[QUOTE=Mattia Valente] Nice!
Would you happen to have a few shots of the bracing scheme? Thoughts on that?
Question: most baritones I've seen, as well as the electric baritone I've built, use significantly heavier string sets (.015-.070 for lights, .016-.080 for mediums with scales varying from 27" to 29"). Dave Berkowitz uses the lighter of the two, I believe, and at least on his first also used a JLD Bridge Doctor (although I haven't bothered to ask him (yet) about what he's using now). I'm going to build myself another, for personal use, so more opinions are always welcome![/QUOTE]
Matte,
Here’s a couple of pictures of the guitar’s top bracing.
I brace it in the normal pattern I would for any of my guitars. You are looking to get the top moving as much as possible in the “right” way and heavy bracing won’t help here!. With baritones, the string tension shouldn’t be different from a more normal scale guitar. What you do is find heavier strings for the longer scale length that give the same tension. It’s not like you are building a 12 string or something like that. The body I use (and bridge position) is the same as for my 12 fret body join guitar with 25.75” scale length.
The real area you need to pay attention to is saddle angle and compensation, particularly on the lowest strings. I was able to play with the first baritone I made by sliding extra pieces of bone behind the saddle I had done to find out where the intonation worked. As you will see from the pictures of the guitar I have just made, the back slant needs to be a lot more than normal to get the 5th and 6th strings to intonate properly. You also have to take this into your bridge design as you can end up with steep string ramps. The compensation will obviously vary with the scale length.
There are a couple of interesting principles that I have observed with baritones.
The first one is to put different sets of string gauge on and then work out how many half steps down you tune them to get back to tensions similar to lights (or mediums if you prefer) on a more normal (25.4" say) scale guitar. The longer the scale length the more options you have. On my guitar his means that with a set of lights (0.012"-0.053") you go down a step D-D, with mediums (0.013"-0.056") down one and a half steps to C-C and with heavies (0.014"-0.059") down two whole steps B-B.
The second principle is the scale length of the guitar when capoed at the second fret - which if the guitar is a 14 fret body join turns it to a 12 fret body join equivalent. For the scale lengths quoted above plus mine you get the following:
14 fret scale/ 12 fret scale (i.e capo II)
29" / 25.75"
28.3" /25.3"
28" / 24.9"
27.5" / 24.5"
26.5" / 23.5"
These are some interesting and familiar 12 fret scale lengths. If you combine this with the set of strings used for the one step tune down, then playing with these and the guitar Capoed at the second fret you are playing different 12 fret guitars with light gauge strings in E-E tuning. In the case of a 26.5" scale it would be like playing a 12 fret parlour guitar.
As for the “best” string gauges, this is the Holy Grail for Baritones and I’m still searching – especially the lowest string. It’s bit like acoustic basses, go to thick and you lose that nice tone but get a stiffer string. On the B-B I’ve gone as low as 0.075”, but currently like 0.066” which is slacker but gives a nicer sound to my ears. For my scale length guitar heavies work, although the 6th works better with say an 0.066” on, or what I currently do is buy a set of D’Addario EJ 15’s, take out the 0.011” and add an 0.066” for the bottom string. This gives 0.014”, 0.023”w, 0.030”, 0.039”, 0.047”, 0.066”. I like the feel of the wound second but a plain 0.018” or 0.019” would work well.
Hope this all makes sense and helps.
_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010
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