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Here’s the second of three guitars that I completed recently. Body is roughly grand auditorium sized, curly big leaf maple with spalting on the back. Top is engelmann spruce. Mahogany neck with ebony fretboard and bridge. Body binding is African Blackwood. Scale length is 25 1/4”. Guitar is fitted with Grover Rotomatic tuners and a JJB Prestige 330 surface mount pickup. I normally use Elixir phosphor bronze strings but decided to try D’Addario nickel bronze on this one. It sounds very nice to my ear. Big and open with good definition of each string. Enjoy the photos.

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Andy
www.bounsallguitarworks.com

That is a real beauty. Well done.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Agreed! And as mentioned in another thread, I really like your bridge design.

Dave

Fine looking guitar!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Very NICE!!!
Looks great.

Mike

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Mike Collins

Looks very nice! I like the purf lines on either side of the end wedge. Agreed on the bridge design.


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Thanks for all of the kind words.


Those ‘purfling lines’ are actually the edges of a removable panel that allows access to the inside of the body in case repairs, pickup replacement, etc are ever required. A number of the guitars I make don’t have a traditional center sound hole, so I use this mechanism. I may have posted this previously in another thread, but here’s a few photos that show how it works. Pics are of a different guitar but the same type of access port.

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Andy
www.bounsallguitarworks.com

I don't see any locking mechanism on your tail port. What holds it in?

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Ah! That’s great and a nice design. I hadn’t considered a non standard sound hole introduced repair challenges, but of course it does!

Heck, it would be nice to have for even a standard soundhole for final brace tuning.


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Another beauty!
How did you like working with the spalted maple?

The outer nut on the endpin jack is what holds it all together. The aluminum bar that the jack is mounted on gets pulled in tight against the inside surface of the tail block. The lip of the access panel gets pulled In tight against the exposed outside surface of the tail block. The whole affair is held securely in place. Simple!

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Andy
www.bounsallguitarworks.com

The spalting on the back fortunately was pretty solid and not overly spongy. There were a few small spots where I did apply a bit of epoxy to harden it up a little and fill in a couple of minuscule holes/voids. I bought the back/side set many years ago, so it was very well dried, etc. The original sides also had spalting and they turned out to be impossible to bend without fracturing. I was lucky to find a new set of sides that are a good match to the unspalted heartwood In the central section of the back. So that’s what you see here.

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Andy
www.bounsallguitarworks.com

Here’s a short video for anyone interested in what this guitar sounds like. Forgive my not quite mediocre playing skills. https://youtu.be/5bzQsJ7vJkU

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Andy
www.bounsallguitarworks.com

Very nice work.

I have some spalted maple that is beautiful but not very hard. I never thought of using it for body wood. I've used it for rosette which is also striking.

I really like the access opening you created. It is well thought out and executed.