Way Back in Time

Do you know whether Liszt scored the work for the cymbalom himself, or whether someone else arranged it from his piano score.?
Liszt was very fond of writing complex piano scores based on other composers works. Schubert's Ave Maria is probably the best example.

 

Since you seem very interested, perhaps you should do the research.

 

Perhaps you both should take your interest to your own thread about your topic and let Tyrsonswood have his thread about the guitars he made.

 

Maybe Vlad and Wils can show us all the stringed instruments they built by hand...

 

Your guitars are beautiful man. True skill. Can’t imagine how you felt about the fire and then the water too!!!

 

Thank you...

 

Unfortunately I have never built an instrument by hand, but that does not mean that I do not admire your achievements. I have however done some restoration work on theatre organs and it was something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Widening the scope of a thread, tends to keep it alive, so that more people will see and add comments. All to often, as soon as a thread disappears off the bottom of the new posts page, it just disappears into the abyss forever.

How often do you play your collection of guitars these days.?

 

I started the thread with a rather narrow scope. Widening it's scope with totally unrelated material just doesn't seem to make much sense.

 

Anyways...

There is this...






More later...

 

Flat top acoustic I built between 87-88.

 

Chisel and scrapers for the carved tops, along with lots of sanding. The school had thickness sanders for thin stock... (acoustic tops back and sides, binding pieces, stuff like that)

Really crude home made thickness sanders.... Matter of fact they probably wouldn't allow 80% of the power tools we used back then. Certainly not in a school.

 

So, "the Dancing Girl" is the only flat top acoustic I ever designed and built. There is only one of these. (the student acoustic was built within school guidelines, even though I made each piece, it wasn't "mine")

It's a flamed Koa back and sides, Sitka Spruce top, Nicaraguan Rosewood neck, and an Ebony fretboard. N. Rosewood and Maple binding all around.

The body shape I designed started out as a jumbo acoustic, shrunk down in size by quite a bit. It's about the size of a "parlor" guitar. It's a Mini Jumbo. The 4 piece back is made from one board that wasn't wide enough to build this guitar... It should not be hard to figure out how I did that, but it goes over some people's head when I try to explain. This is a steel string guitar but it has "fan bracing" on the top which is something normally only done on classical "spanish" guitars which are nylon strings. "Secret bracing involved" It doesn't sound like a typical Martin or Gibson acoustic guitar which are all "X braced"... It's not supposed to sound like those guitars. Warm and full sounding with infinite sustain. It's a fingerpicking blues/jazz machine... I told you there was only one of these...

The neck is something some previous guy had screwed up and couldn't sort out. (I was good at finding these things buried around the school) This unfinished neck was already years old by time I got there, it had been partially assembled, but no fretboard or carving yet. The school had since run out of Nicaraguan Rosewood in the size needed to make a neck... It was already getting hard to find anywhere else too, so.... "Yeah, I can fix that, no problem." I guess I did fix it... Although I know it had something to do with the headstock being skewed off angle I can't see it now or tell you exactly what I did to fix it. I do remember that the headcap (front face of the headstock) was glued on and the center line of lighter wood was something I hand cut the channel and inlayed before doing the mother of pearl and abalone inlay. That set my centerline for the headstock shape, normally you would glue the headcap together with the stripe and then apply it to the neck. Oops. I did it backwards in order to save the last one of these necks in existence. Everything is on center now, whatever I did...

The interesting inlay shapes, neck and headstock, had no patterns made before hand. I just started cutting shell inlay pieces and designed as I went. The fretboard is some kind of "evolution of a tree" or someshyt... Hey... There are "Tree of life" inlay patterns. Mine just evolved. Whatever... The "Dancing Girl" just came about after finding a couple of those shell pieces, especially the top piece that looks like flowing fabric, or a drape, or... a veil. That's it "a dancing girl with a veil but she's really a plant... in a urn..." ... Whatever.... Cut pieces, each piece fits the last one ... Inlay. The pieces of wood in the rosette are all bookmatched side to side, those are all hand shaped to fit the round channel in the top around the soundhole. One pair at a time, each fits the last.

The electronics... The last two frets are not frets, they are parts of an electric pickup.... the "faux" end of the neck fretboard overhang is a pickup made to look like a fretboard overhang. There is also a saddle pickup and a microphone inside the body of the guitar. The current electronics were installed around 2007. The original setup of just the fretboard and saddle pickups was something I never finished building back in the 80's but the previsions were built in. I bought this preamp setup, used my handwound fretboard pickup instead of the kit "soundhole pickup". I had to cut away and fit the preamp into a place designed 20 years prior. So, inlaying plastic into wood... It kinda looks like I meant to do that.

More later...

 

Adjustable truss rods... they all have those. Also something I made. They weren't readily available premade back in the 80's like they are today. Thing with a premade rod is you don't have custom lengths available.

Interesting tidbit... The Aviator has a truss rod, but it's not in the neck at the moment. Actually it's slightly "missing" right now. The guy I just got the guitar back from stuck it "somewhere in storage" and he's still looking for it.

This truss rod design is removable so you can install it as needed to counteract what the neck and string tension wants to do. The Aviator is so stable that I have been all over the country with that guitar and it has never needed a truss rod adjustment... Having it in the neck with no tension on it causes rattles. So there is a channel down the center of the neck with nothing in it. So, not only has it never needed adjustment, it never needed the rod at all.

 

Yeah, they are just common steel.

Ours were something like this, but I couldn't find an exact match...



On the adjustable end the round rod passes through the collar freely, end of the rod and nut are threaded. The other end is welded. As you tighten the nut the round rod gets shorter forcing the square bar to bulge out, thus bending the whole unit. That bend applies pressure in the middle of the neck to counter act the pull of the string tension.

In a perfect world, strings pull a forward bow into the neck, truss rod forces it "flat" again making the system balanced. Ideally there should be slight forward bow called "relief" to keep strings from buzzing. Necks shouldn't be perfectly flat.

In the real world, things are not always so nice. If a neck has a backwards bow and the truss rod is loose then there is a big problem. The rod can't adjust in that direction. The way we were designing ours (the school's) the rod could be loosened, slid out of the neck and installed "upside down" to push the neck in the other direction if need be.

In the "modern" world, they now have dual action truss rods that can move the neck in both directions. We didn't have those in the stoned age, though.

Most guitars that exist in temperate climates will need slight adjustments a couple of times a year to play in their "optimum setup". This is due to seasonal weather changes causing the wood to move around. Truss rod is one of those adjustments. Changing place of residence, like from the desert to the mountains, can also cause the wood to move around. This is why the "Aviator" never needing adjustments is remarkable.


Note: Most guitars that exist on the planet are not at their "optimum setup"... Many are really, really off... like, not even close. Guys play them anyways.

 

It takes me forever to take photos... I hate taking photos could be part of the reason for that.

Anyways... This guitar...


Now looks like this...









Lots of little pieces of wood, that...


.

 

What it is... A carved top, hollow body, double cutaway, jazz box... sort of. (It's not "normal" to have 24 frets with a neck to body joint at the 19th fret on a jazz box... I never do "normal")

The top is super flame "Golden Koa", Koa is normally a medium shade of brown like the other guitars I've posted. This top has the braces carved into the top, instead of removing all the wood and making braces out of a different wood and gluing them in. The top is about 1/8th inch thick through the whole center section. The outside is carved first to establish the "carve". Then the inside is carved to the thickness desired. Then the top is "tap tuned" to it's final tone. Just like a Violin, Cello, etc. Koa is a hardwood, and most "jazz box" guitars would have a Spruce or Cedar top, those would be soft woods. They react differently, especially when plugged into an amp. The hardwood still moves but feedback is more controllable and there is much more sustain.

Back and sides, neck, is all Honduran Mahogany. The back is quite thick and the sides are also. This is done to cause the acoustic sound to reflect outwards. If they were thin, like is common, they would absorb this acoustic energy. Downside is this guitar is quite heavy, but it's made for seated playing, so it's not a problem. It's also largely an electric guitar but acoustic principles still apply.

White trim is Maple, Hand carved bridge is a Koa base with an Ebony saddle. Pickups are Bill Lawrence XL series with hand made Koa covers... Yes, both of those pieces are Koa, light and dark colored. Compare to the Golden Koa top. The Brass part of the tailpiece and the wood overlay is something I made, the string attachment piece is a Schaller piece, made in Germany... It was part of some other type of bridge and I adapted it for this purpose.

So when I built the guitar initially it was a Lacquer finish with a dark cherry sunburst... It was the finish that took the major hit in the fire, Heat/Water/Freeze that happened had it peeling off in many places, there was a small "burn" where the finish bubbled on the top. It did not harm the woods or the glue joints. (There was some fret repairs needed due to the trauma, but that has also been dealt with) The finish that is on it now is oil and wax... The difference in tone and dynamics between the two finishes is dramatic. It's like a completely different guitar. Finish it also something that affects acoustic principles.


More later...