ready to set up second falcate classical

[johnparchem]

This guitar is Lutz\Panama Rosewood falcate braced classical that I am building for my classical guitar teacher. He commissioned the guitar after hearing the first falcate classical and the falcate Steel string guitars that I built.
I used Royal-lac on top of a zpoxy pore fill for the back sides and the neck and a shellac French polish for the top.

I just finished applying shellac last week. I still have yet to level sand or polish the royal-lac back and sides or the French Polished top. It looks good in the pictures, but it definitely has a hand applied finish look.









The bracing follows the pattern in the Gore Medium Steel String mapped on to a cutaway Hauser 37 body shape. I actually made 2 tops. I pulled the first one after closing the box and realizing that the final top resonance would be below 180 Hz. I went from 8 mm braces to 9 mm laminated European spruce braces. I did clean it up before closing the box.



The back was designed with the active back design.



The bridge is a laminated Brazilian Rosewood bridge. It ended up at 18 grams



Here is the tap with the bridge but no strings. At 195 Hz it is a bit low but I will end up with around 188 Hz or so. Ten Hz higher than my last falcate classical and 10 Hz lower than my falcate classical retop so I should be able to hear the range.

[Dave M]

John that is one nice looking guitar.

It looks like you have just taken a smidgen off the lower back brace allowing for further work. Is that right?

I think the cutaway looks fine. Your teacher is clearly not one of the conservative classical players!

Cheers Dave

[johnparchem]

Thanks, Yes there is a bit taken off the lower brace on the back.

The teacher was rather Conservative. I think I nearly turned to SS after he played the falcate braced SS I made. I think what finally turn him was the 20 inch radius on the fret board of my classical. He is getting older with some arthritis in his hands. He was shocked with the ease of playing bar chords. He plays a 1975 Kohno 30, which is a tough instrument to have ones compared against.

[johnparchem]

I made the compensated nut and saddle and strung the guitar up. The sounded sounded great about a half an hour after I put the first set of strings on. I am really excited to hear how it sounds over the next week. My target for the top was 190 Hz, almost got it. I ended up at 94.2 Hz for the T (1,1)1 188.4 for T (1,1)2 and 236.5 for the T(1,1)3. Graph below. I still need to clean up the nut and saddle buff out the finish, do a final set up in a couple of days. Also I will add a small dot on the side of the fret board at the 7 fret.

I sort of cheated on the compensation as I used the same scale length and the same strings that are in the classical guitar example in the book. I did not have to run the calculations. I made the compensated nut and then measured the active string length for each string and marked the saddle.

[kiwigeo]

I sort of cheated on the compensation as I used the same scale length and the same strings that are in the classical guitar example in the book. I did not have to run the calculations. I made the compensated nut and then measured the active string length for each string and marked the saddle.

Oh come on John!!! I was hoping you'd have done up a super sized spreadsheet like the one I'm halfway through to work out the compensation.

Nice work on that guitar......looks good and you did a good job getting the resonances right. A very valuable thread for those of us within the lower ranks of the Gore Army.

[johnparchem]

Martin, you probably missed the line in one of my previous posts: "I pulled the first one after closing the box and realizing that the final top resonance would be below 180 Hz."

Like you this is the second top on this guitar.

[kiwigeo]

Martin, you probably missed the line in one of my previous posts: "I pulled the first one after closing the box and realizing that the final top resonance would be below 180 Hz."

Like you this is the second top on this guitar.

I was actually referring to this process with my compliment

[johnparchem]

Martin, you probably missed the line in one of my previous posts: "I pulled the first one after closing the box and realizing that the final top resonance would be below 180 Hz."

Like you this is the second top on this guitar.

I was actually referring to this process with my compliment

Sorry, I did take your comment as a compliment. Thank you. My comment was meant to be self deprecating.