A guitar reconstruction

[Dave White]

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"Originally Posted on: Sat Aug 07, 2010 7:20 am

Some of you may be interested in this.

Six years ago I made a "dream guitar" for my 50th birthday present - a European Spruce/African Blackwood 13 frets clear of the body guitar called “Butterfly” :

Bfly1.jpg (103.25 KiB) Viewed 8975 times

It was called "Butterfly" because of the figure on the back:

Bfly2.jpg (121.63 KiB) Viewed 8975 times

This was my ninth guitar and although sounding good there has always been a little something lacking to make it "great" - the African Blackwood is so full of overtones and with my current abilities I wanted to make it "great". I left the back and sides far too thick for African Blackwood and the funky shape with large upper bout of the “Butterfly” was to take full advantage of the butterfly figure of the back.

I came up with a more elegant shape that still shows off the figure. It has “similarish” size to the Torres style classical guitar “El Levantine” that Colin Symonds made for me that has a Caucasian spruce top so when Colin kindly gave me a Caucasian spruce set it became obvious to me where it should end up. With a 13.5" lower bout it's similar in size to a Martin O sized guitar. Taking apart, rebuilding and eventually recycling all of the pieces of a guitar is an interesting challenge in itself and I have a low boredom threshold, so in June and July this year the “Butterfly” became “Féileacán” – the Gaelic for Butterfly.

In wood terms this guitar is almost fully transcontinental. Europe is represented by the cherry and lime end-blocks, the European spruce linings, and the sycamore neck, Asia (just) by the Caucasian spruce top, Africa by the African Blackwood b/s and fingerboard, Australasia by the Curly eucalyptus binding, North America by the Lutz bracing and South America by the Katalox rosette and headstock veneer and Brazilian Rosewood bridge. I don’t think wood grows in the Arctic and Antartic regions but I could be wrong.

Here are some pictures of the finished guitar. It is 630-660mm multiscale with 13 frets clear of the body:

Bfly3.jpg (135 KiB) Viewed 8975 times

Bfly4.jpg (153.31 KiB) Viewed 8975 times

Bfly5.jpg (89.89 KiB) Viewed 8975 times

Well . . . I say finished but I haven't got round to making the wooden tuner buttons yet The guitar has been strung up for nearly a month now and I'm happy with the result. Today I did a first recording - a lovely waltz written by English guitarist Ken Nicol called I.H. It's from his album Initial Variations and each tune is wtitten for someone that has influence his life and is titled by their initials. He calls this one his "Scottish Tune". It's in DADGAD Capo 3, and was recorded with my usual set up of an AKG C1000S microphone mixed down with flat EQ and no added effects: http://www.mrsite.co.uk/usersitesv13/de ... GES/IH.mp3

I did a photo documentary of the deconstruction and reconstruction here on the Luthier Community Forum: http://www.luthiercom.org/phpBB3/viewto ... =97&t=1964

[Localele]

Very nice Dave.Sometimes it is good for the soul to DO something for yourself.Love the soundtrack to go with it. What string gauges have you used across the set?

[Dave White]

Michael,

Thanks. String gauges are 0.052", 0.042", 0.032", 0.024", 0.017", 0.013" D'Addario's.

[Localele]

Pretty standard set. When I look at multi-scale guitars they look as if they would need a bigger span of gauges to get the right sound.Optical illusion.

[Taffy Evans]

Very nice Dave, very skillful and well executed work. I can imagine the challenges you faced in the rebuild as had to do it to one of my guitars for a customer. She insisted on getting the same guitar back and not to build a new one even tho the insurance was paying the bill. The guitar had been swamped by the flooded Northern Territory Katherine river. Would have been easier to build a new one from scratch.

Now that I think of it the guitar is shown in the "Gallery" and it too has a butterfly on it.

Do guitars with butterfly's have short lives????

Love your work Dave

[DarwinStrings]

Gorgeous, great shape Dave, thanks for sharing your dreams.

Jim

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[Kim]

Well it was worth doing the reconstruction just to see and hear some of these beauties again.

Well done Dave, the buttery is truly a lovely thing.

Cheers

Kim