Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

It's finally finished!!

Not perfect but not bad either. It has a husky little voice at the moment but sounds better than I thought it would. Its b****y hard to play because there are 6 strings and not much room, even though the nut is the same width as a Tele.

Specs are;

Back and Sides, fretboard, bridge - Kwila
Top - Sitka Spruce
Neck - New Guinea Rosewood
Binding - Rock Maple
Bracing Western Red Cedar

(not counting the 15 super feet of other wood thrown away getting to the final result)

Here are the pics!!!

Full frontal outside in the strong sunlight
And again, with view of sound port
View through the sound port - its nice to be able to be able to play the guitar and see whats going inside at the same time - perhaps thats why sound ports were invented? All that hard work and you can't see it -unless you put in a soundport!
The top!
This is for Toejam - next to Big Daddy.
BTW, the dreadnought is the one guitar I will never part with - I have had it since I was 18 - and thats a long, long time ago now. It's no lutherial masterpiece but I would not swap it for anything. It still has the scent of mahogany when you open the case after all this time. I serenaded my wife to be with it and sang my kids to sleep with it (irish folk songs always seemed to work best!! 4 bars and they were out for the count - or maybe they just wanted me to stop???). When I put new stings on it, I feel like Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana and John Williams, all rolled into one - until I start actually playing it of course.

But I digress!!!

View of the headstock and fretboard. Everything almost lines up!
The back is a very pretty colour, I think
I am also happy with the finish - the blotches you see are actually reflections of flowers. Its shiny.
Finally the back of the headstock - my first laminated headstock - again, needs must, I stuffed up the tuner holes and got one out of line , so had to fill them in, cover them up and start again. I wonder if that's why laminated headstocks were invented? You never know , do you?
Anyway, thanks for looking
Cheers

Tidy work Richard, you must be happy to see it finally hit the gallery. I am guessing that scale is pretty close to a Terz guitar are you tuning it up to a G?

Jim

that kwila comes up pretty spiffy, Richard. well done!

I love small guitars. The wood choices work a treat on this one. You've got that finish down pat too.

Have you found a case to fit it?

Nice job Richard, I like the timber combinations too & the shape is excellent (I like a tight waist ). Got the strings & bridge on upside down though .

Thanks for all the comments, yes nice to see it finished but as I am keeping this one and it has a bolt on neck, it will no doubt be some tinkering later....

I was very happy with the finish, I spent a couple of hours trying to get one of those foam pads you buff with on the weekend but couldn't, so reverted to the hand buffing method. I am always amazed how quickly the gloss comes up after one rough cut and two fine polishes, then one superfine - et voila!!, shiny guitar.

I played it all last night - a bugger to tune but once you get it there, its good.

Toejam, I am not entirely sure what I have it tuned to at the moment but much more like E than G, hence bends and vibratos are easy - it has normal strings so they are a lot looser than normal.

Allen, no case as yet, we have a local dealer that I could probably get one from, but in no rush - its supposed to be a travel guitar so it will spend most of its time lying around in likely places, asking to be picked up and played.

Now on to the Tele!!!

Cheers and thanks

Turned out a treat for you Richard - well worth the effort.

What was the scale length on this one?

Tele fever around here...!

Jeremy.

Looks nice Richard. With that short scale lengths you might find it interesting to try some "Nashville Tuning".