THD E10 - The Anarchist
I’ve tried to warn all my guitar playing friends… A little something out of the box and west of left field.
I resonate with Christopher Schwarz’s description of woodworkers as “aesthetic anarchists.” This is especially true of a lot of the luthiers I follow. Builders like Rick Toone and Michihiro Matsuda invite us to a new mental space where the radically new is built on the foundation of what has been. This anarchy of design refuses to listen every permutation of “THE man” who would force us into consumer driven, mass-manufacturing agendas.
Ok - yeah - a little dramatic.... What actually happened was, I had an idea to try and build a guitar out of some of the primo cutoffs I had laying around - a little mahogany, a little walnut, some glorious maple veneer and that sweet baltic birch ply. Nevertheless, the craftwork of Toone and Matsuda did serve as real inspiration in this build.
Knowing the sizes of wood I had available, I worked up a plan in Affinity Designer.
Although I draw up designs for all my builds, this one had to work within the parameters already established by the sizes of the scraps. There were also several ergonomic considerations I had in mind that I will explain as we go around.
The Body is a piece of mahogany I have had laying around in my stash for a couple years. Was going to just cut it up into smaller parts for bracing and whatnot. The upper “arm rest” is a nice chunk of walnut. The lower leg rest “L curves” are pieces of 1/2” 9 ply baltic birch - one of my all time favorite structural materials - with some maple veneer on the face of the front facing “L”.
Ever since I saw the original Steinberger back in the 80’s, I have been a little fascinated with the headless design. Last year, I watched some old videos of Alan Holdsworth and he was talking about why he preferred the headless design. So, I have been wanting to make one of these for a while now. As you can clearly see, the tuners are not on the headstock but on the opposite end of the body. This puts the majority of the weight in the body. It is a major change in the feel of the guitar. The strings, then, load through holes in the headstock, supported by some ferrules to keep the strings from biting the wood.
At first, I was thinking of just putting regular, small tuning machines there and reorienting them to fit with the design and course of the strings. Then I discovered that Steinberger had recently made their tuners available at an affordable cost. These have been around for while, but the price was astronomical. They are a whole different type of tuner with a 40:1 gear ratio. Most really good tuners are 18:1 or 20:1. These higher ratios give better fine control when tuning. Also, the smaller profile allows them to be used in some creative ways.
The Neck is a 5 ply Mahogany, Hard Maple, Walnut stack. What I can’t capture in the pics is the profile of the neck carve. It is not a traditional rounded C shape or D shape, but a flat faceted, slightly asymmetrical, trapezoidal design. These types of profiles have been made popular by Rick Toone and Ola Strandberg. The cross section looks something like this:
So many things on this build were purely experimental and this neck profile is one. After playing it for a few days now, it is one of the most comfortable necks I have ever played, perfect for my short, stubby fingers. The neck was not just experimental; it is also based on ergonomic ideas like other parts of this design.
This is a multi-scale instrument with 25.5” on the bass side 24.75” on the treble. It’s what would happen if a Les Paul and a Strat had a baby. Or maybe it’s just heresy.
The two “L curve” pieces on the bottom of the guitar house the electronics and serve as leg rests for playing the guitar sitting down. It can be balanced in the traditional position or flipped up to 45 degree position more in line with classical posture. That is my preferred way to position the guitar when sitting down. Keeps a lot of stress out of the fingers and wrist.
The “L Brackets” are designed with ergonomics in mind…. not just to be “out there”
Each pickup has its own switch which gives 7 combinations. I also wired the middle pickup out of phase to get that weird tone. The volume and tone are wired with a vintage configuration that allows them to interact and keeps the highs from rolling off when you turn the volume down. I prefer this because it also gives much more tonal range just by adjusting volume and tone.
One of my favorite fasteners is the 4mm 10-24 socket head screw. they are used all over this build to hold things in place. I like these because of their size and strength and also the 4mm head is the same size as the truss rod nut. The neck it attached with 3 socket head screws received in 3 brass E-Z lock threaded inserts tapped into the neck.
Two things I like to do: 1) work on the cheap, and 2) transform humble materials into something more handsome. The pickups are super cheap rail mini humbuckers I found on Amazon for $17 a piece. Do they sound like a $300 set of Lollars or Fralins? Not even close. But for this guitar and for what I will use it for, they are just fine.
All of the wood is finished with my “special sauce” recipe of blonde shellac, F-One oil, and Renaissance Wax. It has taken me a while, but I have finally dialed in the satin finish that looks and FEELS fantastic. I have never been a big fan of the high-gloss, plastic finishes. The shellac and oil finishes and have always appealed to me primarily because they just let the wood be what it wants to be. They are also mostly non toxic and much easier to apply.
Usually, I use my power tools to just get things done quick when I can. I can get spastic and impatient; I just want to get things done. This time I spent about 8 hours carving all the facets in the body with my planes and chisels. This gave me time to figure out what the wood wanted to do.
The weight comes in at 6lbs 2oz which is already fairly light. All the weight, however, is in the body which makes it feel different. When playing it sitting down it just sits where it needs to be and the neck does need to be supported in any way by the left arm. Super comfortable.
And there it is.
Since I started with Christopher Schwarz, his words seem a good place to end:
“I hope to make the case that most woodworkers I’ve met are “aesthetic anarchists” – people who work with their hands, own their tools and seek to live in a world where making something (anything) is the goal of each day.
Woodworkers generally labor alone, producing objects that are the result of just our tools, our minds and our hands. And the objects that we build are a slap in the face of the chipboard crap that is forced down our throats at every turn.
Though woodworking might seem a traditional, old-time skill, it is quite radical in this consumerist age where buying stuff is good and not buying stuff is considered fringe behavior.”
Christopher Schwarz - The Anarchist’s Tool Chest