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August 6, 2025 · 8:20 pm

Guitar #41

I recently built a guitar after two and a half years off. A friend gave me a lovely piece of bear-claw spruce, which I took down from the shelf one day in June and joined together just for something to do. Then I planed it down and sanded it to rough thickness. By this time I realized that I was going to build another guitar, but I didn’t know what it would be. So I went around and looked at guitars in the local music store and decided to make something that looked like my previous big body guitars! These were both copies of the Taylor Grand Auditorium model, but when I delved into this a bit more I discovered that those were very close to the little know Martin models known as J40 and M36. The main difference being the body depth. So I settled on something shaped like a Martin M36, which has a 4″ deep body, but with V bracing like Taylor uses, and which I have been using for the last few guitars too.

It took me 2 months to build, working slowly and steadily. I have been experimenting with this V bracing and this time I settled on my own version that omits the waist brace. I had already tried this on a guitar or two that I rebuilt, so I was confident that it would work. Basically I simplified the already simple V brace concept by making the 2 main braces one long piece from end to end. Unlike Taylors, this idea needs no waist brace. Despite how great the guitars I made with the waist brace design were, I still figured that the waist didn’t really need that brace if the main braces didn’t get thinner there. So I left off that waist brace and kept the main braces high at that area.

In the spirit of being different again, I braced the back with an X brace, which is the commonest form of soundboard bracing. But heck, it looks good and works great for backs too!

In conclusion, it’s a fine guitar and it has a great sound. I can’t say it’s better than the ones I built with the waist brace, but time will tell how it sounds in the long run. So far, so good – great response from low to high, and very loud. It was an interesting project to build something out of the ordinary. After all, why be ordinary?

If you are interested in reading the whole process, here is my diary of the build, from original hand written notes.

GUITAR DIARY Download

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Tagged as bearclaw spruce, guitar, luthiery, Music, V bracing guitar tops

March 26, 2020 · 8:03 pm

Corona Gold Guitar

Guitar #6 c. 2001

When I took up guitar building, I began by attempting to build an archtop guitar. I quickly concluded that I should try something simpler, so I put that aside and built five other guitars before returning to the archtop in 2001. I carved the top from a hunk of cedar I glued up from lumber I found at the local yard. It was a huge thing, and it sounded great, but when I tried to stick a pickup on it I ruined the top. I was going to throw it away, but then decided to see if a simple domed top would work. I removed the old top and made a new one for the body.

body with top removed

new top – domed plate

attaching new top to the old body

I didn’t try to disassemble the neck, because it was made like a classical guitar, with the ribs built into it. So I slid the new top into place and glued it on.

guitar #6 – version 2

I played this guitar for years, and stuck a face mounted pickup on it. It sounded great, but it was still huge and unwieldy. Last year I decided to have a go at turning it into a thinner, smaller guitar that I could use in the band, so I sawed the back of it off, and reformed the lower bout, reducing it by 2″. I put on a new back, and made a cutaway so I could access the high notes. I needed controls for the pickup however, so I cut a hole in the lower bout, planning to mount the controls there on a plate. When I played the guitar after making the hole, it sounded better! I decided to leave the hole, and I mounted the controls on the body between the two main braces. I stuck a mason jar ring into the new soundhole, because it just happened to fit. Everyone seems to notice this.

guitar#6 – version 3

This became my main guitar for band use, since everyone who heard it said it was better than my other guitar. This may have to do with the pickup, an old Framus single coil. I played it for a couple of years, and recently decided to build a copy. I hadn’t built a guitar in 5 years and thought this would be a good idea, if only to see if I still had it in me to do it. I began in February and worked on it steadily for the past 6 weeks. Building a guitar is intense , and I thought of little else for the time I was engaged on the project. The guitar has a maple body, stained gold with home made dye made from turmeric. Since it is the colour of beer, I have called this guitar the Corona Gold.

the Corona Gold

I copied guitar #6 closely, with a few improvements. Luckily I had a second old Framus pickup, so the pair of them sound pretty much the same plugged in. The new one has a bit more punch however, as it is a little deeper than #6. The new neck is attached with a dovetail joint. The body is exactly 70mm deep. I made the neck in two parts – the dovetail block was made first, then the neck part was glued to that. This allowed for a solid neck from end to end.