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I caught up with a long time client of mine last night...Jackson Browne...and showed him what I've been up to lately including one of my tilt-neck 16 1/4" jumbo guitars. This led to discussion re. designing a new baritone guitar for him...I made his first as a rebuild...and to discussion about scale length. The first one I "made" for him was a rebuild of a...hell's bells, I don't even quite remember, but I think it may have been a Tak dread. I put a new top and fingerboard on it and made it with a 27" scale length. Jackson has subsequently tried and commissioned other baritones from other builders, but came to feel that the 27" scale was what really could do it for him.

Now I've tended to push the scale length out to 28", wanting more push of the top, but Jackson's reasoning was in line with mine on that... If you design well, and "tune" the top well, the 27" scale stays much more guitar player-friendly, and that may just trump driving the top, especially if the guitar is to be used mostly amplified. There's a lot to be said for putting playability over pure acoustics on player's instruments. Sure, I know all the theoretical reasons to go longer with the scale length, but that's all a moot point if the player just isn't comfortable playing the instrument. Just look at the classical guitar world. 664 had become the macho standard... Now 650 or less is quite acceptable.

So the end result is that I'll be building a tilt neck bari for Jackson in the next year or so. We have some funny ideas up our respective sleeves, so the guitar will have a lot of parts and design elements that will be funny...yes, kind of inside jokes...while not being horribly visually obvious. I told him about the symbolism of the elements and materials that went into the Henry Kaiser "Ms. Antarctica" guitar, and we just sort of riffed off of that.

Anyway, Jackson's comments and positive criticism of the guitar were a huge boost to my confidence in my current design. He really got what I'm up to, and his ultimate complement was this: "Rick, this guitar changes the game..."

Your thoughts on this are much appreciated, Rick. Thanks!

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

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

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

Thanks Rick.

I've built baritones with a 27.5" scale and they sounded fine and were, like the one you'll be building for Jackson, played mostly amplfied so the scale length and its ability to push the top weren't as much of an issue as playability.

I'm currently building two baritones with a 28" scale....well, actually one is in progress and the other is ready to be started soon.
With the scale lengths of 27" and 28" being only 1 inch apart over their entire length, that 1/2" on the half of the fingerboard end being divided along the fret course doesn't present a huge adjustment on the part of the player. Both of these will be played unamplified and acoustically for the majority of the time so the longer scale will play a large part in their success with their owners.

My thought on this is that if a player has that much of an issue with those dimensional distributions, they may want to just string up a standard scale length guitar at....say 25 1/2"...with extra heavy strings and drop the tuning to achieve the baritone register. I have a few players using my guitars with a 26" scale and a tuning of a fourth below standard tuning at B to B.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with for Jackson Browne in any case. I'm sure it will be interesting and inspiring for the rest of us.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Thanks for posting, Rick. I'm not sure how much you'll be able to reveal as you build the Baritone. Nonetheless, it would sure be very instructional and most appreciated to watch a pro design, execute, and document a build based upon such an accomplished player's input.

Then again, I'll be the first to understand if this is not possible.

In either case, congratulations and good luck on the project.

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

Rick,
I was out and about for a couple of hours today and was able to pop into the Guitar Villa near me in Bethlehem, PA. They usually have a few of your guitars on the wall there, but I wasn't able to get my hands on them today like I usually do. They're always the highlight of my visit to the store and I missed them this time.

Being primarily an electric builder, your input on the baritone project that you were talking with Jackson Browne about is going to be interesting.

The thing that is so different between the need to achieve volume and the response that comes from the right combination of tension and energy and the ability of allowing electronics to fill in the gaps is that those of us who are completely focused on the acoustic application of our efforts can't usually take advantage of the other side...or depend on it being there when our instruments are being used.

Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing what you come up with as always.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Kevin, while I'm primarily known for my electric and acoustic-electric instruments, in fact my roots in acoustics are very deep, and my current hands-on projects are more acoustic than electric. My crew do most of the electric building these days, and I tend to work on machining parts, spraying our production instruments...and building acoustics.

If you go by what I consider "real world" usage of acoustic guitars, it's interesting to note that Taylor sells three guitars with pickups to every one without one, and I think that if you step outside of our ivory towered acousto-centric campus here, you'll see that the majority of acoustics sold at between $500.00 and $2,000.00 in stores have pickups in them. It's really an acoustic-electric world out there, as offensive as that may be to many acoustic purists. Then you get to a Jackson Browne or David Crosby, and they want pickups in their guitars no matter the cost of the guitar or the amplification system. The guitars are tools of their trade, craft, and art, and they need to be able to get their messages across to audiences numbering in the thousands. So these guys want great acoustic guitars...yes...but they also know that a huge number of the ears that will hear their guitars do so through the benefit of amplification.

Another issue is playability. With a baritone you're on that narrow path between playability and real world strings. Shorter scale lengths want fatter strings which sound funky. Longer scale lengths allow thinner strings...but playability is compromised. Throw a pickup in there, tune the top right, and you can do very, very well with a 27" scale length and reasonable strings. Yeah, you may get more punch out of a 28" or longer scale, but if the musician has a hard time playing, any gains are lost. This is very much like the trend to 650 mm scales and shorter for classical guitarists for whom the 664 scale is just not worth the effort and hand strain. Modern builders have been able to come close to erasing the perceived disadvantages of the shorter scale lengths by getting more out of guitar tops than was done in the past. What good is a great sounding instrument if it's hard to play? And it's not for us luthiers to tell the players what is hard and what is easy. I've known several otherwise brilliant designers who seem to think that musicians should just adapt to their superior designs and are unwilling to accommodate the player. "My way or the highway" kind of stuff...

I have not broached the idea of a fanned fretboard with Jackson. I think I'd just have to build one and put it in his hands. He told me that he was pretty traditional in his guitar tastes...something I already knew having worked on many of his instruments when I lived in LA. So I think the concept would be off-putting to him, though once he played one, he might just like it. He was actually very surprised at liking my guitar so much, being how off the field it is compared to his guitar collection. But he also recognized that I throw enough traditional visual features into the designs (even though many have obscured origins) that the modern stuff doesn't overwhelm the aesthetics. That is a very conscious thing on my part. I love the tradition of the guitar, but I consider innovation to be a part of that tradition. I think you have to be very careful when straying too far afield in the aesthetics department. You want to draw the attention of a potential player/client into the whole instrument, not to some particularly original, but ultimately off-putting feature. And if you do have a particularly unusual feature, it had better work like gangbusters and justify its existence. I see some weird shapes which seem to be for the sake of weird or original in some guitars, and they just don't make it for me. I'm trying for the form follows function path. If you have to spend more than two minutes convincing a player of the utility of some visually arresting aspect of your guitar, you've lost. The nice thing about my tilt neck and floating fingerboard is that I can demonstrate changing the action in ten seconds, and every guitar player I've shown these guitars to instantly gets the message about the fingerboard being free of the top. Guitar players have a much easier time grasping the benefits than do fellow luthiers...

Rick,
My reference to the "real" world in my previous post was not at directed to the sales market for guitars, but simply the actual tone of the guitars themselves without being plugged in even though most have some sort of electronic assistance installed. You have to admit that when even the most avid electronic players of acoustic guitars like David Crosby and Jackson Browne and others get in the studio with those wonderful guitars that have all of the best pickups installed so that thousands and thousands of ears can hear what they are playing go into the studio, the pickups aren't as important any more and the expensive and efficient microphones come out and are very carefully placed around the instruments to catch something completely different.....the "real" sound of the instruments. If it wasn't that important that guitars sounded great on their recordings that will be heard by multiple numbers of people who will hear them live, they'd just plug in and throw them to a track on the recording.

I have to say, though, that many players who buy a guitar with a pickup in it only occasionally use them or simply buy, not because the pickup was there. They buy a guitar that they like, many times, that just happens to have a pickup onboard.

With the effects of the room, the system and speakers and then the processing necessary to make the guitars work at the volumes needed all taking a toll on the final tone of the guitars live, it never really does the "real" thing much justice and that's just a well proven fact. I've been to so many concerts where the acoustic tone was very good, but I also understand where it is always falling short of what can be achieved or captured in the studio and why, so it's not a problem or disappointment, just and excepted and accepted occurrence in live music. I've seen and heard Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Bob Dylan and lots of other great acoustic players with some of the finest acoustic guitars ever made in live situations and have always loved the tone that they've gotten, but still enjoyed the more refined tone of the guitars on their recordings that just exhibited more of the true tone and character of the instruments. But even then, I would venture to say that I'd likely enjoy the tone of those same guitars while listening to them being played across the room from me in a completely acoustic environment.

I agree and am fully aware of the general sales of guitars with electronics and pickups in proportion to those without. I install pickups in almost 75% of the guitars that I build, but I still build with the acoustic end of the guitar's tone at the forefront of my efforts. I have, on the other hand, built guitars that were intentionally directed completely to a plugged in application for both live and studio use. They had very little ambient or acoustic output or volume but sounded great plugged in on stage and on tape while standing up under very high sound pressure levels without feedback problems.

I have always loved the look of your guitars because of the path that you've bravely taken away from traditional appearance while still incorporating just enough to keep the purist interested and willing to pick them up and give them a try. I also agree that many players who may just end up loving your guitars need to be attracted enough to them by appearance to give them any consideration.

The heavy strings necessary to achieve tension sufficient to create decent tone and volum on a shorter scale have sounded clunky and almost dead to me when we've tried that here, too, but it allowed the player to enjoy the baritone like lower registers with zero playing adjustment as the ergonomic end of things stayed the same. I do like the tension of the strings on a baritone with a 28" or 28.5" scale length, but personally, don't care to have to stretch to play the things.

Anything a customer has wanted from me concerning scale length has always been fine with me since they're th one who will play the guitar when it's complete. I just always try to explain to them the characteristics that will likely present themselves with different scale lengths to allow theme to make a more educated decision when we get ready to lock in the details of their commission.

I currently have several guitars with shorter scale lengths in my shop ranging from a very short 23.750" to a personal favorite of mine at 24.875". Two others are at a traditional 000 length of 24.9", but it's always whatever they want and I wouldn't think to try to tell them what's right for them or not right, for that matter.

I'm not an acoustic purist by any means and 90% of my playing time is enjoyed with a Strat, Les Paul or Parker Fly plugged straight into an amp. I love to sit a play an acoustic that I or any other builder has created, but my situation demands that i play an electric. When I do play acoustic...it's plugged in most times, too.

I love the concept of your tilt neck and floating board too. Very practical and obviously functional innovations. Good stuff and i agree that a player sometimes grasps the benefit of such things before other builders just because they are willing to. Believe me, other builders get it, but don't want to validate it since they didn't come up with it....no matter how good it is.

Thanks for your time...and wise input,
Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars