The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I know a lot of folks watching my valiant attempt at building a guitar feel like they’re rubbernecking a highway wreck. Just at really slow speeds. They witnessed me trying to bend walnut into a shape nature never intended walnut to pretzel itself into and on multiple tries, nature proved its point. They watched in horror while I whacked on a Sitka spruce block with a froe, a flat length of steel used for splitting cedar shakes I’d let rust for 30 years, then tried to plane the bookmatched sections down to 3/16th of an inch and glue the two side by side together for the soundboard.

Some had to avert their eyes when I made kerfings to attach to the bent sides to create a glue surface for the top and bottoms and add strength to the skinny carcass. When I cut spruce and cedar bracing wood for the top and then the back, they cringed. The big boys scallop these, but I drilled holes to take away mass. The last thing you want is a top that doesn’t vibrate freely because you stiffened it too much.

Remember this mantra: let the top sing! Let it vibrate! Most guitars have a soundhole cut right into that vibrating top. Not me, pal. I’m building mine to let sound out the side so I, me, myself, can hear it, not some mythical audience I’ll never play for. The fretboard on most guitars gets extended over the top down to the soundhole and glued, more dampening of the vibrations. Me, I’m going to elevate it above the top a quarter inch or so, nothing touching that singing spruce.

Ditto the pickguard, usually a plastic affair cemented to the top too. I’m either eliminating it altogether or making a floating wood one attached to the side. Most strings on a traditional gitbox sit on a bridge then drop down through the drilled top where the stress on the thin soundboard is compensated by a hardwood reinforcing strip, yup, glued down. I’m going to attach a fancy tailpiece at the end of the guitar bottom where only the bridge touches the top, the only place the soundboard is tampered with. Good good good vibrations sez the Beach Boys. We’ll see. No, actually, we’ll hear…. Stay tuned!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 6th, 2017 at 4:33 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.