Building Bealtine I take time out from building to attend workshops to improve and extend my playing skills, and also to have fun. In February 2006 I went to a cittern workshop at Witney where Gavin Davenport was the tutor. I make/play guitar bouzoukis and have a Jimmy Moon cittern that I play but only occasionally. Gavin opened my eyes to the potential of this instrument and he kindly agreed to help me design a guitar-cittern that he will use and trial for me. This instrument will is the third in my Celtic Festival series and is called Bealtine. It turns out this is apt as Gavin's birthday coincides with Bealtine - 1st May.
Citterns, to my ear anyway, aren't quite as "in your face" as bouzoukis and have a timbre and sound that my friend Bill Briscombe described nicely as "plangeant". Accordingly we decided that a slightly smaller body shape would work better and it was based on my Grand Concert sized model, Samhain, but with 16 frets clear of the body. Gavin also plays shorter scale guitars and citterns than I usually make and so we decided on a scale length of 630mm. As it's a prototype, I wanted to use some wood that I had that was not 100% fit for use in a commission but has great character that I would use on a personal instrument of mine. The back and sides were made from some fantastic flamed Cuban mahogany that was ordered for an all mahogany parlour guitar - appropriate as amongst other things Bealtine is a festival of fire and flames.
There were a number of things that I wanted to try out on this model. One is an adjustable neck joint that I am trialling on my instruments. Another is to use a top of Lutz spuce that I got from Shane Neifer rather than my usual European spruce. This is a hybrid of Sitka spruce and white spruce and it is a gorgeous wood with the looks of European spruce and great cross grain stiffness. This will be important as the guitar-cittern will have a total string pull of 230-270lbs depending on the string gauges. This means that I dropped my usual pinless bridge and instead used a pinned bridge - but with 5 holes only, 2 strings per hole. The last two things I want to try were a laquer finishing system suggested to me by my good friend Peter Cree, and using a K&K Pure Western pickup.
Building of Bealtine took place between May and August 2006 and the build was documented here:
