Official Luthiers Forum!

Every so often, I look for YouTube recordings of guitars made by folks here on the OLF. Some are good, some are great, some are (frankly) held back by either the method of recording or the player, or both. The one in the link below struck me as just delightful. The guitar was made by the OLF's Toonces The Cat.

I just wanted to pass along something that, to me, is wholly superb. Great player, great guitar, and way above average recording technique. Just a great presentation of the guitar all the way around.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCBB1wQob5E

Enjoy, and well done, Toonces (aka Simon)!

Very nice!

Sweet!!

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The guitar sounds very well balanced which is perfect for that style of playing.

Excellent.

Wow, it sounds like the sound just wants to jump out of that thing!

Pat

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Pat

Thanks for posting, Don !!! I hadn't seen that video before ... the dude is a solid player.

Happy to do so, Simon. As I said, you don’t always see all three things (great player, great guitar, great recording) at once. Fine examples should be highlighted.

Are there any details regarding this specific guitar you could share? It obviously turned out great.

Hi Don,
I'm pretty sure that was a German Spruce / Indian Rosewood guitar that I built back in 2010 (I would have been building professionally for about 2 years at that point). I've changed a lot of things since then in terms of refining my overall sound .. but you can tell that I was aiming for a very large, expansive sound with great articulation and clarity. Basically, ultra responsive but also very balanced, rich, and clear.

I've essentially always built just one OM sized model that I've refined over the years. I've done 3 major body changes over the years to my OM and this was the 2nd body design. I've always gone with a 25.0" scale as my standard scale. 3.5" body depth at the heel and 4.5" depth at the tailblock. x-brace with my own bracing approach for the lower bout braces and I've modified those things a lot as I've shifted the sound over the years.

It's hard to tell from a recording but to my ears, the treble response is holding back that particular guitar. I think it may just be the recording because generally, my mids and trebles have always been quite strong. But on that recording, it isn't quite balanced with the mids. One of the things I've really tried to achieve with my work is absolute perfect balance across the bass, mids, trebles. I also don't like the sound of tops that are ultra ultra thin. I do like the sound of "very" thin tops with appropriately sized bracing.

Structurally, I can tell you that I'm a firm believer in keeping the bridge area as stabilized as possible but allowing the lower bout to be as flexible as possible. Once you achieve that, then you can dial in the sound by messing with the lower bout bracing as needed. Another thing that I did, especially early on in the first 5 years or so of building professionally, is sought the critique of some excellent local players that didn't really gravitate toward my sort of sound. More of the traditional Martin type of players but with the small shop/boutique guitars. I created a really nice and comfortable scenario for them to give me honest feedback without fear of hurting my feelings. No one will give you an honest opinion but will only say nice things ... so anybody reading this ... you have to go out of your way and purposely seek honest critique. But that phase of early critique was quite useful for me and I don't think I'd be currently where I am if I didn't choose to set aside my pride and get helpful critique from informed players.

All the Best,
Simon