#2 - The Slot-Head — tyson hand-did

#2 - The Slot-Head | Over the past month, I have been building guitar #2. I know - some of you still want to hear the first guitar and I will post some video up of that - it just takes a little bit more effort to get that did, and I am lazy. In the meantime, I thought I would go ahead and post some pics of this second build.

On this guitar, I decided to work up my own plans with various ideas and concepts that I like and I wanted to try out. So after about a month of planning, I made all the forms and templates that I would need to get this one rolling.

This time, instead of bending the sides by hand, I used a silicone heating blanket and a form:

The blanket heats up to about 400 degrees but I controlled the temp using a router speed control. Worked great. This method allowed me to bend the sides with less stress and more consistency. The sides are draped over a half-form of the guitar, heated with the blanket around 300 degrees for 15 minutes, then allowed to cool back to ambient temperature. This method requires less skill than doing it by hand on a heating pipe and I can more carefully control the results.

Here is a pic with the top and back all braced up. On the top I used a different bracing pattern - kind of a modified double-X with an A-Frame in the upper bout. The A-Frame connects the neck block with the rest of the bracing and supposedly transmits more of the energy from the neck through the top helping with sustain and such. Got this idea watching a video of George Lowden talking about his bracing techniques. Thought I would give it a shot on this one.

This guitar is a slot-head design. This is a bit harder to build, but I love the way slot-heads look and the change in the string angle at the nut puts a little more tension on the strings there and helps with transmission and retention of string energy, or so I am told.

This guitar is also a shorter scale length (24.5") with the neck attaching to the body at the 12th fret instead of the 14th as in most "modern" guitars. Many older guitars were made this way - especially parlor guitars - and I like the shorter scale length for finger-picking. In carving the neck, I put more of a hard V profile in this one which feels very nice.

Since the humidity has gone up, I have comandeered another section of our front room to do gluing and other humidity sensitive tasks.

The wood in this one is all Mahogany except for the bindings and rosette which are Rosewood. I am hoping this will give me an "ole-timey, woodsy" tone for this one. Many pre-war Martins were all mahogany. Also, Nick Drake supposedly recorded with an all mahogany Guild M20 and I love the tone he gets there. We'll see.

On this one, I also decided to cut the fret-slots by hand. I sure hope this thing plays in tune when it all comes together. One of the luthiers I follow advocates cutting frets by hand, because it is far more accurate than trusting jigs, etc. We'll see. I checked my calculations and marks about 50 times so I am hoping for the best.

One other "innovation" on this build is a pinless bridge:

This is a feature that I stolt from Michael Greenfield and George Lowden's designs. Instead of the ball end of the string going through the sound board, the strings thread through slots in the back of the bridge then up and out over the saddle. This makes for a sleek clean bridge. (I have always hated bridge pins for one reason or another). There are many reason for using this design, not least of which is not having to drill six fairly sizeable holes in the top plate under the bridge. Many very high-end makers use this design - I hope they know what they are doing.

I am in the final stages, putting the TruOil finish on over the next couple of days and hope to be done by the of the week.

Even though the woods I picked for this one are fairly cheap, low end woods, they really pop as the TruOil finish goes on. If nothing else, my craftsmanship is a step up on this one and I am learning more as I shoot for the vision I have in my head. Excited to get the bridge on, get it set up and hear what it sounds like.