Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Billy,

You asked me in the 12-string tuner spacing thread about Vietnam so I thought it would be best to answer in a new post.

The headstock logo is Thanh Cam. Do Dung, my luthier,has become a good friend and I like to support his work. He is making the 9th guitar for me right now. It is a 7-string with 2 octave G-strings. (I like G-strings). I got the idea from a Jim McGuinn design I saw on the Martin website.

Dung mostly makes classical guitars and Asian stringed instruments so he really enjoys working with me on something different. (steel string acoustics are not very popular in Vietnam.) He also made a couple of Bennedeto style archtops that came out very nice.

I give him a few ideas and he makes things happen, I love to visit his workshop and learn about your art/craft/science. I hope some day I will have time to build my own guitar. Now all I have time for is building golf courses.

Here's the latest project:

HEADSTOCK



The diamonds, dot and logo will be abalone and the stem and truss rod cover will be ebony.

SOUND PORT



ROSETTE



Enough drawings...the neck will also have a diamond abalone inlay design.

This is the first guitar he has made that will be 90+% local materials. An OM with quilted mahogany top, bottom, sides and neck with rosewood fretboard, binding, bridge, and possibly rosette. There is a lot of abalone available here.

At my request he is making the body 1/4" deeper than Martin specs. I am using the gold alloy EVO frets and Gotoh Minis from LMI. They are good people and the only company I know that would sell me a single tuner instead of a set of 6.

It's going to be a fun Xmas present for myself.

Cool!! Looks like your luthier knows what he's doing! Be sure to post when it's done!

_________________
Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)