OK decision made! This years project is going to be some kind of acoustic guitar! My Faith super jumbo is great but rarely comes out of it;s case which in a cottage is always being tripped over! It's not that there is anything wrong with it, quite the opposite, it is the solid topped jumbo sized acoustic guitar I've always dreamed of BUT I didn't make it and for that reason I don't feel the same attachment to it, it's like my music or sound isn't all my own work.
As I discovered with the dulcimer you need a proper bending iron to make a steamed sided guitar so I am going to make mine like my electric guitars but with no center block and (even though it goes against my rule of not buying any wood) a proper braced spruce top. I have that pine dining room table top to make the back and sides from and a mogany table leg (or two) to make the neck.
Also I want to include some unusual features :
A multi scale or fan fretted finger board which means the bass strings are longer than the treble ones like on a grand piano! It evens out the string tension and improves the tone no end and I've been reassured they feel perfectly comfortable to play.
http://novaxguitars.com/sales/index.html
What Green Field guitars http://www.greenfieldguitars.com call a negative angled neck. (The opposite of a Les Paul's neck which angles back.) This causes the strings to exert a very slight upward pull on the sound board and gives the guitar a more harp like sound. I'm thinking rather than have he neck positively angled which looks a tad ugly have the sound board sloping down towards the neck and tapering the sides.
The big drop at the end of the neck will allow me to fit in a humbucker between the sound hole and finger board (at the two octave mark.)
Well don't expect to see much progress until the weather gets warmer as it's freezing in my workshop at the moment!
Btw I'm sending you this via my newly formatted Linux Ubuntu PC - the perfect credit crunch solution for Mac users who find they need a faster machine and/or find their old G4 processors are not supported anymore :(
Listen to this fan fretted guitar and notice the even voicing of each string rather than sounding like the all are resonating together.
NOT saying mine will sound anything as good but it's got to help!
