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Most of you probably remember my grand experiment from the last OLF $150 challenge that I named Big Mouth. I tried a number of experiments on this one including falcate bracing. Two of the experimental things I tried I didn't like - the baseball bat neck and the the large soundhole. So I'm doing something about them.


Fortunately this one has a bolt-on neck and fretboard extension so it was apart in a few minutes. Went after the neck with a rasp, sanded it all down and got it where I want it, hopefully. Stripped, ready for finish sanding, then refinish. I'm also going to change out the inexpensive Grover tuners to a decent set of Gotoh's.


The soundhole has backing on it and it is tapered up to the soundhole so I cut a piece to match.


Got the first part in and clamped with fish glue

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Great post , Thanks for the pics . Its nice for people to see that with the right planning a guitar can be repaired aor reworked and wont appear to have been !

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

I sure hope that turns out to be the case

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Great recovery from a failed experiment, much better than just living with it. Also an opportunity for learning something new.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Im assuming that you will put a strip of inlay on the joint to hide it , so that you have , thin inlay , wood , thin inlay , brown , thin inlay ? Thats what I see visually and it wil look like it was meant to be that way !

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

That's the plan - thought I'd do a B/Maple/B like the inlay around the rosette.

First step was the hard part - taking a rasp to the finished neck.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yeah,. that's what I meant . Its gonna look like it was meant to be .

I know what you mean about going after a finished product though, its like , I made it to done , and now Im tempting fate

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Got some more done.

Used offcuts left over from trimming the top to make the new insert but had to join 4 pieces to get it wide enough and keep them bookmatched.


The backing I installed was not even - not too surprising since it was a tapered edge, so I carefully leveled it out with a 1/4" bit in a laminate trimmer then cleaned it up with chisels. Overall depth below the top is thicker than my top offcut so I've laminated another piece of spruce to the offcut to build it up a bit. I'll finish thicknessing it on the drum sander.


I decided I don't like the Grover tuners I had installed for the challenge. I'm going to change them out for a set of Gotoh's so I needed to fill the tuner's screw holes. I made a bunch of mahogany pegs from a neck offcut. If this was an expensive instrument I would put a backstrap on cause the filled holes will show since they're endgrain.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Nice work.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Thanks Tony, now that I'm in the middle of all this I'm actually enjoying myself. Scary, I know

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

i can easily understand your dislike for the club like neck, i've seen too many of them on the later plywood stellas.

but i would be interested to know what you disliked about the enlarged sound hole. some folks must like it as evidenced by the tony rice model.

and i agree it's a good solution to the problem!

Michael, I just don't like the looks of the large sound hole on this guitar. I have another one with the same 4 1/4" that is x braced and I'll probably leave it. I'm going to pull this one back to 3 7/8" or so.

Got the plug in and leveled out. That miniature Lee Valley block plane works quite well when it's sharp.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Another thing on the sound hole. Not sure I have a clue what I'm talking about but I'm hoping that reducing the sound hole size will help the sound get a bit more focused. Only way I know how to find out is to try it.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Got the purfling channel cut and will put a wash coat of shellac on it so I can glue it in tomorrow.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Soundhole is all done except for tapering on the inside. I went ahead and used a standard dred diameter of 4". As soon as the tuners get here then I'll get those installed and everything will be ready for sanding and refinish. Sorry for the poor photo - all I had in the shop was my phone. I'll put up some better ones later.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I'll be interested to hear your opinion of how the sound changes from the smaller sound hole. I wouldn't expect it to become more "focused"....... But it's difficult to describe tone.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

I like it , looks like it was designed that way ... If you never tell anyone it was a change , they will never know

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Thanks Wud.

Darryl, I don't know if I'll be able to tell anything or not but I'm suspecting maybe not. Some people seem to think that sound hole size is critical to the point a small change can make a discernible difference. Yet I was advised by one well-respected luthier to just make the sound hole big enough for my hand (mine are large) and not worry so much about it. When I get it done I'll post my thoughts.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Steve, Very nice job on the rework. Please do keep us posted on any changes you detect due to the smaller soundhole.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

+1

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Thank You and Best To All

Great stuff Steve.
I don't suppose you did any "tap" recordings into Audacity or similar (for FFT spectrum analysis) prior to reducing the soundhole size ... be interesting to see how the peaks of the resonances changed. You don't get the chance to quantify results of altering one variable & retesting very often, and trying to "remember" sounds how they change is notoriously difficult, for me anyway.

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Dave
Milton, ON

Thanks Dave. I've got some numbers - the most reliable are probably the ones taken by Trevor from a recording I made. I'll check it again and post the results. Project has been delayed, I had to go out to the left coast for a few days Should be able to get back in there tonight.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Everything is done so put some Zpoxy on the neck and sprayed the top with shellac tonight. I'll post some more photos when all the work is done.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

The soundhole rework really does make a very noticeable difference for the better....mike

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the difference is. I'm not real sure what this guitar should sound like since this is the first falcate braced guitar I've ever played but I think it lacks some of the clarity or focus I would like.

I've wondered what the guitar top would look like over time if it was a bit darker to start with so I used several coats of amber shellac to seal it. I'll scuff that later today and start shooting the PolyWhey. The neck profile is quite a bit slimmer but still not what I would call a thin neck.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"