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OK so everyone knows that I build some pretty nice guitars if I do say so myself, but with the move out here to Boise and the shop packed in a Mayflower wharehouse I'm not able to do much building or much of anything with my hands. So I've been spending time playing which feels really good, I'm very happy with how my work has stood up and play the snot out of my thin body guitar.

So this evening after working on some stuff at work most of the day I couldn't stand being cooped up anymore and we decided to head over to the guitar center and just do some snooping. Now I'm pretty bad about not liking Guitar Center because normally you have 12 year olds playing bad cover songs at really high decibels, I could certainly never work there as I'd be yelling for everyone to shutup at some point . But they do get some pretty good stuff in and sunday evenings aren't too bad.

After drooling over the Les Pauls and PRS's for a while I ventured into the acoustic area, it was quiet and so I sat and played through alot of what they had with Michelle listening. I found some really odd things and a couple of scary ones, they had two Breedloves in there (surprising, as I have never seen them in there before), one was over a $1000 and sounded like the top was made of stiff cardboard, I mean it was just bad, yet there was a second breedlove that sounded quit good actually and not a lot of difference in the price.

I played a little of everything, tried one of the new entry level Ovations and put it right back , played with a number of high and low priced ones. The scary part is that some of the cheaper ones actually sounded better than the expensive ones , there where some that to be honest the workmanship was pretty dang good on, especially when your looking at a guitar for under $400. Now I've been to Gryphon a number of times and the stuff that Frank has there is simply top notch, but most casual players aren't going to spend $10K for a Olson no matter how nice it is so Guitar Center fills a need.

What was a little disturbing was that some of the cheap stuff was so dang good, and it really got me to thinking about how I build and about doing things like making a cheaper line of guitars. In my playing around I ran across this little Fender GD0300, it had of all things what appears to be a curly maple top. It could be spruce but I've never seen spruce like that before, I was intrigued because it's pretty stunning. They stained the top before finishing to make the curl POP, the sides and back are just standard Mahogany and the binding is standard white plastic, it has standard BWB purfling. The headstock is ebony and the rosette is just purfling circles, no fingerboard dots, it has just a little fender F at the 12th fret.

So I picked it up and played it for a while and it sounded GOOOOOOD, very bright and open, I noticed that the X brace has a wood cap, the neck is nice and skinny and I couldn't put it down. So after about 20 minutes I just bought the dang thing, here's the kicker....

It only cost me $249!!! that's a killer price for such a nice little guitar, sure it needs some polish and when the shop is back up I'll spend some time in the wheel with it, but for that price the fit and finish are really good and it's a great little players guitar. I'm going to spend some time playing it and doing some looking around in the inside to see what they did to make it sound like that, it has standard nickel sealed tuners, it was made in China. But no matter it's still a great guitar, I intend on building something like this once the shop is back up.

So I didn't build it, but I did buy it, I took some quick snaps of it (sorry for the quality) to show it off, and if anyone knows anything about the top I'd be VERY interested to learn about it, it seems VERY thin around the rosette (I'll see if I can find my calipers and check it out) but I would really like to build some guitars like this, it just well POPS...

Here ya go:











Cheers... I'm off to play

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Thats definately maple. Probably veneered over a cosmetically challenged spruce top. I know Taylor was looking at doing something like that but felt the glue added too much weight to the top. Dean guitars does it though so there must be a way

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That top looks like quilted sapelle to me. I've never seen a low end guitar with wood that nice.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

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

I knew that the Zootman didn't have the market cornered, but it's nice to see proof.
Wait...unless Bob sold that to Fender?

Anyway, that's a pretty guitar. When I worked in our local music store, I was constantly amazed at some of the lower end stuff and how nice it sounded. Gives one pause about all the bling, doesn't it?

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

I'll pop in a lighted mirror tomorrow and look at the back of the soundboard, I don't think it's a lam Jason, it feels to stiff to my fingers (spruce has a touch of give to it) but I could be wrong. And I'm positive it's not Sapelle Ron, I've seen both and I'm positive it's maple, it's the only wood with that particular figure, plus the stain is a dark amber and sapelle is too brown to come out that color.

I may call Fender and see if they know for sure, I figure they should have something in their database about it somewhere. Like I said it's a great little guitar, it needs a little fine tuning here and there, the tuners are geared too high for my liking but they do the job. I need to polish out the nut slots just a little to make tuning smoother and the saddle could be about a 64th lower, but the neck is set right and the frets are excellent.

It felt good to just buy a guitar, it's been a while since I've done it and it was awesome. My wife rolled her eyes when I was looking at the Les Pauls, she knows I love tiger maple sunbursts best and they had a couple of the re-issues there, I just drooled....

One note of interest was they had a Martin OOO that had a split in the top from the bottom of the bridge to the tailblock, they reduced it in price but the split was pretty large and it looked to me like the wood was not seasoned very well and just pulled at the lower bout. It was very wide grained spruce anyway, it sounded OK but I'm not sure if that top could ever be glued back, at it's widest the split was about a 64th....

Cheers

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

For sure Maple, and most likely a veneer. They will veneer both the top and underside with the same lam's to give the apperance of solid wood. If they did indeed use solid wood that would really surprise me as that nice of maple would get expensive fast, and on a lower price guitar that does not seem right, but then again you just never know!

You can also normally tell by looking at the edge of the soundhole. If it's painted our bound normally it is laminate. It if is solid you'll be able to tell as you won't seem the laminates. But you gotta look really close sometimes as they laminate light colored woods together to give the appreance of a solid top.

Really all that matters is that you like it, and that it looks groovy :) And that it does! I'm also always imnpressed at what little money can buy you a pretty darn decent guitar.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Paul,

I am almost certain that it will be a laminated top. You said two things that make me think that. First that it is very stiff and second that it is thin around the rosette. I have an Alverez that is like that.

She's pretty though!! I really like Cort's. I have seen and played a lot of them in our local music store they almost always blow the doors off the Martin's that hang on the same wall!

Good luck tomorrow!

SHane

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Canada

My bet is that it's simply a quilt maple veneer (that's most def quilt maple, not quilt sapele. Let's go with the likely choice, right?) over a plywood, sorry, 'laminated' top. If you're very lucky, over a solid spruce top, but I wouldn't count on it. Sides will be laminated as well. There are plenty of Ibanez's out there with stained quilt maple veneers that are just as nice. They're only found, far as I can tell, on low-end to mid-low-end instruments.

In fact, quick google proves it:
http://www.fender.com/products/search.php?partno=0958906020

That's a rather pretty plywood fantastic you've got there (although to be honest, I really don't like the look of quilt tops on acoustics. Maybe that's just me). If there was spruce under the maple (solid), you bet they'd use that as a marketing tool. While many of 'em can sound pretty darn good, sometimes even very good, I find that's more the exception than the rule, and they pretty much don't 'break in' as you play them.Mattia Valente38691.1564236111

Just think, you could buy ten of them for the price of a fairly average custom job!

I've often found, that when I play with the guitars in the shops, the cheap lines sound pretty good and the top of the range guitars likewise, it's the mid price ones that always seem to disappoint (?500-800). Perhaps that's where the hole in the market is for some enterprising luthier.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Now there's an inexpensive guitar that makes me want to pick it up and play. Actually I'm glad there aren't more of them around. I started building 'cause I couldn't find one of those. Of course I've now spent far more money than if I'd have just bought the expensive one to begin with, but I suspect I'm also having far more fun

Colin, funny you should metion that, I've been thinking that there's a market there just waiting to be, er, exploited. Only problem is you'd have to build so many of them that you'd need to buy a ton of tooling and then hire a marketing dept and sales team to move em. Unless you have an edge.

I wonder if one day in the future an online luthiers forum, not unlike this one, will switch from group buys to group production. There's more than enough skills and names in a place like this to control a market segment like that. Ok, decending back to earth now...

According to the Fender website, the top is Laminated Quilt Maple.

Fender Model GDO 300

Drew: yeah, saw that. All that means to me is that it's laminated with some quilt maple on top. I really doubt the whole thing's maple.

Probably, as I think it was said earlier, on a pretty lousy looking spruce top. Certainly ups the character of the instrument.
When thicknessing your top with a laminate in mind, does one account for the thickness of the veneer and go a little thinner on the spruce?
What glue would you use to do this in order to get as little sound degradation as possible with the laminate?

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“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting”
-jack handy

I have taken apart several of these "low end" guitars in order to examine their construction. Everyone of them had a thin veneer top ( looked pretty and real) some sort of filler and Veneer on the bottom. This was true for the backs as well. I too have thought of a lower priced "production" model. The problem is that the money is made by volume. Most stores pay 50% of retail so...a $250 guitar costs them $125...WOW! I don't know what part of the guitar I could build for $125 and be profitable! Never mind the whole thing. Plus floor space is precious and most people are searching for affordable name brands. So many stores don't/won't give you a prominent display area. Tough part of the business to break into in my opinion...especially with the low cost of Chinese labor.

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

Dave makes a great point, but I don't think it's wise to compete at the $400 level, your going to get trampled.

However if you for instance had someone CNC your necks and headstock, CNC your blocks (heel and tail) and jigged up so that all you really would be doing was assembling and possibly some voicing you *could* make money selling $1000 dollar guitars (or maybe a little more). I'm convinced that if you remove all the tweaking needed or minimized it a single builder could put out 10 to 20 guitars a month working 8 hour days. Now that's based on that he's not doing custom work and doing mostly assembly, the only finiting would be voicing, neck alignment, pre-finish and setup.

I would not finish them but send them out to be finished, the biggest point would still be that they would be voiced by hand and that doesn't take all that long. It's just a thought, I've long considered that if I could get my basic parts made I could up my production 10 fold and spend more time on making things more productive.

Maybe I'm just dreaming but it seems possible...

-Paul-

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-Paul-

Patriot Guitars

Paul that's just the price bracket that always disappoints in the music shops. No-one in the western world could compete with that Fender and it's like but the $1000-1250$ guitar could be where the big sales are likely to be, to the guy who wants just that little bit better. It's a big jump from $250 to the $2500 custom job.

With all the recent interest in CNC here, a 'Taylor' style, batch built, unit construction, guitar using standard components from the 1 or 2 man shop should be viable.

It's then all down to marketing, and the cache of coming from a full blown "custom" builder would do nothing but help.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I dunno, I quite like Larrivees and Taylors around the 1200 dollar mark, quite honestly.

It's too late to enter the mid-price market! There are now all-SOLID-wood guitars available from Epiphone (Masterbilt), Fender (made in Mexico), and, I believe, Guild/Fender (made in Asia), for under $1k at the usual discount. The only way to do it would be to have your designs made overseas; but why?

[QUOTE=CarltonM] It's too late to enter the mid-price market! There are now all-SOLID-wood guitars available from Epiphone (Masterbilt), Fender (made in Mexico), and, I believe, Guild/Fender (made in Asia), for under $1k at the usual discount.[/QUOTE]

I have to comment.. China is saturated with low end product.. So much in fact they have these $250 guitars stockpiled. Expect to see a strong mid-high import push in the next year and I don't expect it to stop at the $1200 models. There is no reason the imports (CHINESE) can't compete in the 2k+ range. If you've been inside a Taylor or a Larrivee you know this isn't a skilled profession when you get to that level of production and automation. Outside of brand recognition and customer loyalty US Manufacturers won't ever have a fair fight at the market while Chinese are earning 3rd world wages(5-8 cents an hour)
Jason38691.9564930556

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CVT Inc.
A tour of our shop (Somewhat outdated)
My Personal eBay profile. BCWoodBug