#17 It's Parlor Time Again

Last summer, I met Walker Taylor - the grandson of a good friend. We got together and I showed him a few of my guitars. He asked how much one would cost. I told him, if he set aside some time this summer, he could come build one with me. Then COVID19 hit. . . I think we had both been looking forward to working together, but decided to postpone the build given the circumstances. Since the guitar and build experience was supposed to be his graduation present, I went ahead and built him a guitar to his specs. Here are a few pics.

Taylor picked my TS body style - a smaller, parlor size. These smaller guitars pack a big punch - it is my favorite size guitar. For the top, he picked a piece of torrefied (baked) sitka spruce. This type of top is baked in a very controlled environment so that the resins in the wood crystalize and most of the moisture content is removed. It is a process which basically “pre-ages” the wood. It also turns the spruce a nice golden brown, almost like cedar.

For the back and sides, we went with a very nice set of East Indian Rosewood - a classic pairing with the Sitka top. For the back, I did a center stripe of flamed maple to tie in with the binding. Haven’t done that in a while.

I put all my “bells and whistles” on this one - arm bevel, adjustable action neck, etc. Taylor picked out the classic flame maple binding scheme - a very classy look for this guitar.

For neck, we went a little fancier with a 5 layer mahogany, maple, rosewood ply - all the main woods of the guitar. The mahogany had some very interesting figure in it, almost like a flame.

A few more detail pics of headstock and bridge.

And a few more pics of the inside and outside.

And finally a little sound sample:

Very pleased with the way this one turned out. Disappointed that Walker didn’t get to build with me this summer, but happy we could still make a very cool guitar for him.