Electric Classical Guitar

and synthesizer controller

I wanted to build s synth controller, one that had a scale length and string spacing like a propper classical guitar, and felt like one when being played. I had never done a cutaway or an arm bevel, so I figured that this was the perfect oportunity since I didn't need to worry about possible detrimental effects on tone that those features might cause with a normal acoustic instrument. I was using the Ghost pickup system made by graphtech, which has the electronics for a combined audio output as well as the 13 wire output for feeding the Roland or Axxon MIDI units (I have both) for controlling synths, so I thought that it would be fun to play around with that as well.

Front and back

The back (as well as the sides and headstock veneer) is East Indian Rosewood.
I put the hole in it to make the wiring easier, as well as to gain access to the controls. I routed a small slot for a maple strip around the hole, just because.

The top is a piece of Adirondack Spruce, a "freebie" from Allied Lutherie durring a sales event. Worst piece of crap (from a luthier's perspective) I'd ever seen. On hindsight I should have used Maple. It would have saved me some grief later on...

The sides

For the sides I decided to use solid linings rather the kerfed ones. Since I used a block of Basswood for the block where the arm bevel would be, I decided to laminate 3 pieces of Basswood bent on the same forms that I made for the sides. While Basswood is soft and carves well, it is extremely brittle, and does no bend well! Another painfull lesson learned.
You can see the cracks in the Basswood linings if you look closely.

Fitting the back

The back is curved to a radius of 15 feet. It is laying in a 30 foot radius dish and the braces, also curved to a 30 foot radius, have been glued in place. The 2 longitudinal braces, intended to stiffen the guitar along it's length, straddle the "soundhole". All braces are Honduran Mahogany - I would have used Spanish Cedar (I love the smell of it!) but I didn't have enough on hand.

It's easier to fit the back at this stage before the top is on. The ends of the braces are trimmed to a tight fit. It is not yet glued to the sides - it will be glued on later.

Glueing and bracing the top

The top is curved to a 30 foot radius, and is laying face down in a radius dish. It has been glued to the sides and the braces (also 30 foot radius) have been fitted and glued to the top and sides. Some scraps of top wood have been fitted and glued with the grain at a right angle to the grain of the top, making it a 2-ply top for added stiffness. I had to find the future location of the bridge and where the holes for the saddle pickups would be, so as not to obstruct them. It's not pretty, but nobody will see it. Umm... except you.

Closing the box

It's kind of a milestone in any build, but there's still a long way to go!

You can see the block of Basswood that's the core for the arm bevel. It will be filed down after the purfling (the skinny decroative strip that will hug the edge of the top) and the binding (the wider decorative strip that will hug the side) are added. The binding and purfling separate from each other at one end of the bevel and rejoin at the other end. Once the block of Basswood is filed down, it will be covered with a veneer of East Indian Rosewood. You can see the end result in the picrures down below.

Body bound and purfled

Pretty standard binding and purfling, except for the mitred bit in the cutaway area where the neck will join it.

Below are pictures with the rough neck, ready for the mortise (body) and tennon (neck) joint. The neck is Spanish Cedar, or Cedro. It will be carved down after the neck and body or joined, so I can blend the neck into the body at the cutaway.
See the "assembled" pictures further down.

All assembled

Neck joined and carved, fingerboard glued on. Now to level the fingerboard (sanding), and fretting, leveling the frets (sanding) and finishing the fret ends.

Finish work

Lots of sanding done. The pore filling (back, sides, neck and headstock) has been done, followed by more sanding. I pore filled using GluBoost, a special, very thin superglue. Just dribble it on, squeegee it out, and then sand it back. Then repeat untill all of the pores are filled. Goes pretty quickly. Leaves a nice sheen where it soaks into the wood a bit. It's the first time I've used it, and I'll never go back to anything else

After final sanding is done, the bridge is located and masked off, so there is bare wood left to glue the bridge on. I did not locate it carefully enough (see below). Now ready to apply the finish.

Done!

The finish is French polish/shelac, but in this case a slightly different concoction: shelac with an added synthetic resin, called Royal-Lac. Regular shelac dries to the touch in seconds and hardens in a short amount of time, as does this this, but after it "cures" for about a month, Royal-Lac becomes extremely durable - more like lacquer. I thinned it to what I thought was the right "cut" but it was still a bit too heavy. It went on well. built up nicely (and quickly) but it left some swirl marks. I level sanded it and diluted it by half again and resumed the process, knowing that I'd have to sand and buff it out later. Many people do that anyway, but previously I had prided myself with being done with it after the last "spiriting off" session.

Oh well - lesson learned - it won't happen again.

To the right you can see the 18 hole bridge - the strings are woven in and out a couple of times and voila! - no timber-hitch knot.

I learned how to do the cutaway and arm bevel there as well. The body pattern for this guitar is Robby's own. I like it a lot - a more gentle bend at the waist, one less place for wood to crack!

Stupid Mistake

After glueing the bridge on, and stringing it up (the next day), I came to the realization that the bridge was not where it should have been! It was the first time that has happened, and I must not have been in my right mind when I was positioning the bridge prior to masking it off for finishing the guitar. It was located 1mm too far away from the fingerboard, and 2mm too far towards the bass side. So I got to learn yet another repair technique - removing the bridge. After heating it to 160 degrees (Farenheit) I was very carefull prying it off, but not carefull enough. You can see the dents I made in the picture on the right. These are pictures taken after re-glueing the bridge in the correct position, as are the pictures above. In the picture on the left you can see the 1mm of bare wood to the right where the bridge was, and in the right picture you can see the 2mm of bare wood above it. So now I have some finish repair work to do, as I have had to do on my previous guitar builds. Almost all of the dings I have repaired were on guitars that I hadn't even strung up and played yet! I still have some final sanding and polishing to do on this guitar yet, but I decided to just get it out of the shop for a while, for it's own safety.

Oh well - lesson learned - it won't happen again.

After all that, came the wiring. I was REALLY glad I made the "sound hole" in the back! It would have been like building a ship in a bottle - an opaque bottle - if I hadn't. It was still pretty difficult though, fishing 6 pairs of wires through the bridge, putting connectors on them and fishing them through the side (they barely reached) to connect to the daughter card mounted to the 13 pin DIN connector on the side. Then wiring up the main board and mounting that on a bracket, all done through the "sound hole" and scratching the back in the process (more finsh repair work to do).