Official Luthiers Forum!

Thanks everyone for the gracious compliments.

Wood specs: Engelmann spruce soundboard and top braces, EIR back and sides, Spanish cedar neck, rosewood bindings with maple and maple/black purflings, pre-slotted 650mm ebony fingerboard, EIR bridge. Guitar is French polished.

Build timeline: I started researching the possibility of building a guitar on my own in January 2010. I read several books by the end of April including: Courtnall, Doubtfire, Middleton, Cumpiano, Bogdanovich, and later Sloane. I decided that I would give it a go and ordered a serviced kit from LMI in April. I started building the solera and other jigs and fixtures in June. I began work on the actual guitar in late August and put strings on it 4 months later on Christmas Eve.

I think my biggest anxiety during the build was that I wasn’t sure that I would end up with a playable guitar considering all the various elements that affect playability. Up until the end I wasn’t really sure if I had selected a workable geometry of neck angle and doming, or put in the correct amount of fingerboard relief, or if the action would change significantly when the neck and soundboard were under the pull of the strings, or if the guitar would even play in tune. As it turned out I needed almost no fingerboard taper to get the proper action. And I was relieved when the action didn’t change measurably after putting strings on, and when all the notes on the fingerboard played in tune, and without any buzzing.

As far as tone, I like it… trebles seem a bit closed but overall it sounds pretty good to my ears. And it plays like a dream. As for sound clips – I did record a few minutes initially to get a baseline of the sound when I first put strings on but then noticed that one of the bone strips on the tieblock had pulled loose. It has since been fixed (thanks to lots of helpful advice I got here).
Here are a couple more pics I tried to include with the original set but they wouldn’t go through.




Again, thank you all for the support and encouragement.

Joe