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The obvious (traditional) choice of woods is Indian Rosewood for back & ribs, with Spruce soundboard, Spanish Cedar neck and Ebony fingerboard. In order to assess the possibilities available to modern guitar makers, I tried Santos Rosewood for backs & ribs, Cedar and Sitka Spruce for soundboards and Stripy Ebony and good quality Indian Rosewood for fingerboards. The choice of wood for the bridge usually matches the wood used for the back & ribs. The decorations used for purfling and binding has also strayed from tradition, in that cross banding has been used in some cases instead of the usual veneers for purfling and the use of contrasting wood for binding has been explored. I have also been somewhat adventurous in the design of Rosette, having made two original distinctive patterns, followed by a third pattern based on a design and manufacturing technique developed by Tony. The strutting styles made during the course were by Torres, Fleta, Santos Hernandez, Hernandez y Aguado, and the Lattice. All of these have distinctive sounds, some being similar whilst others are quite amazingly different. After having made the first Lattice (of a design by Roy, with Spruce soundboard) I was encouraged by Roy to make second Lattice with a Cedar soundboard, to assess the difference. The result is difficult to explain as there were so many differing opinions. Without doubt the Cedar soundboard had greater projection, whilst the Spruce had a brighter quality, but opinion was that both suffered from quick generation of overtones, and a possible lack of ability to produce colours in sound. In order to improve this last criticism, I developed and modified the Lattice strutting, making two more guitars with different soundboard woods, followed by another two with further development to the Lattice design.
All of the guitars made have been finished in the traditional manner of French Polishing using special pale shellac, and in order to achieve a professional standard, I undertook a French Polishing course run by the Midland School of French Polishing. I have now made a variety of instruments that
were not bounded by the traditional look, I can offer guitars
that either portray the traditional look, or can be more flamboyant
using some of the exotic woods that are now available. |
I enrolled
on the Newark Guitar Making course with some reservations, not
knowing quite what to expect. During the first three months,
the making of my first ‘Torres style’ guitar was comprehensively
guided and supervised by Roy and Tony. I decided then that I
would exploit the course to fullest extent and thus embarked
on a journey of discovery, making as many different styles and
using quite different choices of woods as possible.