Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi,

I'm trying to find an outline of a slope-shouldered dreadnought guitar shape - like the older Martin Dred that had 12 frets to the body & a slotted head. Martin re-released the guitar as a new model a few years back called the CEO-4 and/or CEO-5. I can come up with a suitable brace pattern, etc. for it if I could only find a full scale, accurate copy of the shape somewhere. Any suggestions or solutions come to mind?

Thanks in advance,
Skip

Skip, check with John Hall at Blues Creek Guitars (one of our sponsors). I think he has plans, forms, and molds for about everything.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

I have a template for the old Martin 12 fret "sloped" drednought body. It has some dimensions noted on it, but of course you can modify depth to suit you needs. If you want a tracing of it, PM me with an address and I'll mail you a copy.
You can see a photo of a finished slope from this pattern at http://www.kleinguitars.com/mauel/mauelguitars.htm
It's the second guitar if you scroll down the page.

Hank,

Thank you for your kind offer. That's a lovely guitar! Before asking you to go to the trouble of copying & mailing, I wanted to try an experimental technique using computer software & surprisingly enough ... it worked.

I downloaded a pretty large, straight-on picture of a slope-shouldered dred off the internet. Then, using Photoshop I "cleaned up" the edges to make them really sharp. Then, I imported the picture into Microsoft Publisher & changed the page size to 20" x 24", then stretched the pic to the reflect the correct dimensions (15.625 lower bout, 20.938" body length). After printing onto 9 standard size paper sheets, I taped them together using the printed registration lines and there it was. I now have a pretty accurate outline of a Martin slope-shouldered dred!

The trick is finding a really straight-on photo & then stretching it exactly the same in both dimensions - not distorting the picture. There may be other ways to do this with other software & a LARGE printer or plotter, but this worked pretty well,

Skip

No problem Skip. If you want a tracing for comparison, the offer still stands. I just trace the profile onto some heavy wrapping paper so it's no big deal. Just sent one of to a lad in Canada.

Thanks again Hank!

cheers,
Jeremy