Official Luthiers Forum!

Here is a guitar bouzouki I just finished. Wish I could play it, it seems to sound pretty good!

Italian top, EIR back and sides, ebony appointments. Simple snakewood rosette. Nitro finish.

The pictures are not perfect, especially the pictures of the top fail to show the beautiful grain in this wood. Oh well, here we go.



Front:







Another one:







The back:







Headstock (oops, I guess could have done a better job of cleaning the dust...):










Rosette:







Bridge:







Some heel shots:










And lastly a very dusty one of the butt wedge (!)








Thanks for looking!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


great detail...

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

Man that's great.  What is the size?  Is the sound a lot deeper/more mellow than a regular bouzouki?  Very nice detail work.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Arnt, that is beautiful! The rosette is perfect. I wish I could play it !   Great job. I can't believe the quality I see on this OLF. It scares me a little! Alan.

Arnt,

That's great. I like everything about it!
Those miters look perfect.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Wow! Beautiful work! Loved the curvature of the bridge.

Jim

 

As Jim Said:

WOW!

That's another winner, Arnt. Beautiful! Its new owner is going to smile until his cheeks hurt.




Psst! It's an "end graft"!

Dang, Arnt, you are good. That is such a beautiful instrument and the detail work is amazing. Maybe if I lived in Norway, hmmmm.

What kind of scale does it have, Arnt?


8 strings, I've been thinking of taking three or four strings off of my guitars.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Now there's an idea.  That would improve my playing skills considerably.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Wow Arnt... thats really good. I guess we have to have that Scandinavian OLF-thing soon...

I love everyting about it, the shape, the details look outstanding and so does the finishing job.

Who is getting it?

Arnt, that is INCREDIBLY beautiful!!!

It really reminds me of the Avalon Legacy range guitars....

So, is that body size a regular guitar size, or smaller/narrower?

Man, I wanna hear some soundclips!!

Arnt,

Very elegant and lovely workmanship

Time to make one for yourself - just like a mandolin on steroids really

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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

Wow!

Very nice instrument and super clean workmanship!

Well done!

Thanks everybody!

Waddy, yes the idea was to get a deeper, richer sound than the owner's other bouzouki's, which are traditional Irish type instruments. He wanted a more guitar like sound, and I think we have achieved that (surprise; it is built like a guitar!).

Calton, I know; I saw you mention this in another thread but I found it funny, and being the immature clown that I am...

Old man, the scale is 25,4".

Lars, the instrument was commissioned by Andreas Aase, who is very good, professional local player. Among other things he plays in a duo where the other guy plays a Hardanger fiddle, and this instrument will be used in that setting at least. With the Irish bouzouki they were getting a little "treble heavy", this instrument will hopefully fill in a bit more on the other end. We shall see.

Sam, the instrument is approximately 390 x 500 mm. I used my SJ mold, but I shimmed the lower bouts a bit to narrow that part in about 10 mm. Why? Dunno, felt like a good idea at the time. Hopefully Andreas will put some sound clips up on his web site!

Dave, yeah I know. I play the mandolin of course, so I can find may way around the fretboard on this one as well, but man! You have to really stretch out, so the normal mando chords are very difficult to do. I love the way the chords sound though, this thing sustains! I put 2 carbon rods in the neck along the hot rod, so the neck feels very solid which probably contributes to that as well. I was concerned that the narrow neck would be flimsy, but the carbon seems to have taken care of that.

Thanks again for all the nice words guys, I'm blushing over here!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

[QUOTE=Arnt]
Dave, yeah I know. I play the mandolin of course, so I can find may way around the fretboard on this one as well, but man! You have to really stretch out, so the normal mando chords are very difficult to do. I love the way the chords sound though, this thing sustains! I put 2 carbon rods in the neck along the hot rod, so the neck feels very solid which probably contributes to that as well. I was concerned that the narrow neck would be flimsy, but the carbon seems to have taken care of that.

[/QUOTE]

Arnt,

I made my first one two and a half years ago and it joins the body at the 16th fret. The neck is rock solid. If you are playing in GDAE the chords will be a bit stretchy, GDAD sits much better. I have e-mailed you a word document that has GDAD chords from a workshop with James Fagan plus a few of my own variations.

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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

Thanks Dave! I'm delivering the instrument at luch today so I won't have much time to try it out, but as you say I will have to build one for myself too. These are fun instruments!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

[QUOTE=Arnt] Thanks Dave! I'm delivering the instrument at luch today so I won't have much time to try it out, but as you say I will have to build one for myself too. These are fun instruments![/QUOTE]

"...at luch..." ?!!! That was supposed to be lunch, darn edit button...

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

I just realized I didn't put up any photos of the whole thing, so here are a couple of more.

Front:






Back:

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Excellent work Arnt. Looks like it was built by an architect.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

great job Arnt.... congrats.

Arnt, that's one gorgeous, elegant instrument! Love it. Thanks for the inspiration!

So, the scale length is 25.4". Is it tuned GDAE as Dave mentioned? What string gauges did you use?

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Actually this instrument is tuned FCGD low to high, in other words one whole step down from the most common tuning, which Dave mentions. This was the players choice; according to him this works really well with the Hardanger fiddle. The strings pairs are .042/.032/.017/.012, which gives a total string pull of 68.12 kg in this tuning. On a guitar with the same scale tuned to concert pitch the stings will pull 73.51 kg with light strings and 79.42 kg with medium strings, so that was my starting point when I considered the bracing and top dimensions.

One problem I see is that the G stings (.017) are a bit slack, so we may go up to .024 on those and see how that works. Intonation can be hard to get right if the unwound strings are too slack. The .017 strings in his tuning only pull 7.32 kg each.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Here is the string calculatoer I used

The McDonald Patent Universal String Tension Calculator

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin