New archtop...Just finished

[Chris Richards]

Well, here it is at last! I've been building this for the last four years on and off. I'm far more use to building solid body electrics but thought I'd have a go at something completely different. I basically followed the Benedetto book, which I would say was absolutely essential for me, I did change some cosmetic things which are pretty obvious to the eye.

I wanted an art deco look for the guitar and Originally wanted to use aluminium for the "F" hole binding and body binding, the "F" holes worked out ok but I just could not get the aluminium to stick to the body edge, no matter what glue I tried, so I had to fall back to the usual plastic, this left me with a problem, as cleaning off the glue from the rebate damaged the wood, so this forced me into doing a sunburst finish to hide the damaged areas... But I'm more than pleased with the outcome which I think adds to the art deco look. The finish is cellulose with a black edge oversprayed with green, I'd recently finished a Firebird style guitar in the same livery but sprayed the black last, going over the black with green kinda tones it down a bit.
The sunray pattern on the tailpiece I've repeated on the headstock, I was going to put a pickup and pickguard on it but I'm holding fire on that for now, but might add them later.

Building this guitar was a nice sojourn from an otherwise quite stressful time in my life, I don't know what I'm going to do with it as I'm not much of a player, especially the genre of music that you're meant to play on it. although it's far from perfect, I'm very pleased with the outcome.

[Chris Richards]

I should say a bit about the specification I guess :
17 inch archtop.
Carved engleman spruce top and carved quilted maple back.
the neck is flamed sycamore
Ebony fretboard.
Ebony tailpiece with maple inlays. Ebony adjustable bridge.
Aluminium "F" hole binding, plastic elsewhere.

[Jason Rodgers]

Excellent! And great overall aesthetic plan!

[Gilbert Fredrickson]

Very nice. With the right hand tools, an all aluminium archtop would be in reach.

[Mike Wilson]

Very nice work! I have always been partial to green.

[Chris Richards]

Thanks for the comments, Yes I'm pretty fussy when it comes to the appearance of a guitar, I was pretty disappointed when removing the aluminium body binding damaged the surrounding wood as I wanted to do an all natural finish, from then on I couldn't decide on a finish but a few months ago I did a Firebird in green and loved the results so that made my mind up and I'm really pleased with the overall look. I had to have a couple of goes at the black, the first attempt resulted in the black covering too large an area, so it was back to sanding before having another go!

I'm not sure of the virtues of the chord anchored tailpiece, in retrospect I would probably go for a hinged one, also I might re do the bridge. I've noticed that with the string tension the tailpiece doesn't sit very well on the edge of the body so I've got to address that problem but apart from that I'm going to leave it settle in for a while as I'm sure there'll be plenty of other little issues that will need to sort out.

[Patrick Hanna]

Hey, Chris,
Two comments:
1. I've never seen anything quite like this before.
2. I think it's cooler than all get-out!
If this baby ever makes an appearance on stage, you can be sure she will provoke a lot of inquiry and discussion. I think you've done something fairly unique in terms of the visuals. And I think you did a great job overall. Don't worry about correcting a few unplanned errors or whatever. The quality of the fix is all that matters, and you've done very well. Are you pleased with the way she plays and sounds? I think you ought to launch another archtop immediately.
Patrick

[Michael Lewis]

Metal bindings on wood structure are not a good idea, no matter how it would look. The problems would come from the differing rates of expansion and contraction from changes in heat and humidity.

Maybe a layer of aluminum foil covered with a heavy clear tape of some sort. There are some modern adhesives that can stick these things together pretty well. Industrial supply houses have some very interesting catalogs, (hint).

[Chris Richards]

Thanks for the comments, Patrick....Regarding playing the guitar, I have it tuned a tone lower at the moment because of problems with the tailpiece but I want to play it for a while to leave it settle down. Having never built an acoustic before I'm not used to the relative movements of various parts under the string tension, a stupid thing to say but it's very different from a solid body! The neck is great and I'm sure I can get a very nice action. It took me about four years to build, mainly because I was doing other guitars in between but these last 3 months I've been at it constantly as.... a)I wanted to get it finished and ...b) I finally knew what I wanted it to look like... It really bothers me when I'm confused about the end result so to speak, especially when the aluminium didn't work out and spoilt my finishing plans...But once I'd thought of the sunray pattern and then the green finish it gave me the final push to get on with it.

There's certain things that I really don't like on guitars and one of the features I didn't want to do was the veneer on the back of the headstock, it advises in the book that you need it to counteract any warping tendency from the face veneer, but to me it looks unnecessarily fancy and as though it's hiding a headstock repair, so I've kinda gone for a partial veneer and hope it doesn't cause any problems. I hope I'm not sounding like an arse mentioning these things!

Michael, as for the aluminium, I agree with you totally, it was a disaster from the start, It's only in the "F" holes now and I hope it stays there! I'll avoid it in the future and like you say a chrome'ish paint or covering would be the way to go.

The guitar is far from perfect and I would like to make another but I don't think that will be anytime soon. Here's a picture of the guitar I built that gave me the look for the finish that I wanted, I do like taking classic designs and changing them around a bit.

[Hans Bezemer]

Nice job, I like the colour and the stripes on the tailpiece and headstock.
Could you tell something about the bridge. Thit you make that yourself?
Do you have a close up picture of the bridge?
I like the adjustable saddles.

[Chris Richards]

Hi Hanz... Here's the bridge, I carved it from ebony it has typical thumb wheel height adjustment, the saddles are steel wire bent into a staple shape and I've drilled a series of holes so their position can be changed, once they're in the correct place I'll use a little super glue to hold them in... As yet I haven't set the guitar up so I don't now quite how the bridge will perform, the wire is thick enough that I've filed some notches to locate the strings... So far it seems ok, once I've set the positions of the saddles I may well fill the unused holes to neaten things up, also I want to work on getting the saddles to sit neater in the ebony, the bends on the saddles have a bit of a radius which holds them a little high so I could either countersink the holed or try and get the bends a little tighter.

[Hans Bezemer]

Thanks Chris,

That's a simple but effective solution. I like it.
Does the rods of the height adjustment get in the way while playing?
They seem a bit high, but maybe that's just the picture.

Hans

[Chris Richards]

Hi Hans.....

The posts look higher in the pictures, but they are a bit high anyway, they're threaded into the ebony bridge base with a touch of super glue, so I'm hoping that I can take them out and cut the bottoms off them, the tops have an allen head socket. I'll have to get back to it this week and sort the problems.

The tailpiece attachment loop has cracked the wood where the holes are drilled through it that go into the slots to take the length adjusting thumb wheels, I'm hoping that I can glue a piece of ebony on the bottom of the tailpiece to strengthen it and give a larger more stable area for it to sit on the top of the body, or I'm thinking of modifying it with some kind of metal bracket that screws to the tail block and strap pin.

The bridge also needs the feet re profiled slightly as under string pressure they don't sit evenly on the top plate. So a few jobs to do before I can give it a good trial so to speak.

[Jason Rodgers]

That saddle solution is cool. Next time (?) you do this, you could set up the bridge without any saddle holes, string it up, and use short lengths of wire/rod to find the compensation points. Then, with the places marked, drill the little holes for the little saddle "staples."

Too bad about the tailpiece: I hope you can save it. There's a lot of torque at that point.

[Chris Richards]

Yes that's a good idea with the saddles... It took me a while to get use to everything moving about (tailpiece, bridge and the body top plate) until you get the string tension right... Yes I'm a bit upset about the tailpiece as I think I won't be happy until I make another one, but it's a bit of a dilemma whether to build one with a metal bracket rather than cord, like you say there's a lot of stress being applied via the cord...And I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with that. Firstly though I will try and fix it by gluing a piece of wood on the underside.

[Michael Lewis]

Chris, did you put a saddle under the cord for the tailpiece? It is a traditional feature carried over from the violin world, and helps spread the stress and strain the cord exerts in that area.

[Chris Richards]

Thanks Michael.... That's something else I should do when I remove the tailpiece, Could be quite a awkward thing to do with the body finished. I'm asking myself why I didn't do it when I built the guitar?

[Michael Lewis]

Use a very sharp chisel and be careful, that's all there is to it. Oh, leave a slight clearance at the ends of the new saddle so it won't cause cracks as the top dries out during low relative humidity events. Take a look at some violins to get a good idea of how it goes together and how to make it look clean. Cut only part way through the edge of the top so the saddle sits up above the tail block. I cut about 2/3 out and leave 1/3 thickness and make it fit well except at the ends where you leave the small gap. Almost any hard wood or bone will do for the saddle. If this isn't clear you should say so.

[Chris Richards]

Hi Michael

That's great thank you...Getting used to the movement that happens on these guitars is something I'll have to get my head around, as an aside how much should I expect the top to deflect under string tension at the bridge? Probably next week I'll get to work on it again. The string anchor method I used on the tailpiece are just simple holes and the strings load from underneath, I did this to avoid disturbing the sun ray pattern on the top, but now I'm seeing the advantage of using the traditional key hole method!

[AL Lombardo]

Chris,

This is one of the most beautiful guitars I have seen. I love the Benedetto style. Impeccable work and headstock design. Sorry for the stresses...I know them. It sucks