"The Queen of Hearts"

[Taffy Evans]

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.

01-DSCF0072.JPG (73.96 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

08-DSCF0050.JPG (70.46 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

03-DSCF0058.JPG (106.08 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

02-DSCF0073.JPG (115.06 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

04-DSCF0074.JPG (75.71 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

05-DSCF0075.JPG (78.05 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

07-DSCF0051.JPG (62.56 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

12-DSCF0059.JPG (88.6 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

1-DSCF0035.JPG (78.34 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

2-DSCF0030.JPG (94.67 KiB) Viewed 18963 times

[demonx]

Nicely themed without overdoing it, great work!

[rocket]

That's bloody nice Taff,, the sound hole purfling,, done by hand or some machinery?? very nicely finish axe though, congrats!
Rod.

[charangohabsburg]

Amazing and very nice.

I wonder if there are more hearts on the guitar than I could see!

[Taffy Evans]

Thanks.
Rod, rosette done by hand

Markus, there are 50 hearts in all. The back is 3 piece so reinforcing over the two glue seams are heart shaped, also includes soundhole and the two side ports.

I have the build process on disc for the customer, maybe I should post it.

[Kev3]

Really like this one Taffy, can't for the life of me work out how you've achieved some of that ! - so, please do post some build pics.

[charangohabsburg]

Taff, I tried to get to 50 when counting the hearts, but couldn't spot more than 34!
Posting the build process sounds like a good idea!

Cheers,

[Kev3]

Good game Markus ! - kinda like them "spot the difference pics" - I only made it to 36 hearts

[charangohabsburg]

Kevin, I won't give up and I'll count again!

[Taffy Evans]

But wait......there's no prizes

[charangohabsburg]

And what about my reputation? People could say "Markus can not count"!

[Graham Long]

Very nice, just the right amount of bling, well done Taffy

[Taffy Evans]

I could get sneaky and not tell of some of the hidden hearts that may not count in the 50.

! - The black heart [ebony] in the back of the neck has a white heart [rock maple] at the front under the fingerboard. The ebony was not thick enough to go right through.

2 - The black hearts at the endpin are inlaid into white hearts which were then trimmed back to leave the fine white outlines.

Now that's another 5,

[ckngumbo]

Taffy that is a beaut!

[rocket]

Yes Taff i thought that might have been the case due to the inconsistent profile of the heart shape,i had a similar task recently although not as ornate where i ran some violin purfling around a margin of an oval sound hole in an arched soundboard, using a purfling cutter , knife and pick, pretty hair raising!
Rod.

[jeanburdge]

nicely figured a heart on your guitar..........

[Taffy Evans]

Thanks Jean, the guitar has been on display in the Townsville Museum for the last 2-3 months, I'm looking forward to picking it up this coming Monday, and to see how it came through it's stay in its glass case. It's a nice sounding guitar so I'm looking forward to playing it again also.