Official Luthiers Forum!

Sitka spruce
curly maple
Cocobolo









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Incredible!

Looks grand to me. How's it sound?

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

That's a looker

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Hutch

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

Very nice, what finish did you use?

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Sounds great, both acoustically and plugged in.

My usual -Nitro, Mohawk brand.

Beautiful archtop Brad. Well done!

Real looker, sweet!

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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.

A beauty. 16” is the perfect size. Wood binding on the F holes? Any technique tips binding F holes with wood?

I can see the appeal beyond aesthetics especially with dark woods as it would seem the joints could more easily be hidden and the wood to wood glue bond stronger than with celluloid or plastic.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Beautiful. Just looking at the pictures makes me want to pick it up and play it.

If you don't mind, a few questions:

Body depth?
Scale length?
"Parallel" or X braces?
How do you attach your tailpiece?
Pickup maker?
All carved, or any laminations?

Prob'ly exceed my quota with those questions so I'll stop. Thanks for posting it.

It's always a challenge to bind F holes with wood.

Depending on how the wood bends there are two ways I do it:

I thickness the binding down to around .050 and bend it on a very hot pipe

or as in this case the coco didn't want to bend to the tight radius so I took 3 veneers (.020 each) and bent them separately on a pipe( they bent easily) and put them together as I glued them to the f holes-worked great.

You are welcome to ask me all the questions you want-I love "talking shop".


Body depth is 3"
scale length is 25-1/4"
X- braced

The pickup is handmade by Kent Armstrong-I encased it in cocobolo. interesting note, When I told Kent that I would be covering the pickup with wood he left the top layer of epoxy resin off the top so it would have better sound-That's custom!

All hand carved -no laminations

I make my own bracket for the tailpiece from brass or stainless steel sheet stock, then I bend it in a vise.

I attach the bracket to the tailpiece by actually drilling and tapping the ebony for short machine screws.
I have been doing it this way for 25 years with no failures.

I tried doing this for the fist time with an all cocobolo tailpiece, but it just wasn't hard enough, so I made a new tailpiece out of ebony with a cocobolo veneer on top

Kent is amazingly approachable isn’t he? I was a little nervous calling him the first time but a jazz guitarist friend that knew him and gave me his number said not to worry. He was right.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Yes, I have been buying pickups from him for 25 years, he is a great guy and makes some of the best pickups in the world.

Wow Brad, what a beauty! Was thinking that the absolute perfection of the top that it must be formica. But then I see what you found curing the carve in the lower right lower bout. Either a tiny whisker or a tiny horizontal pitch inclusion/pocket. How many yrs of history are recorded in the growth lines of that soundboard? 250-300? Man, sure is purty though! yep.

Yes, Brent another great top I got from you! I think of that tiny little inclusion as a "birth mark"....

Are we going to get to hear this beauty!

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Hutch

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

WOW WOW WOW

Yes, My friend is coming over next Friday to do some recordings. He is a great Jazz player.I will post some sound clips.