to a normal lapslide but to go with a ladder braced top and one soundhole. The name of this instrument is "Orthus" - in Greek he was the two headed, serpent tailed dog of Geryon, the three headed giant king of Erytheia. Orphus was also the father of the Sphynx.
Specs - Twin necked acoustic lap-slide guitar 630mm scale lengths. Ladder braced top, hybrid X/ladder braced back. Central "neck block" with carbon fibre flying buttress braces anchored to the sides. African Mahogany top, back and sides, mahogany peg blocks, Curly eucalyptus bindings with bwb top, back and side purflings. Brazilian Rosewood peghead veneer, end grafts, nuts, saddles and fret position markers. Sycamore (maple) fretboards bound with Curly eucalyptus, and bridge. Marquetry fret markers to match the rosette. Ebony bridge pins. Gold Gotoh mini tuners with hand made Brazilian Rosewood buttons. Hand rubbed pre-catalysed lacquer finish over Z-poxy resin.
With the sympathetic strings and overall tension, tuning down a step makes this a fabulous baritone instrument without having to increase the scale length. The lower neck in CGCCGC (a lot of CGCGCD tuning) and the upper one in CGCEbGC or CGCEGC means I can use both necks to good effect - 260lbs on a 630mm scale length and it sounds good. With the string gauges taken down a little it can work in D tunings as well. I suspect that similar but diverse tunings will work better for combination playing than having say Open G and Open D - this is useful if you are performing a repetoire without having to re-tune plus you get the spacey sound and sympathetics.
Here's a couple of sounclips. The first one is the Gospel song "This Little Light of Mine". The lowest neck is in CGCCGC (shades of John Butler) and the upper neck in CGCEGC (Open C). I started off by strumming each neck in turn to give a feel for the sound. The main tune does move between the two necks:
The tunings are endless and you could get lost forever in this instrument - I'm loving it and so is Martha.
Dark Side of the Moon I do wander onto the dark side occasionally and make electric guitars, mostly when nagged by my daughters.
The first was for my youngest daughter Suzanna. The guitar is her design is called Orion. The guitar is a Strat type guitar using the hardware from a salvaged Squier, provided by my friend Bill Briscombe. The body is lime with a 4 piece Zebrano top and back veneer, and the neck is Cedar of Lebanon (given to me by Russell Rose) with an Indian Rosewood fretboard:
Here's the finished article. The body and neck have been finished with Tru-oil.
And I got it finished in time for Suzanna's birthday!
