Damselfly
F-hole inspired design loosely based on my Coral Firefly and other more famous 'jazz' guitars.
- Redwood one piece hollowed out body, parallel top braces, 16" lower bout and 18" length, roughly 2" thick with top.
- Sitka spruce soundboard
- 24 fret neck I bought (Ibanez vine design) with additional decoration added
- 25.5" scale length with Bigsby type copy tremolo and roller bridge
- Lipstick pickups (GFS brand) with A250K tone and volume pots. Star point grounding and full enclosed control shielding
- Completed May 2020 as a commissioned custom build for my boyfriend
- I believe this was somewhere around my 5th to 7th overall build, including some acoustics made under Jeffrey Yong in Malaysia
- I have had the building 'bug' for some time but it really started going in 2015 in terms of actually making stuff. Currently I do about 4 a year, plus mods, etc. It is mainly for myself, friends, and a few clients. I build both LH and RH instruments, though lefties especially love that I service their needs and can do guitars right for them
- I build from home and have work benches set up inside and outside (like for routing), plus spraying fixtures, etc.
- I did the full design and layout on Adobe Illustrator 1:1 scale, made all the routing templates and responding 100% to customer custom requests. In other words I made the design from scratch and then added specific features as requested, which I also had to design (as needed)
- My 1967/8 Coral Firefly, a very unique instrument from Danelectro, was certainly the jumping off point, but this newer guitar builds and improves on many aspects
-Unique and/or improved features include:
- upper bout mounted 4-way pickup switch B/B/B+N/BxN series, in an easy access cavity all fully shielded
- fully shielded easy access control box inside an easy access control cavity lid
- tremolo with roller bridge and locking tuners for tuning stability
- 2 layer veneer (rosewood 0.5mm and maple 0.5mm) covered F-holes for a pinstriping effect
- easy upper fretboard access to all 24 frets thanks to slimmed neck pocket and recessed bolts
- fairly unique in that 99% of 'jazz' type guitars have only 22 or fewer frets whereas this has 24
- I made the outlet jack plate and recessed in into the body for a more flush look, plus made the pickup switch mounting plate
- side edges are all rounded over so no binding or harsh edges are experienced
- my background with a router and solid body guitars certainly played a role here in the build. Since I did not have the bending equipment for a traditional F-hole guitar, I elected to make the body from a single piece of wood that would form back and sides and also much of the support struts, so this in turn makes this a rather unique guitar blending some aspects of traditional guitar with router based technology. Also do to that same lack of bending equipment I elected to make the top flat like a steel string acoustic, and it turned out well
Beth Horner
