Official Luthiers Forum!

Please welcome
Colin Symonds

Colins Bio

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Colin,

Welcome, and it is great getting to know you better. Sounds like you are a very accomplished player as well as builder. I would be interested to hear more about your bolt on neck design. Do you have any pictures you could share?

Jeff

It's great to have another new face in the Bio's section. We look forward to your contributions.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

Hi there Colin, Welcome to another old dog. Good to have you here at OLF.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Professor Symonds, the guitar is very captivating, and music moves the soul. I come more from the woodworking aspect, but am motivated by the guitars end purpose more than craftsmanship alone. Congratulations on a nice bio, and thanks for hanging out with us, Bruce.

Welcome Professor Emeritus, I certainly hope you find the forum a place for solutions and answers but also a place where you can share and expound on your experiments of guitar making. It's good to see another person from the other side of the POND(Atlantic) join us.
Very good looking instrument! Hope to see more of your work in the future. There is nothing like playing your own hand made guitar is there? have a great day.

Colin I have enjoyed your post. wow can you build guitars and lutes. Welcome and looking forward to seeing your work and insights on this craft

Welcome Colin. Nice to have you on board. Looking forward to a different perspective and more diversity in the quest for the perfect sound.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Thanks to everyone for their kind words. We don't have the "community" of guitar builders over here so it was a joy to discover this fine forum. As I told Lance, ever since I joined in I have been made to feel like an old friend. So thanks again to all the members, you're great guys and I hope to learn a lot.

Jeff the bolt on neck simply uses an extension of the neck wood bolted to the routed out fingerboard support part of the neck block. Only about 3mm on the sides and 10mm on the end of the fingerboard bears on the soundboard top. I've only done one this way so far but found it worked really well. Next time I'm doing a string change on it I'll take it apart and put some pics up. I'm currently working on an identical guitar with a normal glue job to see if the sound is any different. Personally I doubt if it will be. I believe Taylor and Babicz use similar systems but it is nothing new, I had a guitar in the seventies that was very similar.

ColinColin S38378.2231365741

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Welcome aboard. Noticed you are a geologist. Last year we traveled Scotland w/ a friend who is a geologist. He insisted we drive all the way up to Laxford Bridge to see the outcropping of Lewisian Gneiss (sp?). While he took his pictures, we were attacked by a voracious swarm of midges. The wives got a good laugh as we danced about in desperation. Mean little suckers! (The midges...not the wives.)
Hope you contribute often. And feel free to cuss in Latin all you wish.
Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Steve,

Every geology student in Europe gets taken up to the Lewisian Gneiss. The Scottish geology was my speciality for many years, I did my PhD on it. Those Gneisses were metamorphosed at about 6 miles under the ground and the overlying rock has then been eroded, causing uplift. What everyone goes to look at is the Moine thrust where older Moine rocks have been thrust 30 miles or so over the top of the younger Lewisian. It's rare to find older rocks on top of younger ones. Imagine the forces involved in pushing a whole mountain range 30 miles over another. This all happened when that part of Scotland was not joined to England but to the east coast of the proto North America. The same rocks can be found in Canada. End of Geology lesson! But it is beautiful.

Those midges are infamous they can only be compared to the ones found in Alaska and Northern Canada. If we have to go up there in Midge season we all wear midge hoods and the strongest Deet that we can find. It looks like a bee keepers convention when a bunch of us are there!

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.