#21 The New Old-Timer
My goal was to make a guitar that sounded old and flat, something vintage that had a “rustic” tone. I kinda failed at that and wound up with something more interesting.
All the guitars I have built so far have glued on bridges. There is another style of guitar that has a floating bridge and the strings are attached to a tailpiece on the lower bout. These types of guitars have a very different sound. I wanted to play around with this design just to see what would happen.
The body is my smaller, parlor-esque shape. I used some less that primo pieces of wood that I had for this build. The top is a piece of western red cedar that is beautiful but so brittle you can look at it wrong and it will crack. Not a great choice for a floating bridge top where the tension of the strings is pushing down rather than pulling up. The back and sides are pieces of Honduran Mahogany which are nice but nothing spectacular.
For the binding, I decided to use some faux tortoise shell that I had bought a while back for an electric build and never used. Very simple, no purfling or anything else. I dig the way it looks, will use it again.
Another innovation on this one is the placement of the sound port which is also the main sound hole since this is a “closed front” design. I moved the hole from the narrow upper bout area down to the lower bout which solves the problem of having access to the inside of the box. It is always good to have a way to get inside the guitar.
As I am developing my adjustable action neck, all the unnecessary parts are getting set aside. In this design there is no heel on the neck - a part which functioned to hold the neck in place in traditional builds. The neck here is held in place by three screws and looks more like the neck joint on an electric rather than an acoustic. All of the architecture on the inside of the box has changed too to deal with the downward pressure of the string tension.
Well, there it is. I love building these experimental instruments. They are always surprising - especially the voice and tone on this one. It is nothing like what I expected. It has great sustain and a mid-rangey tone that sits well in the mix. It is one of the most responsive instruments I have made so far.
Here is a little sample fit for the Christmas season.