B. Aaron

I know it isn't a guitar, but a flat-top mandolin is so similar to a tiny guitar in construction and design that I think I may as well post my work here for you all to see anyway... Think of it as broadening your horizons! I should have started posting photos when I started working on it, but the thought didn't cross my mind until recently. Anyway, the lame bit is that the photo gallery in question is a Facebook photo gallery. (If it weren't, my friends wouldn't follow along to see what I'm doing.) The not-lame bit is that every single photo is captioned, and many of the design decisions are explained along the way. Photos are usually posted the same day I do the work. Here's the public link to the photo gallery: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=597325&id=559500530&l=9161c52828 ------------ Specs, though some of this is not yet seen in the photos: - X-braced Sitka spruce top with extra-heavy head brace, a la Somogyi. (Reason: it's structurally significant. It supports the neck block and defines the end of the vibrating plate, so the ends won't (and shouldn't) be scalloped. You wouldn't scallop the trusses in your house, would you?) - EIR back and sides - Sides are also lined with Sitka to double the thickness and increase stiffness (like a Ramirez or Friederich classical guitar or an Ervin Somogyi acoustic) - Solid Sapele linings ("kerfings," but what do you call them if they aren't kerfed? Linings.) - Spanish-style neck joint (integral neck) - Black walnut/roasted curly red maple (Acer rubrum) neck: roasted maple has been baked (after kiln drying) at a high temperature just short of scorching the wood, which turns it a wonderful brown colour that I would describe as caramel. I suspect it gets that colour because the sugars/sap in the wood caramelise, but that's a guess. When baked, it is allegedly more stable humidity-wise than normal red maple, and red maple is empirically more stable than hard/sugar maple (Acer saccharum). It is also 20% lighter, 35% softer/easier to carve, and still a spectacular 90% as stiff! It should be a stable neck. The walnut was chosen mostly for aesthetic purposes, but it too is very stable and is lighter, softer, and almost as stiff as sugar maple. - 0.5"x.25" carbon fibre inlay in neck - Compound radius EIR fingerboard with proper guitar-sized frets instead of goofy tiny mandolin frets - Grover 309 tuners (they get good reviews, so I'll give them a shot) - StewMac scalloped tailpiece (less time consuming to restring than a Gibson-style tailpiece, and the heavy cast tailpieces aren't the right angle for a flat-top) - Red Henry style bridge; he's so generous with his research information! I respect that. http://www.murphymethod.com/index.cfm?event=pages.content&contentId=87 - K&K Mandolin Twin pickup - French Polish with some strategic oiling to maximise chatoyance. Yes. Yes yes yes. Feel free to ask questions if you have them.

A note about working with Bloodwood: from my experience, it is not a router-friendly wood. Not only is it dense, but I would say it's brittle. It fights the bit a lot and has a tendency to split and send nasty chunks flying. It is very grain-sensitive to the direction you route it in. I've stopped using it for any job that might involve a router because I've had so many bad experiences in that field, but it's a beautiful wood and I have no doubt that it could make a very fine guitar if you don't mind the difficulty working with it. I used a lot of it on a banjo I'm building and I've made a lot of conducting batons from it. (You know, like for conducting orchestras.)

I agree with lowendfuzz for a first timer. A bolt-on (Fender-style) or bolt-in (PRS style) neck offers the advantage of a lot of tweakability once the instrument is finished. If you get the neck angle wrong with a set neck, it's wrong forever. If you get the neck angle wrong with a bolt-on, you can shim the neck or route the neck pocket differently. You can usually even shift the side-to-side alignment a few millimeters in either direction if that's wrong too, by putting shims into the sides of the neck pocket. In short, you can go back and fix some of the mistakes people tend to make on their first instruments.

Where do you find fine finishing supplies (such as grain filler) in Canada? Definitely not at the Co-op Home Center. You MIGHT find what you need at Lee Valley, but I'd go here instead for most stuff: https://www.woodessence.com/ They ship from Saskatoon (and sometimes Ontario I think?) so they can ship you stuff without USA/Canada border restrictions getting in the way. The guy who owns it is really nice and he's helped a lot of guitar guys track down supplies (myself included).

Yeah, that's a good point too. The straighter the grain, the better to reduce the likelihood of warping. Taking two incredibly crooked-grained pieces of wood and gluing them together in opposite directions is just asking for trouble.

This is pretty spot on, and it's easy to see why their results contradict each other. Most of the studies (that I've read) done by instrument makers to find out which grain orientation is stronger have only included a few pieces of wood. The largest sample size I've ever seen was 12 pieces of wood, all from different trees, and none of those pieces were actually tested for stiffness in both grain orientations. I've even seen one study that only involved THREE pieces of wood from the same tree. Having such a small sample size makes the studies nearly useless. It's just lousy science. On the other hand, data from people who study forestry and lumber (instead of building guitars) for a living says that neither orientation is consistently & statistically stiffer/stronger than the other. Sometimes one is, sometimes the other is; it varies from tree to tree, and from what part of the tree the wood came. There is more variation in density, strength, and stiffness between wood from the bottom and top of the tree (and from tree to tree as well) than there is between different grain orientations of the same piece of wood. I like what Ervin Somogyi says on the subject: even if it's not the strongest, quartersawn wood (or more accurately, vertically grained wood) is the most problem-free wood to work with in instrument construction. Whether it's vertically grained because it was sawed that way in the first place or because you just laminated it that way makes very little difference, AFAIK.

You got a problem aboot beavers there, buddy? What's the big deal, eh?

Looks always count!

It certainly won't affect the resonance of the air cavities in the chambers, and if the bridge is anchored in a center block it won't be able to do much to set the top & air cavities resonating anyway, so you won't even have air-coupling between the top and the back. Unless the chambers are truly gargantuan and the back and front are carved very thin, the back and front "walls" of the cavity will be too stiff to resonate at any useful (i.e., low) pitch, regardless of whether or not the bridge & air cavities are able to drive them. Ever try knocking on a chambered Les Paul, Tele, or even a 335? When you do, does it just go "thunk" louder than a solid guitar, or does it actually resonate at some sustained pitch? (Personally, I haven't found any guitars that do any more than just "thunk.") The whole point of a semi-hollow (vs a true hollow, which is largely an acoustic instrument) is to reject feedback, which it does by rendering the back and front plates unable to resonate efficiently. That's why Gibson started making semi-hollows in the first place, and built (and build!) them with plywood front and backs. Thus, I seriously doubt that the back wood will contribute much to your tone: practically no coupling to the neck or bridge via physical connection Or air-coupling. P.S. The fact that most basses are played with a strap (with the player standing up) means that your body will dampen the back plate anyway, so even if it is capable of resonating and contributing to the sound somehow that way, it's going to have a hard time of it thanks to the player's belly.

I'm inclined to agree about the back, though I won't speak to chambering the body (because I'm too opinionated on that particular subject to be objective). I'm not fully convinced that the back plate of a solidbody guitar (bass or not) will have much impact on the tone of the instrument, because the main coupling points rarely make contact with the back (bridge, neck joint, etc). Your coupling points are likely going to be mostly maple and ash: I think they're going to determine most of the tonal character of that instrument. How thick is each layer of the body going to be, and what type of neck joint (and neck material) are you planning to use?

Sapele is heavier and stiffer than Mahogany. If carved to the same dimensions, Sapele will theoretically produce a neck that absorbs less string energy, thus resulting in more sustain. Mahogany will have quicker decay by comparison. It raises the question of whether you want more sustain, or the more typical "punchy" character of an SG. Tonally on a bright/dark spectrum, I have no comment.

In theory, yes, with alcohol based dyes. I think some mandolin builders do that. I haven't tried it myself, though.

Mahogany has a "heavy" reputation because of Les Pauls, with their massively thick bodies and heavy maple tops (hard maple = 44-46ish lbs/ft³). Its reputation is not the fault of the wood itself so much as the dimensions of the quintessential Mahogany guitars. Mahogany (Genuine or Khaya) is usually only about 10-15% heavier than Alder on average. They're both somewhere around 2/3 the weight of hard maple. Sapele (often marketed as Mahogany) is heavier than Mahogany, as RestorationAD pointed out... 36-40lbs/ft³, depending on which sources you quote.

Good to know you're thinking ahead about that!

Very tidy! Looks like you're off to a good start. For your finish, I would seriously consider something other than traditional lacquer, because that stuff is SO GROSS. Either that or invest in a good respirator or something similar for when you're spraying it. (Maybe I'm just a wimp about wood finishing, but I think I'll stick to oil finishes, French Polishing, and water-based finishes now that I've done a guitar with acrylic lacquer and had experience with it. That was awful.)

What are you planning to use it for? It's hard to suggest a replacement if we don't know the application! Ovangkol isn't too expensive yet, but it's a CITES threatened species now so we'll probably see the price start to climb in the coming years.

Soft or Red maple (Acer rubrum) is actually about 15% stiffer, stronger, heavier, and harder than mahogany (be it Genuine/Honduran or Khaya/African)... it's just not quite as stiff as hard maple. It's actually about half-way between mahogany and hard maple in almost every respect, from an engineering standpoint. It's also a bit stiffer than curly European maple, which a lot of folks seem to think is stiff enough to make necks out of... So if it's an application where mahogany is sturdy enough for the job (i.e., traditional SG necks), then soft maple should be adequate as well. I'm not convinced carbon fiber rods will be structurally necessary unless soft maple is way more prone to moving with the weather than I'm aware of. Regarding SGs being neck heavy: yes they are, and that's even with Genuine Mahogany, which is the lightest wood you'll find on most production electric guitars (the alder-necked Allan Holdsworth signature Carvin and Parker instruments notwithstanding). It's not so much that their necks are heavy so much as their bodies are very thin (and thus lightweight) and the strap pins are up around the 22nd fret instead of way out at the 12th fret like on a Stratocaster. The balance problem is created through the design of the body and the placement of the strap buttons (and thus the balance point)... not just the neck material.

MDF: this stuff turns into a nasty, yucky powder that will cover every surface in your workshop if you make the mistake of sanding, cutting, or routing it inside. It takes a long time to clean that stuff up. If you can, make your template outside and let the sawdust become one with the dirt rather than become one with your tools and lungs.

I tried the SD P-Rails pickups and was thoroughly disappointed. They don't do a good job of the P-90 or Strat sounds at all (IMO) and the humbucker sound is rather non-descript. In the same guitar, SD Alnico II Pro pickups (also with coil taps) kicked P-Rail butt, both in humbucking and tapped modes.

Some sources suggest that HIDE GLUE (the granular kind) might take stains well, but I've never tried it myself. Also, hide glue sets up too fast to be an easy-to-use veneering glue.

+1 to quartersawn being more stable. Not stronger, mind you: just more stable, less prone to warpage, and generally more problem-free than slabsawn wood. If you do use flatsawn wood for the neck, make sure it's perfectly flatsawn, because (much like quartersawn) it will be less prone to warpage than something with the grain running diagonally and a bunch of runout. It should also feel more consistent to carve than diagonally grained wood, which is useful when you're just learning. The more research I read about wood, the less conclusive evidence there is that either grain orientation is universally stronger than the other: every study I've read has had far too small a sample size to actually prove anything, and their results are usually inconclusive anyway. Much research I've seen from those in the forestry & lumber industries suggests that there's more of a variation in wood strength between wood from the bottom or top of a tree than there is due to grain orientation (the wood at the bottom is denser/heavier, harder, and stronger than that at the top, by virtue of being more compressed by weight of the tree above it and growing stronger over the years... in theory).

It really depends how heavy those 6/7 coats are! If they're very light coats, you might not have enough. If they were sprayed on thick and heavy, they're most likely more than adequate. It's a question of how durable you want your finish to be. Are you trying to protect your instrument from the elements or from the player?

If two guitars have identical scale lengths and the same number of frets, they will be the same length from the nut to that last fret... but who's to say that the neck itself has to end just past that last fret? Examples: - PRS necks extend underneath the neck pickup, a good 1.5"+ past the end of the fingerboard. - Ibanez JS guitars with 22 frets have more wood past the last fret than the 24 fret model does: Satriani wanted the neck pickup as close to the 24th fret position as possible, so there's very little wood past the last fret on the JS2400, but a more "normal" amount on the 22 fret models where they aren't squeezed for space. The only true constant derived from scale length is the spacing of the frets (relative to the nut and saddles). You can make the neck and fingerboard longer or shorter past that last fret if you want, whether it be for tonal reasons (Satriani) or structural ones (PRS style guitars). The neck and fingerboard just hold the frets in their correct spots, relative to the nut and the saddles. Who is to say what shape they need to be once that task is accomplished?

I agree - the headplate/veneer look is a classy touch. You usually only see it on archtops and classicals, but it looks good on electric guitars too.

It is not a standard size, sadly.