my first handmade acoustic guitar project was in 1976

My Story

I have been passionate about wood most of my 74 years but started my working life in precision engineering. The manufacturing background gave me the ability and attention to detail when it came to constuction regardless of whatever I was designing and building. I have been playing a handmade acoustic guitar for many years and decided to set up my workshop in order to make guitars as a retirement hobby.

My First Guitar

The guitar in the photogragh is a handmade acoustic spanish guitar that I built in 1976, at nearly 50 years old it has passed the test of time.

The wood came from an old piece of furniture which I recycled into this guitar, it seemed a shame to throw the wood away.

In My Workshop

In about 2018 I set up my guitar workshop and procuring or making the specialist machines, jigs and tools, I later made a prototype Archtop Guitar from mahogany following a manual by Bob Benedetto which explained in detail of how to construct these iconic signature guitars, basically using the similar methods of construction as classical orchestral stringed instruments.

Once I had familiarised myself with the process I made two Archtop guitars using rare and expensive quilted maple back and sides with sitka spruce soundboards. The three piece neck is all maple and it has an ebony fretboard. Maple, especially quilted maple is an extremely hard wood to manage. Carving and finishing it was far more intensive than the mahogany prototype.

I then went on to make another mahogany archtop acoustic guitar to further my experience and curiosity.

You can see the quilted maple in the image below.

Design and development from Archtop to hybrid Guitar

After constructing the Archtop Guitars from quilted maple and mahogany I made a series of guitars in the same image as the Archtop but used regular 3mm thick tone woods and curved bracing to emulate the design. Obviously tone and volume are an important feature for performance and my curiosity was once again raised to experimentation.

I later changed the tail piece and bridge to a fixed pinless bridge design with a round sound hole, basically amalgamating the two types of guitar, the archtop and flat top together in a hybrid design.

Quilted Maple Archtop Guitar

My only disappointment was the glue line which is due to the nature of quilted maple reacting in a similar way to end grain and absorbing the titebond adhisive further into the wood.