Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi guys, Its jason avila from Visalia CA. I have been a member in the past with another user name JasonAnthony . Here is the progress of my first. My friend hblair aka Heath (who some of you know) has been my thought bouncer in this process. Its great to have a good friend to throw ideas off of, and chase this love of building with. There are not many builders in or around Visalia CA. Well here is the
L-0. Sitka & Mahogany w/sitka bracing. The body is as deep as a dreadnaught. After I glued the top on I realized (Like my friend..I did not drill an access hole for the truss rod) and the Valley of my scallopes are to short. I plan on doing more carving there, to widen the length of the valley closer to the X. The braces are knifed to a round point. Like I said when I first joined..I appreciate feedback and thoughts..they are welcomed with me.

Jason Avila

well, i think ill leave the real advice for those who have actually completed a guitar, although im getting close. i will definitely agree that you should carve your scallops back closer to the x intersection, but you already knew that. as for the truss rod access, it looks like the a frame bracing is going to make it difficult to cut all the way through the head block to gain access through the sound hole. you might want to consider access through the headstock. thats just my very inexperienced advice though. well have to hook up so i can tap on that baby (the guitar, that is).

ps im glad you are not jasonanthony anymore because that sounded like you were in the latin boy band menudo.

congrats on making it this far. you are doing well my friend.

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sweat the small stuff.

Bridge Plate?

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Hi Jason - nice work my friend and I would be happy to check it out more closely but I can't see what is happening from your pictures - they are to small. When I blew them up the detail is lost.

Any chance of posting later pictures, perhaps 800 X 600?

Thanks!

Bridge plate material is on its way..maple. I will try to send larger pics for you guys.
Jason

Is this a left-handed guitar?

I was woundering the same thing about the tone bar orientation it is set up for left handed or the photos are mirrored one of the two.

Two thing that stand out to me is splay of the tone bars and finger bracing. What is the thinking there? I find it is critical to have the upper tone bar in contact with the bridge plate to get the ballaced tone I want. These tone bar's conection with the X-brace seem to be very deep in the lower bout and very close to each other at the conection to the X-brace and pretty far away from where the energy to drive them will be.

It looks like you have three different material(maybe just color)as side bracing. You got some braces, cream tapes, but what is the black one?

Thanks, David

Yes its left handed. Im a lefty and number one is all mine About the tone bars: I am going off of inexperience ...to be honest. I plan on having a larger maple bridge plate that will end about 6-mm from the upper tone bar. An acquaintance of mine from Folkway Music has given me a little insight to the shape, layout, & measurements of the bracing on an original 1928-29 L-0. I found a couple of pics of an L-0 with it back removed for repairs. Those original braces were tapered not scalloped, Tall, very thin, and knifed. The original had one tone bar and one finger brace on each side of the X. My layout loosely resembles what that picture has let me see of the original (X braced L-0) Really I love the Vintage Voice..I have had some opportunity to get some hands on experience on only a few Pre-war Guitars. Really before I started learning about anything to do with Luthierie, or tradition versus innovation ...I fell in love with the Pre War sound. I am not a Die-Hard but as far as I can see this is the direction I want to travel.

- The sides have 4 sitka wood braces and two colors of bias tape (I couldn't make up my mind)
- I also chose to make my top with no radius in hopes of a more resonant, responsive sound
- The braces are not tucked under the kerfing, they tapper to nothing just prior to meeting.

Also a little about Jason Avila..I am an artist learning to be a craftsman... unlike my friend heath, I rush in way too soon without counting (or measuring) the cost:roll:

Does anyone with a Mac know how to convert a jpeg to a file small enough to upload and praduce a good sized pic for the forum?

I have all my images in iPhoto, so I bring them up on the screen there and adjust the window size or zoom to whatever size I want it to appear as. Then I open the "Preview" program to grab a screen shot of it.

In Preview, select "File -> Grab -> Selection", drag the crosshair over whatever image or part of an image you want to capture. Then "File -> Save As", then when I select jpeg it offers a "quality" bar that you can adjust. I can save a pretty big shot at around 4-5, which ends up about as good as a monitor can show anyway, and will be around 40-50 kb. A shot the size of yours will usually come in around 20-25k. I'm certainly not a graphics expert and there may be other ways, but that's what I came up with and it's pretty quick and easy.

The guitar looks great by the way.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

If you want to send me your pictures to info at heshtone dot com I would be happy to resize and post them for you buddy. Please send me as large a file as you have not to exceed about 3 MB each.

For Mac users:
From iPhoto, to make web photos: choose EXPORT and from the dialog box choose JPEG and pick the various settings, like quality and size. It is pretty self-explanatory at that point.

One "fun fact": JPEG files are compressed. Due to the way the compression algorithm works, larger photos get a higher RATE of compression, though that won't make them SMALLER than photos that start out small (in inches or pixels, etc). When you start with a photo that is 2-3 megs (or larger) the difference between what you start with and what you wind up with can be, ummm, breathtaking. F'instance going from 4 Megs to 0.23 Megs with only a small compromise in quality (considering...)...cool.

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Mark W. Lewis
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I'm tired of followin' my dreams. I think I'll just ask 'em where they are going and hook-up with 'em later - Mitch Hedberg