archtop guitar design construction

Published by on November 13, 2020

Since I wanted the best fit for these inlays, I only used the router to waste away the insides where I could. Sitka Spruce or a similarly strong yet lightweight, resonant timber. They were built by luthiers who weren’t as skilled as those at Gibson or Epiphone, and they didn’t have the reputation necessary to charge high prices for their guitars. Having recovered from the klong, I made a little groove-filling shim of aluminum sheet and wax paper, and dribbled in some of than wonderful black epoxy I used for the inlays. Or rather, it. After I got a decent rough fit, I made and added a heel cap to each neck made of curly red maple with a mahogany veneer separating it from the other maple at the "binding" line of the back. The tops won't be bookmatched, but the backs and sides may be. This worked great. I mitered the binding joints at the base. Finished headstock inlays. It's a good product, but next time I would squeegee it in, leaving a lot less on the surface. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. You may be charged a restocking fee up to 50% of item's price for used or damaged returns and up to 100% for materially different item. doesn’t really have a simple yes or no answer. Ready for Harry Becker to do setup. I use "Cut Rite" brand wax paper because the name suggests it should be used in woodworking. The more coveted Silvertone archtops sport a logo with a spear and halberd crossed behind a green shield. It’s very time-consuming and labor-intensive, making guitars with carved tops significantly more expensive than those with laminate or pressed wood tops. I placed the neck in the body and measured how far it needed to set down on top of the body to accomplish this. I clamped the bindings hard against the fingerboard, then used superglue to weld the wood together. Many of them have carved spruce tops and laminated maple backs. Compare the guitar in the first video to the guitar in the second. Great bargains exist, but you need to be willing to search. Here's one of the newly-fixed frets, straight from the fret fixer. My shop is great for this project during the Winter, but by the end of Spring it will be too humid. Harmony database, they were actually made from all solid woods (spruce tops and mahogany bodies). Sanding the other headstock side curves was easier, using a drill press sanding tool with a few grits of paper. I'm not buying luthier tonewoods. Polishing. However, many older models don’t have truss rods so they may require a neck reset. I sanded, then more - soaked in again. A straight line along the centerline  of the fingerboard should fall exactly 3/4" over the top of the body at the location of the bridge. And I'm really looking to test my patience and standards with an unusual, high-visibility project. As it turned out, everything was pretty straightforward. Like vintage Gretsch electrics, Gretsch archtops seem to be a bit less durable than their contemporaries. Unable to add item to List. Now, there are archtops available that are significantly less than that. Lots of stuff, inevitably, will come from StewMac. Final alignment. I taped blocks under the neck to support it during the cut,  and left a little extra next to the bindings, which will come off when I shape the necks, starting Monday. As a bonus, the DVD set includes Focusing On Bridges and Tailpieces, Bob's 80-minute examination of archtop guitar bridge and tailpiece design, and its effect on playability and sound. The difference between their tone and that of a vintage archtop is more a matter of personal preference, but as you move up the scale of vintage quality, the tone of a higher-end instrument will certainly be superior. Between the fan and the dust ports, it wasn't too bad. An overview of neck construction, includes tips for adding headstock "ears," routing for a truss rod, laminating a classical guitar heel and more. As a bonus, the DVD set includes Focusing On Bridges and Tailpieces, Bob's 80-minute examination of archtop guitar bridge and tailpiece design, and its effect on playability and sound. I thought the curve was so slight I would have no problem pressing them in to fit the curve. Solid wood is simply a solid piece of wood that resonates much more freely than laminate wood, typically making the guitars built with it louder. The high-end Kay archtops are the equal of lower-end Epiphones and Gibsons but are generally much cheaper. I mixed cherry dust with epoxy to glue the 34 inlay pieces. Harmony archtops were generally of a lower quality than Kays, but they still have the potential to be a good bargain. Please try again. That’s a decent illustration of how the quality can vary from one model of Kay to another, and that’s not even getting into the differences between brands. Building an Archtop Guitar (via Will Ehster). Before we get into specific brands and models, let's start with the basic terminology below. The timber used is often Spruce e.g. Epiphone has also recently reentered the low-end archtop game, with the resurrection of their Masterbilt series, while Gretsch and Eastwood are also offering archtops of their own. It also allows these guitars to have a better frequency production. The first couple of coats soaked right in. Pre-Gibson Epiphone archtops are a bit cheaper, but the cheaper models still typically sell between $1,000 and $1,500. I removed the veneer and binding right down to the maple. Fitting the ebony bridges to the curve of the tops. Then I peeled the backing off the prints, stuck the in their spot on the headstocks, and cut away the "inlay parts" with an exacto knife. I had to do it this way because the boards had to be tapered from each side, relative to the fret slots. For the pickguards, I laminated curly cherry veneer onto solid cherry - same veneer as the flip side of the headstocks. This design method removes a lot of the static string tension from the soundboard, which only has to support the downward pressure from the floating bridge. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. The strings are attached at both ends to this structure and the pickup(s) is/are mounted on this. So, I'll be doing this pretty much full time this Winter. This stuff dried hard as a rock, and it took three days to sand it off. Archtops vary in size, generally ranging from 16 inches to 19 inches on the lower bout. First, I made a complete set of frets for both guitars, without bending the wire to any radius, undercutting for the binding and some overlap to trim. I had 43 nicely cut straight frets which would not work unless I could come up with a way to radius them. Behind him is his beloved 3D printer. I decided to do this midway in the finishing, so that any harm to the tops could be "rubbed out" - but no problems arose. There are a lot of mandolin luthiers out there and a good many archtop guitar builders. More recently though, the acoustic archtop has experienced a resurgence. I used .3mm mechanical pencil to draw alignment guides, then traced around each diamond with the pencil as I held it in position. Trimming the waste for a rough fit. The smaller one on the left wasn't robust enough to cut the fret wire at all, but the other one worked fine. So I posted a fan in the window and moved the tool near it. These guitars are often bargain buys, and they’re generally a step up from most Kay archtops. Wet sanding with 600# paper. Sanding the fingerboard inlays took some time, but went very well. I used a Nicholson rasp to bring the necks to their final fair shape. Yet for all the historical importance and modern interest, information on vintage archtop guitars isn’t as widely available as it should be. Finished nut fit. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. Pretty good. The classroom format begins with wood selection, tap-tuning and handcarving of the plates. I guessed at half that (6" radius) for a press to curve tham, figuring a lot of springback. Recommended: Guitar Kit Styles For Musical Genres Archtop Guitar Construction and Design. In a few weeks Brendan and I will each have a ne guitar! The guitar in this current listing looks a bit rough, but appears to be structurally sound. I tapped the neck as far down into the dovetail oint as it would go, and noted whether the neck and body were aligned straight. Part of the task here was knowing when to stop. The neck on the bottom is ready for a rough trial fit, the one at top is uncut. The main thing that separates cheaper archtops from more expensive ones are the materials used, the skill of the builder, and the brand's prestige. I'm basing the design on Bob Benedetto's beautiful archtops, and using his book and plans. To get a perfect fit between the part of the neck that rests on the top of the body, I reinforced a bit of carbon paper and slid it through the tightened joint repeatedly to find high spots, which I snicked away with a sharp 1/2" chisel. This was tedious. I just about shit myself.

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