Official Luthiers Forum!

When you've had a website up and running for a dozen or so years it can get quite big. I hadn't realised how much stuff I had there until I got a message from my hosting service saying they were going to switch off the content editor. That was about 6 months ago, so my website has been frozen in time since then until yesterday, when I launched the new version of my site on a different platform, that hopefully won't become obsolete. Most of that ton of stuff from the old site is still available, having been painstakingly migrated. There's quite a bit of new stuff and more pics and high fidelity sound files all done using a state of the art content manager that is still in the beta stage.

Everyone is very welcome to have a look around. Please let me know via the "Contact" page if you find things that don't work as you would expect and I will do my best to fix them. The website address is in the signature panel below and you should be able to click straight through. If any of you have saved URLs to pages on the old site, they are not going to work, but hopefully you'll be able to find the content you're after on the new site.

Thanks!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Trevor, coming from someone who's day job it is doing web design I'd say it looks great. The only thing I noticed right off is it's a bit unusual to have the main navigation at the bottom rather then across the top. Typically that is at top with alternate footer links at bottom. Of course there is no right way to do it but UX testing does show that users pay most attention above the fold... Having said that I love that the navigation is at the bottom in the mobile design. That's a more modern design and again is based on UX testing that shows most people use their thumbs to navigate and so top navigation on the phone causes them to stretch more. So when it's at the bottom it's a natural place for the thumb.

Anyway, good quality photo's and videos are also nice to see on a website and you covered that.

Now a guitar related question. I read under your innovation section about the finish you like to use. I have been using Royal Lac lately. Done about 5 guitars with it and so far I like it though it is a bit expensive. You said you are using some sort of 'hard' shellac too but didn't mention any brand name. Is this something you are mixing up in the shop yourself? Or is this a product that you can purchase ready to go?

Regards.

Thanks for the kind comments on the website, John.

Regarding the hard shellac, I use a product developed by Robert Rae of Shines (a minimalist website if there ever was one!) though I think Robert is now mostly retired. A version of his "brew" is sold under the "Ubeaut" brand - Ubeaut Hard Shellac. For various reasons (mainly to do with shipping flammables) it is basically only available in Australia. Robert does a special brew of just the hardening additive (cross-linking agent) which can be added to shellac in the right proportion to make the hard shellac mix. He makes up a version of that for me. I have no idea what's in it. I watched him make it up for me once. It was all clear liquids, carefully weighed out, no labels on the bottles!

It is seriously tough, though. I have an island bench in my kitchen which is just a slab of wood. That got ~ 6 coats of padded on hard shellac about 15 years ago and is still going strong and looking good whilst getting all the beating normal for a kitchen work surface and a bit more besides.

The guy from Royal-Lac says that his stuff is different from "hard shellac", but I don't know how.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Trevor, I thinks it's nice, You photo's look great, nice clear and crisp.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Trevor your site is very nicely designed, easy to navigate, good balance of pictures to graphics and seamless flow. I don’t know what the previous site looked like, but having created e-commerce sites you have a winner.