Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Smart People!

I am 2/3 of the way through my three week session in Fort Severn Ontario working on leading a canoe building/restoration shop in a remote community. Yesterday I was talking to a fellow who is working as a mental health worker/councilor and he was talking about one of the projects that he has underway of teaching guitar. He has a couple of guitars here, but there is a real lack of anything that students can take home to practice on in between lessons.

Buying guitars is expensive and they are at significant risk of getting damaged or stolen by others who just want to create mayhem.

I've just started thinking about what sort of simple guitar could be built for this purpose and then thought that consulting the collective might prove to be a benefit.

Our resources include a good size work space with bandsaw, thickness planer, and various hand tools. We have white cedar, ash, and white oak available for materials, as well as some plywood and construction spruce.

Using select materials is out of the question as its not available. Constructing something is easy enough, but the question becomes easy and affordable frets and tuning machines.

Thanks in advance.

Doug

_________________
Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Dear Douglas,

First, my suggestion would be to contact a Luthier in your area. He or she may have some good pointers for you, especially about getting materials like fret bars, saddles, and nuts, etc. Technically, a guitar neck does not require fret bars to be played - scribe marks dividing up the fret spaces will work. A major reason for fret bars is that they have more permanence and so make the spaces easier to see when playing. But another important reason for fret bars is that they allow a luthier or amateur to set up their action much easier by measuring the space (gap) between certain fret bars and certain strings. Also the straightness of the neck is easy to check. But without fret bars you would need to use different dimensions for various gaps as well. I once had a neck with a high spot at one fret bar location causing it to buzz on top of the fret bar - so I simply removed the fret bar and no more buzz. Some parts on the guitar, like the rosetta for example, are for asthetics (pleasing to the eye and/or are traditional). So too, the fret bars are for looks more than making your guitar playable or adding to its sound. For example, some guitar tops, which can be expensive, will add to the beauty of a wood instrument and helps the performer feel better when on stage, but does not always improve the type of sound desired.
Second, Doug, you probably should decide on whether or not to build a classical or steel string guitar. Steel String guitars will need a steel truss rod to maintain the neck's straightness against the tension of the steel strings, where as classical guitar necks can be used without a truss rod because nylon strings produce less neck tension, especially if keeping cost down and the instrument is to solely used for a practice or intoductory instrument.

An excellent teaching/practice guitar is available on E-bay for under $50. It includes a stand and dust cover (rain cover) if it starts to rain in an outdoor environment. The model is called a "Crescent" and even has a cutaway body.
It is also a concert size so smaller persons will enjoy the feel of the guitar. Believe it or not it an amazing instrument for such a low price.

I would suggest purchasing sets of replacement strings in bulk to save money and keep the instruments sounding nice. SIT, Martins, or D'Addario strings would be nice. You will need some medium pics and some electronic tuners as well so the instruments can be quickly tuned. Later, the saddle and nuts can be replaced with harder ones, i.e. bone or the newer plastic resins are even harder than bone.

Thirdly Doug, if theft is a concern, then you can permanently mark the back of the guitars to identify them as belonging to the name of your organizatio, i.e. this guitar is the property of...., if you see this instrument....please contact....etc. That should deter most persons from being tempted.

I hope that helps - just some quick brainstorming ideas I shared with you. Good luck.

Tim

Pardon me for offering an opinion when I only build electric guitars. It seems to me that the value of your work that would go into building a playable acoustic guitar would VASTLY outweigh the amount of money that it would take to purchase a decent trainer guitar...by several orders of magnitude....and this assumes your first instrument is usable for your purposes.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Put out a request for people to donate unused but playable guitars for a good cause. You may get more than you can use, also sometimes music stores will donate.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Put out a request for people to donate unused but playable guitars for a good cause. You may get more than you can use, also sometimes music stores will donate.

Fred

_________________
Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Douglass, is this near your shop? Are you going to be able to oversee the operation, or are you just going to get them started? You'll be able to get playable instruments with the materials available, but someone without your experience may not fair so well.

Is there any budget at all? A pound of fretwire will give you many guitars for not much money, better stil split a pound with a local luthier. You can get passable sealed tuners for about $8 a set on eBay, perhaps several sets would be cheaper still.


Selecting and splitting out brace wood from construction spruce should be no trouble for you.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Thanks, everyone for taking the time to respond.

I found it quite amusing, but obvious when you look at it in certain ways, that some responses were clearly aware of my capacity and others were not. No worries, I won't take it the wrong way.

This idea just came up yesterday and I started exploring it. There is no budget, so I was just looking at something really simple that could be put together in the shop just for the students to practice their fingering. I know about the cheap guitars, but its still too expensive for the present circumstances.

Theft and destruction is more than a minor concern, and putting a name on the back is not a deterrent.

By the way, contacting a luthier in this "area"...well that would be me. There is nobody else at all for hundreds of kilometers. The closest other community is about 40 minutes by plane, and it has to be by plane because there are no roads until the winter roads are built over the frozen lakes and rivers, and going by canoe would take just too long. Fort Severn is very remote.

_________________
Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

If you have some 2x4's you can make neck thru designs - like a silent guitar - with tuning pegs like a flamenco. The frets can be made like lute gut frets with old strings - if sound is not a consideration - painting frets on would also work and make it like a fretless bass.

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It's this new idea from recent decades that everyone gets a participation award. - MUX

Thinking along the lines of a cigar box guitar. You could even make the box out of cheap plywood if necessary, just about anything. I guess the point being the neck though design already mentioned, so the only skill and cost would be to make the neck. End up with basically a neck with a crude box on the end.

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

how about that martin backpacker/padma type of construction?
dont really know what its called

"Wishbone" if I recall correctly.

That reminds me of another possibility. I saw a weird cheap little instrument once, forget what the guy actually called it. I think of it as a strum stick. That particular one only had one string, but no reason you couldn't have 6. It was made out of a 2X4, very simple. The "body" was simply a V shape cut into the end with thin plywood covering the top, back, and end. Add a sound hole and you're good to go. Nothing fancy, but just might work for practicing chords, etc.

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

I've looked at the strumstick a few years ago, its much more of a dulcimer type of thing.

I've been thinking of a kind of backpacker, maybe with only the first 5 frets. That would be easy to make here. Only 5 frets would be cheap and quick and all that beginners would need. I need to think of something for tuning machines. I'm sure that something inexpensive could be found.

_________________
Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

Yea, the strumstick comes from the dulcimer tradition. But no reason you could not use chromatic frets, and six strings. I was also thinking about the early dulcimers, such as a Tennessee Music Box. Basically a crude Scheitholt (sp), nothing more than a box with some strings stretched across it. Now I know that is not what you want, but think of some of the features. For one thing, they used staples for frets. Yea, might be hard to get staples wide enough for 6 strings, but good food for thought. I also saw a farmer made mandolin once with frets made of simple wire epoxied into slots.

As for tuners, you can definately get by going low tech. Think finish nails and wood screws. Put a small finish nail in the tail end to hook the ball end of the string, then wrap the wire around a wood screw on the headstock. So you have to tune it with a screwdriver, will that really matter if the goal is lowest possible cost and likely disposable? Or maybe you could find wood screws with wing nut type heads, or possibly make your own. As long as you can turn it and it holds position, you don't really need geared tuners. Friction pegs do work, and in their simplest form are nothing more than tapered wood pegs in tapered holes.

Just some ideas, hope it helps.

_________________
Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

I've seen an easily made geared tuner on some folk instruments. I don't have a picture, so I'll try to describe it. Each tuner consists of an L-shaped bolt (5 mm or 10-32 should work well, but you could probably go a little bigger if you had to.) The bolt sits in a channel in the head just big enough for the bolt to slide in. The L keeps the bolt from rotating. The short leg has a hole drilled in it so the string can be tied there. At the other end, the channel is capped. The threaded portion of the bolt sticks out the end of the head, and has a wing nut on it. Make the head fan shaped so there's room to get your fingers on all the wing nuts. The string ends up just getting pulled, not wound up, but you have a pretty good ratio if the threads are fine pitch.

Heavy monofilament fishing line is used for unwound strings in many parts of the world. Wound strings are harder to come by. Maybe Nashville tuning? (At least until the students stop breaking the strings every time they try to tune up.

Baling wire in place of fret gut? A little painful if you like to do thumb-wrap chords, but it might work for classical.

Okay, here's a picture of a similar mechanism on the head of Jesse Fuller's "Fotdella":