Spalted maple grand auditorium

[Andy Bounsall]

Here’s the second of three guitars that I completed recently. Body is roughly grand auditorium sized, curly big leaf maple with spalting on the back. Top is engelmann spruce. Mahogany neck with ebony fretboard and bridge. Body binding is African Blackwood. Scale length is 25 1/4”. Guitar is fitted with Grover Rotomatic tuners and a JJB Prestige 330 surface mount pickup. I normally use Elixir phosphor bronze strings but decided to try D’Addario nickel bronze on this one. It sounds very nice to my ear. Big and open with good definition of each string. Enjoy the photos.

[Barry Daniels]

Nice work, Andy!

[Bryan Bear]

That looks really nice! I like the way you did all the appointments, they are subtle and let that nice maple do the talking.

[Darrel Friesen]

Beautiful guitar Andy. Did you stabilize the maple? CA?

[Andy Bounsall]

Thank you all for the kind words.

Darrel, the spalted areas on the back we’re pretty solid and not spongy. I bought the spalted back + side set quite a few years ago so it was well dried. I did use some epoxy in a couple of spots to strengthen and fill some tiny voids. The original sides also had some spalting but they ended up being impossible to bend without fracturing. I was lucky to find new sides that are a good match with the un spalted central section of the back.

[Andy Bounsall]

Here’s a short video if anyone’s interested to hear what this guitar sounds like. Please forgive my not quite mediocre playing skills. https://youtu.be/5bzQsJ7vJkU