First Guitar as done as it's going to be.

[Barry Daniels]

Try hand carving an arched back out of hard maple. Not quite so easy as the spruce top. After doing one, I switched to laminated back plates.

[Bob Ionta]

Yeah, hard maple lives up to its name for sure. Before I built that guitar I partially carved a hard maple back for a 17" Benedetto build. I screwed up so many other things on that guitar I finally gave up. I still have the rough-carved back hanging around somewhere. But I must be a masochist. I enjoy the carving. The guitar pictured above is 16" and has a cherry back. It was not as hard to carve as the maple but definitely more work than spruce. Incidentally, the back is not book matched. It's a quarter-sawn piece with grain straight enough that it's not immediately obvious it isn't book matched. (At least not to me.) I want to build more archtop guitars but find it awfully hard to locate nice wood at a reasonable cost. That cherry was excellent for a first archtop but I'd like to have something fancier for my next one.

[Schennelly Stoughton]

Very nice for a first guitar , congrats.

[Randy Roberts]

Sure doesn't look like a guitar #1 from here.
Really really nice work!

Love the sound of cedar and walnut, can't beat the warm earthy tone. My first use of red cedar was also a piece of siding, and your post brought back fond memories. Spent 4 hours of contortions on the second floor of the lumberyard hanging 12 foot pieces of siding over the railing comparing tap tones. A whole lot of strange looks throughout the day from the crew working in the yard, and when I finally asked them to cut off a 4 foot piece of one board to buy, they asked me what on earth I was doing with it. I just said I needed to patch a board on my toolshed and left it at that. The looks on their faces was priceless.

I would suggest putting a pickguard (clear?) on this guitar ASAP. You will be keeping this one forever I'd guess, and cedar is very soft. Sure don't want this to happen to you... I had just finished this one,(with the above cedar siding top) a first attempt at building one from scratch from a small picture in a book - 1840 Martin (kinda) Size 1. All excited to show it off to friends at the local guitar shop. Walked in, set it down in a stand in the showroom, went in the back to find them, and came back out to find a #!%* kid shredding away on it like a wildman. This is what 10 minutes of unsupervised cedar looks like.

[Alan Carruth]

I've been using the cycloid arches for some time; done right they seem to be very stable. I've seen too many archtops with the bridges cranked up to the limit because of the sinking top.

[Bob Orr]

Looks great, but clip those string ends! First one is always special.

[Bob Ionta]

by Alan Carruth » Sun Jul 23, 2023 2:42 pm

I've been using the cycloid arches for some time; done right they seem to be very stable. I've seen too many archtops with the bridges cranked up to the limit because of the sinking top.

Hi Alan. Yes! Curtate Cycloid arches are beautiful and work beautifully. I learned that from you and used them on your (as always) great advice. Maybe you remember, I also got the cherry from you for the back. Thank you again! I am on a mission to make a guitar that approaches the sound and beauty of the L5 archtop you made for Chris. I have not done it with this one but I'm still pretty pleased with the way it sounds. Hopefully the next one will be a little closer. --Bob