Montreal Guitar Show Debrief

Well, We've made it back from Montreal. All of the guitars survived the trip intact. What a show! I'm not sure where to begin. The few pictures I took really don't do the experience justice. There was so much awesome work on display, I literally could not sleep. My mind spinning over all the beautiful instruments! I left feeling very inspired. If I were to write a detailed synopsis of the show, this blog post would be 125 pages long. So here are the high points.

This is the 5th year of the Montreal Guitar Show. This year the show sprawled across two convention rooms of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Montreal. One room featured acoustic builders and one featured electric builders. Although most of my work lies somewhere between the two worlds, I chose to exhibit in the acoustic room. I felt a little self conscious, because I had two electric guitars and only one which was fully acoustic. But in the end, exhibiting in the acoustic room proved to be a good choice. If there were any disparaging remarks, they were probably in French and I therefore did not understand them...ignorance is bliss! Anyway, all the instruments seemed to get a lot of attention.


Friday July 1st was opening day and it seemed very busy to me. By the end of the day, I was worn out from all of the talking. I met some really great people!

Be it ever so humble...my table...

Saturday continued in much the same way. Lots of talking, explaining fanned frets, construction techniques, and listening to people talk about their own projects. The guitars got played a lot, and on Saturday afternoon I sold the Archtop! It was really awesome. Saturday night, there was an after party for the builders on a roof top deck of the Hyatt. There was much drunken jamming...I did not partake, but it was fun to be there.

I could have sold the Archtop again on Sunday. A person who had played it on Saturday came back to see if it was still available...unfortunately, it was not. There's always next year!

Both The acoustic and electric room were filled with amazing guitars! Here are a few that caught my eye.

An Archtop by Dimitri Tenev. Very organic looking, I really like the rustic nature of this guitar. I've been interested in trying to include some organic elements in my work. I really dig the tailpiece on this guitar, Super cool!

An Archtop by Greg German. Another fanned fret guy.

William "Grit" Laskin. What can I say, his work is amazing! My photos don't do it justice. All of the inlay is hand cut and fitted by him. Here are some better pictures. http://www.williamlaskin.com/gallery2.php

In addition to his stunning inlay work, he is a very innovative luthier. Many of his designs are now standard practice for many guitar makers.

This guitar by Claudio Pagelli was really an awesome feat of engineering!

It's three guitars...and a banjo...in one!
...an acoustic...

...Loosen one bolt which holds on the neck and replace the top with and electric guitar...

...or a resonator...didn't get a pic of the banjo. Crazy!

Speaking of crazy...Ken Parker's Archtop! Crazy is probably not the right word...innovative is more like it! Really amazing!

I don't know what to say about this guitar...It was just stunning!
By Jean-Yves Alquier

This guitar by Christophe Grellier was probably one of my favorite guitars at the show. His execution was really awesome! I love the flowing design of the inlay and finger-rest. I'm sad I didn't get to play it!

Two more really nice Archtops by Pierrick Bura. I Love the sound holes!

Linda Manzer's more-strings-than-you-could-ever-need-o-caster. Her table was always crowded, this was the only picture I could get!

Pete Swanson...The amount of work that goes into just the rim on his guitars is staggering!
He cuts all those little squares on a tablesaw!

Finally I leave you with a video, which kind of captures the feel of the show. I stumbled upon this little impromtu jam on my way back to my table. This kind if thing happened all over the place! I don't know who these guys are, but they were killing it! Sorry about the video/audio quality, but enjoy!

Montreal Preview

Well, somehow a month has passed since my last post. Much has been happening!

As some of you may already know, I am exhibiting at the Montreal Guitar Show this year, and the July 1st opening day is fast approaching! I must admit that the 30+ page exhibitors guide was a little bit intimidating at first. Some of the customs information is down-right cryptic. So, naturally I've chosen to procrastinate! Unfortunately I cannot put this off any longer, so this blog will feature lots of pictures of me filling out customs forms and printing shipping labels. Anyone want to be a guitar builder now?

Just kidding, I thought I would post a little preview of the guitars I'm bringing up to the show.

The first is a little video my friend Rob Basile shot using the 504 Semi-hollow. Rob is a really creative guy and a super talented player! I cannot thank him enough for his help.




The second video is a little more magic from Rob Basile. It features Jared Wofford playing the new 415 Archtop.



Third video is a slide show I put together of the 510 semi-hollow. The music is performed by Mark Boling using the 510. Please excuse my amateur video editing skills!



All three of these guitars will be at the show. If you are in town please stop by and say hello!

Post Partum

Well, it's official, the archtop is alive! All of the months of sanding, scraping, tapping, and tuning have produced a guitar. Someone recently asked me if I had a hard time letting go of instruments once they where finished. At the time, I said no, but that was probably not entirely true. I've noticed, that the excitement of working out the final details often recedes into a kind of melancholy once the guitar hangs on the wall. It helps when they sell, and I don't just mean the cash, There is a kind of relief that comes from finding the guitar a good home. That process starts now!

Overall, I'm really happy with this guitar! It sounds very warm and rich. I hope to record some sound clips and possibly a little video or two stay tuned!

Tradition and the New Guitars

Whenever I begin a new guitar, I usually have some idea that has been floating around in my head which I want to explore. Sometimes It's construction related, design related, or sometimes it's a sonic investigation. Sometimes it's an idea which is brought to me by a customer. In this case, I wanted to use the Archtop and Flat top projects as an excuse to delve into tradition a bit.

One thing I've always been curious about, is Hide glue. It's a subject of much debate in the guitar nerd community. Some say there are tonal advantages to using it. Hide glue dries really hard and brittle, and the theory is that it transfers vibration through all of the glue joints better than the modern alternatives. I've used hide glue a bit for repairs, but never built a complete instrument using it. For those of you who don't know what hide glue is...it's a glue (shocking! I know) made from animal parts all boiled down to a goo... I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. By the time it gets to me, the glue is in a dry powdery form. I have to add water and heat to reconstitute it. Ethically I'm not sure I can get behind this glue, but I'm drawn to the tradition of it. Hide glue has been used as an adhesive for nearly 5000 years (if you believe Wikipedia!) Certainly some of the finest instruments around have been constructed with hide glue. In my world, the jury is still out, but I like the process of using it. I like that it takes skill and care to get a good glue joint. Skill and care seem to be disappearing from our world.


As I near the end of this build, my thoughts turned to the inevitable question of what finish to apply. The traditional finish for most Archtop guitars and most Flat-tops is Nitrocellulose laquer. I've sprayed my fair share of it over the years. These days I'm using a water based spray-on finish which I really like. It's less toxic than Nitro, it dries really hard and buffs out very nicely. My intent was to use this finish on the Archtop, but I could not stop myself from investigating another traditional technique...French Polish. Basically to French Polish, you apply very thin coats of shellac with a small pad, rubbing vigorously until each new layer blends with the previous one. It's a finish which has been used for years by furniture makers, violin makers and classical guitar builders. French Polishing quite an art! An art I would like to be good at, but after nearly a week of swirling shellac onto the Archtop, I decided that it was not to be. I love traditional ways of working and I enjoy exploring traditional techniques, but as I become more and more professional I'm finding a need to balance tradition with technology. In the end, I felt like French Polish was a lot of work. Shellac, even when applied correctly is a delicate finish. It can be damaged by water, sweat, alcohol etc. So, I decided to spray over the shellac with a few top coats of my tried and true water based finish. I'll let everything cure for about two weeks, and then the Archtop becomes a guitar!


Sanding the archtop between coats of finish

The archtop in the spray booth.

While the finish cures, I've turned my attention back to the flat top. It's pretty close to being done. I just need to do some fine tuning.

One of the last tasks is to inlay my logo on the peghead. I often feel that I need to get my "branding" together and come up with a better logo, but for now, I'm inlaying the letter "C" and some swirly bits. I made a crude jig to speed up the process. I use the plywood template to rout the recess for the scrolls.

I print the letter C out on to a piece of paper and glue it to some mother of pearl.

Next comes the careful work of cutting it out. I use a jewlers saw with a fine blade.

...And done...

The next step is to rout out a recess for the letter to fit into. It takes a steady hand...and a bit of patience. I scribe the outline of the "C" with a xacto knife and then use a white pencil to help me see the line. I do the routing with a Dremel tool and a very small bit.

Here's the finished inlay. The "C" is mother of pearl and the scrolls are thin aluminum which I bend to fit. The only thing left is a bit of sanding and then this guitar is off to the spray booth as well!

The Archtop is Getting Close!

Well, the repairs keep piling up at Guru, but I managed to squeezed out a few moments to work on the Archtop this past week. it's getting really close to being finished! I'm down to a bit of fine tuning. I spent most of the time this week, working on all of the appointments.

First up, was the tailpiece. I've been experimenting with a new design a bit. The Idea is that a pin is dovetailed into the end block and the tailpiece clips onto it. the string tension holds it all in place. I really like the look of it! Here's the dovetail cut into the end of the guitar.

And then the pin slides in. The pin is oversized in this picture. I cut it down a bit...

and the tailpiece fits over it! A lot of work goes into building the tailpiece... Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures. Here's the final product.

With the tailpiece about finished I turned my attention to the pickup. This guitar is really designed to be an acoustic instrument, but so many people like play amplified these days I thought I would include a pickup. Most electric guitar pickups and made of a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet. As the guitar string vibrates, it influences the magnetic field. This interaction creates a small voltage in the coil of wire. This becomes the guitar's signal which is sent to the amplifier. I've been using an old Singer sowing machine to spin the bobbin around while I guide the wire on to it. The wire is very fine, it's about as thin as a hair. It's pretty delicate work. Here's a freshly wound bobbin. This pickup will need two bobbins.

Each bobbin has a slot cut for a magnet to be inserted. Here's the whole assembly with magnets in a wooden cover which I made.

This is the top view.

Now that the pickup is wound I turned my attention to the finger-rest. It's pretty straight forward, but I did need to spend some time figuring out how to attach the pickup and get everything at the correct height.

Here's the result. it looks good...if I do say so myself!

The last thing to make is the bridge and the guitar will be ready for a final sanding and spraying the finish.
it will be a guitar soon!