Official Luthiers Forum!

I am new to the site and new to building. I have decided to go with a Parlor guitar for my first build.
I am lucky enough to have a Luther with a few (acoustic, electric, resonator, and dobro) builds under his belt. Not to even mention he is a super nice guy and a pleasure to work and learn from.
I have decided to use a Adirondack Spruce top soundboard, Walnut sides and back, Mahogany neck with a Maple Finger Board, and Maple Bridge. I was also going to use Maple bindings and a stripe up the Walnut back as well. I know Maple is not used much on acoustic guitar finger boards but I thought it would be interesting to say the least. I am trying to get big full sound out of a Parlor Guitar.
I am going to try to keep all design work as simple as possible. So with that in mind I will have a simple rosette in walnut around the sound hole to keep it simple yet beautiful.

I was just thinking, with what little I do know, this combination of wood should give a nice large balanced sound. Any thoughts or ideas would be gratefully appreciated. All tips and input will be read and discussed. With this being my very first build I am overly excited and just want to end up with a nice simple, classy design, and a well rounded louder tone from the smaller peanut body shape of the Parlor Guitar. The amount of knowledge on these forums is staggering. I hope I can get some good input to my ideas. Thanks for taking the time to read this and put any thought at all into it.

Have a beautiful day,
Mike (AKA Siesta Key Kid)

Welcome to the forum! Good luck! I'm dire you will find tons of good info here.

Welcome, hers a few thoughts of mine. The maple fret board and bridge will get dirty and ugly pretty quick if they are not finished. Also, not sure what you are going for as far as big sound but you will be limited in what you get simply by the smaller box size of a parlor guitar.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Hey,

Welcome! I'm new also, just finished my 5th guitar. The previous two guys that gave you advice, Brian and Todd, and Larry from Bluescreek guitars, have always been spot on and very gracious to me with advice. Not meaning to leave anyone out, because there are others, but I know sometimes it is hard to figure out who to believe on forums. Good luck!

Sean

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change isn't synonymous with improvement
instagram.com/bucketguitars/

I'll echo what others have said - a parlor will have its own sound based on its size - I'm not sure what you mean by a "big full sound" but you should probably play some parlor sized guitars before you make your final decision. The term "parlor" is not all that well defined - some people think that 00 or even 000's are palors - the definintion in the last issue of American Lutherie was "a smallish body but with standard scale length and figherboard width and neck joined to the body at the 12th fret". Parlors also include both the ladder braced guitars of the turn of the century as well as X braced - most have just one tone bar.

Probably the most popular "parlor" plans are by Scott Antes - be cautious that his are drawn as though you were looking at an X-ray of the top (many others are drawn from the back as tho you were looking at the top as you build it). It is very easy to brace the guitar backwards (as a lefty) if you aren't careful (don't ask how I know). Here is a guitar built from those plans along with an OM (the 12 string) and a 000 (the sixer)



The parlor is a wonderful little guitar, but it certainly does not have the big full sound of the larger body sizes - I would call it more of a boxy bluesy sound with punchy mids and trebles, but not terribly strong in the bass. It is amazing loud for a little guitar - everyone says that the Antes plans are over braced and I scalloped this pretty deeply. Good luck with your project.

Good luck on the journey into Luthiery, it is good to have a mentor near you with more experience than you have. It should be an interesting guitar.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
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Regarding the maple fretboard, I used a rock maple fretboard when rebuilding an old Harmony/Silvertone once. The look is nice IMO - sort of like ivory from a distance. I soaked it with superthin CA for a finish. It's been about 10 years and and it still looks clean. So there's another option...

I've used maple too and shoot it with Nitro. Fender has been doing this for how long? I like the CA idea too, CA makes a good finish but just be real careful with it. I think to get a big sound out of a parlor you need to make the top scary thin and the bracing very light but It's probably best to just get a plan and stick to it.

Thank you everyone for your responses. I'm glad to see my tone wood and overall style choice was in the right area of a larger sound from a smaller guitar. Freeman, I like the pic and it looks like your Parlor turned out very nice. The sound you described is mostly what I'm looking for. I will have to look into how Fender finishes their Maple fingerboards and most likely try it that way if it is possible. I'm excited to get this project complete with little trouble. Good bracing to get the top thin and types of finish have been running through my head as of late. No sense in thinking too much about it now. Got a lot of work to do first. Thank you everyone and keep the advice and ideas coming I'm grateful for any information and tips I can get for you all.

This is gonna be a whole lot of fun!

I just wanted to point out how refreshing it is to read this, Sean.

Welcome to the addiction!!

You'll have loads of fun with this project, and all the previous advice is right on..

I assume you're builiding a steel string, based on your wood choices.

Two suggestions. I don't know what text or advice you're following, but the only way I would have been able to get through my first was to keep it a bit simple. To that note, Jon Kincead's book is direct, proscribes a "recipe" for the process which worked well for me, and has great pictures. Well worth the small investment.

Second, if you plan to inlay anything into that fretboard, and you don't have a wealth of inlay experience, I'd suggest you use an ebony fretboard instead of a maple one. Ebony is oh so forgiving when cleaning up fretboard inlay "oopsies". maple's the opposite. Balancing that thought is that you need to make whatever aesthetic choices in this first guitar that will keep you fired up about it. Getting it done is the goal.

My two cents. have fun!!

My two cents.

Sounds to me like you have a good plan. Make your guitar out of whatever you have. If the fretboard gets dirty from playing, so be it. Make what you want to your style. Have fun and be creative.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601