"The Queen of Hearts"
Posted: Sat May 17, 2014 2:49 pm
Here's a guitar that's been received well by musicians and others who have seen and heard it.
I wanted to build something special, something different, something that would give me a different challenge. I gave myself a list of criteria that I wanted to follow these were as follows:
1 -I was asked to do something special, something that would stand out.
2 -I wanted hearts to figure in the design
3 -And the words or numbers "50" were to feature somehow in the guitar build
4 -The "000" style guitar was to be used
5 -Use some local [goldfields timber] where possible
6 -Besides looking special it of course had to have a good tone.
7-And lastly I had a finish date that would make it one of the quickest builds I have undertaken [That's quick by my standards] As it happened the delivery date was moved, and as I had finished by the said deadline I had a chance to play the guitar for a while.
1 - I researched guitars with heart shaped soundholes but could only find the two that I already knew about. Eric Clapton's "Ivan the Terrible" twelve string guitar, and though not a true heart shape, a guitar, also a twelve string, played by the late Pete Seager.
I had tried to have a guitar built for me many years ago with that shape sound hole, but the maker declined. So planing/designing this guitar was down to me.
2 - Why hearts? well I thought that if I have a heart shaped soundhole, why not make hearts a feature of the guitar.
3 - Why "50"? At the time of starting this guitar I had been in Australia for 50 years, and next year my wife and I would have been married 50 years. So fifty hearts it was going to be.
4 - Why "000"? why not? I had made some nice sounding "000"s and hoped this be as good as it's predecessors. Its possibly better.
5- Local timber. This came from two sources. The peghead overlays are from timber savaged from a local hotel built in the 1800's and burnt down in the mid 1990's. These were used with the dried open grain and shakes still visible, very brittle and a worry to inlay and work. The other is Emu Apple and is used for the fingerboard. Gold frets and gold tuners with ebony buttons finish of the look well, I thought.
The inlays are MOP, ebony and maple.
Thanks for looking.
I wanted to build something special, something different, something that would give me a different challenge. I gave myself a list of criteria that I wanted to follow these were as follows:
1 -I was asked to do something special, something that would stand out.
2 -I wanted hearts to figure in the design
3 -And the words or numbers "50" were to feature somehow in the guitar build
4 -The "000" style guitar was to be used
5 -Use some local [goldfields timber] where possible
6 -Besides looking special it of course had to have a good tone.
7-And lastly I had a finish date that would make it one of the quickest builds I have undertaken [That's quick by my standards] As it happened the delivery date was moved, and as I had finished by the said deadline I had a chance to play the guitar for a while.
1 - I researched guitars with heart shaped soundholes but could only find the two that I already knew about. Eric Clapton's "Ivan the Terrible" twelve string guitar, and though not a true heart shape, a guitar, also a twelve string, played by the late Pete Seager.
I had tried to have a guitar built for me many years ago with that shape sound hole, but the maker declined. So planing/designing this guitar was down to me.
2 - Why hearts? well I thought that if I have a heart shaped soundhole, why not make hearts a feature of the guitar.
3 - Why "50"? At the time of starting this guitar I had been in Australia for 50 years, and next year my wife and I would have been married 50 years. So fifty hearts it was going to be.
4 - Why "000"? why not? I had made some nice sounding "000"s and hoped this be as good as it's predecessors. Its possibly better.
5- Local timber. This came from two sources. The peghead overlays are from timber savaged from a local hotel built in the 1800's and burnt down in the mid 1990's. These were used with the dried open grain and shakes still visible, very brittle and a worry to inlay and work. The other is Emu Apple and is used for the fingerboard. Gold frets and gold tuners with ebony buttons finish of the look well, I thought.
The inlays are MOP, ebony and maple.
Thanks for looking.