Thanks for all of the kind words! One thing I have to say first is that Joe did me a HUGE favor. When I sent thise guitar to him, I had just had an extremely bad time with a wood allergy to Pao Ferro. On top of that, I had been experiencing something similar to the flu for a couple of weeks. My head wasnt thinking straight and my craftsmanship was suffering because of it. Joe pulled me through by completing some of the detail work that I had omitted and fixed a couple of my blunders before he put the finish on the guitar. he didnt have to do this, but I guess he felt sorry for me and the condition I was in. I am forever grateful for his willingness to help me out during my time of suffering! I am in awe every time I look at this guitar!
Now, about the sound:
I got the pickups installed today. It is a Bband A-11 UST pickup and has 3 individual POTs for the controls. It was a trick installing these as I couldnt get my hands inside the guitar to guide anything. Somehow I managed to get it installed though. Gluing on the bridge was a real challenge also.
Playing acoustically without a pickup, the guitar doesnt have much volume. The sustain is not as prominent as my other acoustics, but is ok. When you plug this thing in.......
WOW !!! I guess it is because I chose to use the 4 one inch holes for the sound holes, but the bass is incredible! Clear, punchy, and bright trebles too. The A-11 pickup is all it says it is. It does give a pretty good acoustic sound to this thin bodied guitar (2" thick). I did try out the feedback and it is virtually nill. I guess the smaller sound holes help eliminate the feedback issue. Even playing right in front of the amp it is quiet as a mouse as far as feedback is concerned.
The boxelder back tickles your stomach while you are plaing it. I have a lot more vibration from the back on this guitar than I have ever got out of any of my other guitars. The electric style neck was a breeze to bolt on. I wish I had made the neck a little thinner, but it is easy enought o change out the neck later if I choose. 4 screws ans it's off. Who ever it was that talked me into making the neck for this guitar should be commended. It wasnt that hard to do and I actually enjoyed making it from a piece of 1x4 curly maple. I got all of the bloodwood binding, bridge, fingerboard and headstock materials from one piece of 1x4 bloodwood that I bought at woodcraft. I made all of the BWB purflings using some maple veneer I bought on eBay and also some black stained veneer I got from eBay. The top purflings I bought from a company called DOMO international. It is all wood also. I love the red color!
Boxelder is not my favorite wood to work with. It has worm holes. It splinters easy, and has a tendency to develop splits in the wood at a moments notice. it burns easy on the pipe bender (I bent this guitars sides on a pipe bender). I did not have a mold to build this guitar in but I used a template and just matched it up best I could to the template. This guitar is the exact same shape as a Martin OM except for the cutaway (or lack thereof). The whole upper bout is solid western red cedar. I wanted a good structure to bolt the neck onto and making this part solid seemed the right thing to do.
The top is Englemann spruce. I sold some of this same spruce in the last OLF swapmeet. No runout and medularry rays throughout. even Joe noticed how pretty this stuff was. I went pretty thin on the bracing and used a bracing scheme I had been wanting to try out for some time. It has the traditional X brace, but that is as far as it goes for tradition. The lower bout is braced like a classical fan brace, witht he fans all attached to a "mario's tone bar" just behind the bridge plate. There is one brace running right up the center of the guitar from the intersection of the X, all the way to the base of the neck.
I put a set of Gotoh 510's on it for tuners....18:1. This is the first time I have used a waterslide decal for the headstock. I think I learned a lesson on those and am not sure if I will use them again. Somehow the yellow color on the lightning bolt seemed to dissappear. the red and black colors show up fine though.
The bridge on this guitar is my new "standard" bridge and one of the first I have used that was made on my new CNC machine. I am thrilled with the way it turned out!
This guitar will be shown at the Miami guitar festival in April. It is scheduled to be played by
Kinloch Nelson, and I will be sure to get some recordings of it when he plays it. As planned, this guitar plays like an electric, but sounds like an acoustic.
Thanks again for the kind reviews!
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