For the Guitarist

[W7XXX]

Natural Audio



I made this guitar in 1974. It is rare Brazilian Rosewood B & S with redwood top. Wood was 25 years old in 74. Mellow sweet tone that can bark if provoked.

[WD8BIL]

Nice work Sam !!!!

[W1RKW]

Agree with Buddly.  Nice work.  What classical works do you play?

[AF9J]

Nice looking axe Sam.,

Along with being a jazz guitarist (mainly with bands in the 30s, 40s, & 50s), my grandpa was a luthier.  He made me my first guitar when I was 6.  It was a nylon string classical.  The wood - spruce.  Since it was sized for a kid (moi), my Uncle Joe (the 2nd generation guitarist in the family) tells me that it was actually a D Lute tuned as a guitar.  I no longer have it (in the 90s, it was passsed on the my Uncle Joe's son Josh in 1992, who was 11 at the time, and just starting to learn how to play).

BTW, 'bark' is a relative term  .  In classical and other acoustic genres, you guitar has bark.  In the heavy rock bands (heavy as in hard rock, powerpop, thrash metal, and heavy metal) I played  lead guitar in, the bark is completely different.  It's more like death tone. 

73 & play on,
Ellen - AF9J

P.S. - I am formally trained in music. I played Baritone Euphonium in Symphonic Band, from 6th Grade through my Sophomore year of college.  I guess, I just like my music a bit more raucous. 

[W3RSW]

Very beautiful piece of work Sam. Bet it sounds as good as it looks. - Ready for gut.
Right pix(?) didn't come through; I'd sure like to see a closeup of the inlay, bridge, keys, etc.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Another guitar builder amongst the AMers, Mike, W3ZGW from the early 90s.

http://www.amwindow.org/audio/mov/w3zgw.mov



Anyone heard him on recently?

[ab3al]

your right about the brazilian rosewood.. whef   On acustics its the cats meow.  the electrics that i make im using indian rosewood.  the trick with the indian is that india has a law that prohibits them from exporting raw materials.  any size no matter how small you buy has to be a finished product.. Last peice of indian rosewood i bought was 16/4 x 7" x 10ft.. they took a table saw to it and cut two 1/8th inch deep x 1/8 th inch wide dadoes through it to call it a finished product.  Another wood i use is ebony.  little tougher to deal with but when you get it right it holds the frets great.

curent project a seven string electrick with a 26.5 inch scale 34 fret.. dont laugh but the neck is curly maple and the body is basswood.  an attempt @ a copy of the ibanez 7 string with a few mods.. I have fat fingers and like the longer scale..  sustains longer than standard scale.

all projects on hold santa is busy making mahogany cigar boxes /jewlery boxes and quilt racks for xmas preasnts..  Got a --major wood-- (pun intended) distributor down the street with all of the exotics in a 200,000 sqft building.  I handle their computers in exchange for wood.  and when they dont owe me I get it 1/2 price.. 

Barter is great

73

[AF9J]

Another guitar builder amongst the AMers, Mike, W3ZGW from the early 90s.

http://www.amwindow.org/audio/mov/w3zgw.mov



Anyone heard him on recently?

I took a listen - that's a nice sounding O-style guitar!  Nice, warm lower mids in the tone.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

[AF9J]

your right about the brazilian rosewood.. whef   On acustics its the cats meow.  the electrics that i make im using indian rosewood.  the trick with the indian is that india has a law that prohibits them from exporting raw materials.  any size no matter how small you buy has to be a finished product.. Last peice of indian rosewood i bought was 16/4 x 7" x 10ft.. they took a table saw to it and cut two 1/8th inch deep x 1/8 th inch wide dadoes through it to call it a finished product.  Another wood i use is ebony.  little tougher to deal with but when you get it right it holds the frets great.

curent project a seven string electric with a 26.5 inch scale 34 fret.. dont laugh but the neck is curly maple and the body is basswood.  an attempt @ a copy of the ibanez 7 string with a few mods.. I have fat fingers and like the longer scale..  sustains longer than standard scale.

all projects on hold santa is busy making mahogany cigar boxes /jewlery boxes and quilt racks for xmas preasnts..  Got a --major wood-- (pun intended) distributor down the street with all of the exotics in a 200,000 sqft building.  I handle their computers in exchange for wood.  and when they dont owe me I get it 1/2 price.. 

Barter is great

73

Ohhh, the 7-string ibanez copy - you gong to play subsonic nu-metal with it?   As for the woods - all good tone woods.  As an expiriment, and old boyfriend of mine and I who were both playing guitar in the same band back in the early 90s, used his dad's woodshope to make a telecaster bodied guitar out of birch.  That was hard!  I think Rick burned up 3 router bits routing out the control cavities, and neck pocket.  It weighed a ton, and you couldn't stand to play it for more than 20 minutes or so with it slung over your shoulder.  But it could sustain into next week.

73,
Ellen - AF9J 

[KA1ZGC]

Nice guitar, Sam, and smart choice of woods.

Been building my own improvements on popular electric designs for a number of years myself, which reminds me I've got a Jazzmaster and Telecaster to finish reinventing. That's my style, take a design that is already well-established, and try and make my "ultimate" twist on that design from the ground-up. This means making it as tonally-versatile and player-friendly as the design will allow, as well as tackling as many of the design's most-lamented flaws as I can.

There's a thousand pics of my ultimate Stratocaster out there in net-land, I won't bother reposting them here. Solid cherry body with bookmatched curly maple fascia, solid maple hand-carved neck, brass nut, solid brass pickguard. Wheighs a ton, sustains for eternity, sounds like a million bucks (and that's what truly matters). Others were built over the years, but I sold them off to put food on the table without ever taking pictures of them.

In case anyone was wondering, assembling pre-manufactured parts is not the kind of building I do. This is starting with a pile of hardwood and finishing with a guitar. Nothing wrong with buying necks and bodies if you don't have the equipment or woodworking expertise, but I have both, so anything less would be a cop-out in my case.

Nice work, Sam. Like your transmitter, something to be proud of.

--Thom
Killer Agony One Zipper Got Caught

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

I would guess a Dreadnaught, but from a recording it is hard to say for sure. Sounded nice, whatever it was!

Another guitar builder amongst the AMers, Mike, W3ZGW from the early 90s.

http://www.amwindow.org/audio/mov/w3zgw.mov



Anyone heard him on recently?

I took a listen - that's a nice sounding O-style guitar!  Nice, warm lower mids in the tone.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

[AF9J]

I don't know Steve,

Not enough booming bass to be a dreadnought style in IMO.  It sort of sounds like a bassier Martin O-style, or a Gibson J-200.

Ellen - AF9J

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

You're probably correct. It was an over the air recording, so the accuracy isn't extremely high. And there's a huge variation in sound between an 0 and a 000 box. Some current special renditions of 000 boxes (like the Norman Blake model) have more low-end than some of the D models. It's a brave new world!

[ka3zlr]

I have a Takamine hollow body i picked up when it was first introduced, and it is well  aged and very pleasant with scads of sustain.

[AF9J]

That's a nice guitar.   The other guitarist in a band I was in, had a Takamine as his acoustic axe.  He loved it.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

[ka3zlr]

That's a nice guitar.   The other guitarist in a band I was in, had a Takamine as his acoustic axe.  He loved it.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

Hi Ellen,

 It's been a very nice purchase very little service, no major problems i've had it refretted twice it never leaves the home so it's seen very little humidity or outside air. But it has a velocity i really like chordal wise and the sustain man you can pick it up and dump out the tail of any note..

[ka3zlr]

Very nice Sam, and 12 strings too i like that.

[Bill, KD0HG]

Is this an optical illusion- A "bent" guitar neck?

[AF9J]

Optical illusion of course.  But, I did know a guy who used to bend the guitar neck for vibrato.  Of course, he snapped off a few necks from doing so.  You can only get away with doing it so many times.

Ellen - AF9J

[ka3zlr]

Optical illusion of course.  But, I did know a guy who used to bend the guitar neck for vibrato.  Of course, he snapped off a few necks from doing so.  You can only get away with doing it so many times.

Ellen - AF9J

 Hi Ellen,

 I don't know if neck bending was what i did, but years ago when i was together with the guys, you know how when at the finish of a song, certain songs, or even at the end of the night..when it called for a long sustain then crash the last chord or whatever i used to do a swing slight bend and turn my body with it ya know to gain a tonal fall,  then come back for the  Crash...and then end... but bending a Les..I don't know about that man...i wouldn't do that to often...I had two Les's they didn't have a whole lot of give to'em...very Stiff axe...now fender...that's another animal...LOL...

[AF9J]

Hi Jack,

Yep, George used to do the same thing (push the body one way, and the neck the other way), with a BC Rich Mockingbird, and a Fender Thinline Telecaster (the one with the dual humbuckers).  The Mockingbird, with it's through neck construction dealt with this abuse better than the Tele. George snapped the neck off the Tele, from doing it one too many times.  Me, I prefer not to stress out the neck by doing neck vibrato.  No thanks.

73,
Ellen - AF9J