Acoustic guitar - with a twist!

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!

2012 already?

Was my last post really in September? With one thing and another I havn't been performing much but the uke got finished and sounds even better than the first, here is a video of me playing it when Victoria Vox played at my local folk club :) She sighed the top of it too! Katie her cellist told me during the interval that VIctoria was supiried how loud it was then wrote "Nice uke" along side her name when she signed my copy of their cd; Vox, Uke and Cello. My floor spot

And a song from Victoria.

Happy New Year!

A quick uke build!

Have just built another cigar box uke in 2 weeks, even though it's plainer I think it's turned out a little nicer than the first one, I built it to sell it but am happy to play it until some one hands me the cash!

Table Guitars?

I won’t go into too much detail or or indeed rant on about how we feel about our American company closing our highly profitable UK factory down and taking it all over to Delaware you can work that out for your selves! But it does mean I have only two weeks of work left before I'm made redundant and have STILL no new job to go too:( I say work, we stopped production a few weeks back and have been taking apart every thing we have built up bolt by bolt. OK enough negativity. One of the surplus items I have my name on is an old table that our printer stands on, I never noticed till yesterday that it has solid mahogany legs! Enough seasoned timber for four guitar or uke necks! :) That coupled with cigar boxes I have left and the large pine dinning room table top I was given a little while back and despite not having any spare cash a few new instruments are being planned! Watch this space!

My own tune on my home made plywood dulcimer and balsa wood boat.

My ideas get even weirder!

Ok I've gone mad! My new project is......The Dulcisizer! Well it maybe called something else bcz that sound like some kind of home keep fit equipment! The idea is an electric dulcimer controlling a simple monophonic synth so it's melody lines can be mixed in with the electric pickups...Wow the hilly billy's have finaly got electricity!
I'm using the string to fret contact idea and it will be far easier the splitting all the frets into 6 and feed the wires down a guitar neck as I only need to spit them in half and wire to each side (The low D string isn't going to be a controller) I already have the oscilator thanks to my reissue Stylophione stylus organ which is now sporting a 37 way D connector so I can remotly switch the notes. It has the advantage over the old ones of not using resistance to control the pitch and is spot on in tune though it does behave a little oddly when you try to play two notes together! My work mate has GIVEN me a five channel mixer module that he made for his giant modular synth and hasn't used. I now need to make a VCF , ADSR and VCA to make the Stylophones output sound more pleasing, I am currently picking his brains while I have the chance as I am looking for a new job before I am made redundant at the end of August.

All At Sea

The reason why things have been a little quiet on the music front for the last six months.

I helped my church youth group scratch build these radio control yachts. We had great fun making them and are planning to launch them on Wednesday evening on a pool by the beach, it's supposed to be nice a breezy should be fun! See more photos and read more about them here: http://fleetoffootys.blogspot.com/