Recently, a classical guitar made by a well known, highly respected Spanish maker came into the shop for evaluation. The current owner had removed all the original lacquer finish from the top and sanded so much that areas of the top were less than 1mm thick. The first day it was in the shop I spent over an hour scrubbing the top to remove remaining finish remover and other chemical crud that was leftover by “a home repair”.
The next day I spent some time with the guitar to learn more about the damage with the hopes that all I needed to do was to re-finish the top. With the aid of an inspection mirror I found a repair completed at some point in the guitar’s life, a “floating brace” was installed to prevent the top from further collapse and an ugly repair done by the owner, a piece of teak veneer and lots of epoxy. I gently flexed areas of the top with my fingers, one section so thin that the wood immediately split. At that moment I knew I would need to replace the top. The neck, fretboard, sides and back were in great shape, those parts need only touch up of the finish.
I called the owner with what I discovered and we both concluded that the guitar deserved a new top. The owner stopped by the shop later that week, he selected a nice redwood top and a new rosette.
Acoustic Guitar Bridge Replacement
The biggest challenge with this guitar is the original binding had to remain to preserve of the guitar’s integrity. My typical procedure is to rout off the binding, cut off the top, replace top and re-bind with in-kind wood binding. After some research for different techniques I found a short photo essay on top removal byJohn Greven and a video by Fritz Damler, both master luthiers.I am very grateful that they shared their knowledge and techniques!
This guitar has an armrest which is glued to the side and is part of the resonator, this is the first pass with a laminate trimmer.
At the leg rest I used my old Ibex brand purfling cutter. I later set up a variable speed Dremel on a Stewmac precision router base with edge guide, which proved to be very efficient.
Is This A Classical Or Acoustic Guitar?
The purfling channel was cut with a Dremel and router bit and lots of hand work. If you zoom in on the photo you can see the original binding, which is about one millimeter thick. The BWB purfling you see in the channel is part of the original purfling.
The purfling ended up as East Indian rosewood, which I scraped down to exactly 0.0430, so it would added up with the B/W/B/W popular and curly maple veneer and fill the channel. I glued all strips in with CA glue, I feared that any other glue would make the strips swell so much that they won't fit!
I will cite the case of a marvelous concert player, a Japanese lady who is barely 5 ft. tall and with hands that are real miniatures. She plays a 664 mm 10 string guitar and demanded that I build this guitar with an action 1 mm higher than normal, which she handles with incredible ease. This is serious study! Jose Ramirez III, Things About the Guitar , 1990 Here is the hand size and scale length that I found on the forum at delcamp.com . Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 250mm+, 664mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 230mm to 250mm, 656mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 210mm to 230mm, 650mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 190mm to 210mm, 640mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of 170mm to 190mm, 630mm scale length Thumb tip to pinky tip span of below 170mm, 615mm scale length Here is my flexible imperial/metric ruler. Here is my hand properly placed on the flexible imperial/metric ruler. Today my reach from lit
Is It Difficult To Adjust To The Wider Neck Of A Classical Guitar From The Thinner Neck Of An Electric Guitar?
What holds the Holy of the Holies, what did Brahma become? Wood. Why will aspen always tremble? For the nails driven into the cross. What makes the color of wood? The soil it tastes. Cradle, fiddle, coffin, bed: wood is a column of earth made ambitious by light, and made of beauty by the rain. Kim R. Stafford, Having Everything Right , 1986. Rive , verb, to split Shake , noun, a split in a piece wood. (Heart shake, ring shake) Shake , verb, (Middle English), to split. I know I should have been in the studio working on my back log of guitars, but the day was so nice and warm with a tall blue canopy, I couldn't stay inside. I decided that I needed to make a proper froe mallet. This style of mallet is traditional to northeastern California , primarily Tehama (where I'm from), Butte, Shasta and Plumas counties where making shingles by hand from sugar pines was an industry. I don't know if it was used in any other region along the Pacific Rim, other parts of the United S
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein, scientist, mathematician This morning I spent several hours grinding and filing on a spike (large nail) with the idea that in the end, I would have several wood stippling tools, also known as background punches. The peg heads on the guitars made by Hernandez y Aguado have carving channels on them that are stippled, and since I am making a very close copy of such of a guitar I need to figure out how to do the stippling. Since I no longer have my leather carving tools and those stipple tools (available at brownells.com ) cost about $27, excluding tax, I thought that I would make my own. They work, but not the way I wanted them to, and I found out that it is really hard to stipple bubinga! That is what I was practicing on. Off to the computer and the world of the Internet and after a little research I found this article . Please be aware that this article is at a website of shooting ma
What holds the Holy of the Holies, what did Brahma become? Wood. Why will aspen always tremble? For the nails driven into the cross. What makes the color of wood? The soil it tastes. Cradle, fiddle, coffin, bed: wood is a column of earth made ambitious by light, and made of beauty by the rain. Kim R. Stafford, Having Everything Right , 1986. Rive , verb, to split Shake , noun, a split in a piece wood. (Heart shake, ring shake) Shake , verb, (Middle English), to split. I know I should have been in the studio working on my back log of guitars, but the day was so nice and warm with a tall blue canopy, I couldn't stay inside. I decided that I needed to make a proper froe mallet. This style of mallet is traditional to northeastern California , primarily Tehama (where I'm from), Butte, Shasta and Plumas counties where making shingles by hand from sugar pines was an industry. I don't know if it was used in any other region along the Pacific Rim, other parts of the United S
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein, scientist, mathematician This morning I spent several hours grinding and filing on a spike (large nail) with the idea that in the end, I would have several wood stippling tools, also known as background punches. The peg heads on the guitars made by Hernandez y Aguado have carving channels on them that are stippled, and since I am making a very close copy of such of a guitar I need to figure out how to do the stippling. Since I no longer have my leather carving tools and those stipple tools (available at brownells.com ) cost about $27, excluding tax, I thought that I would make my own. They work, but not the way I wanted them to, and I found out that it is really hard to stipple bubinga! That is what I was practicing on. Off to the computer and the world of the Internet and after a little research I found this article . Please be aware that this article is at a website of shooting ma
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