The Guitar Designer's Workshop

Weighing In on the Subject

Now that the major components of the Crow guitar have been glued up, I continue to work on the Sakura project. The drawings for the metal plates and the guitar itself have progressed to the point where I can start to cut the material. 

The body will be a single florentine cutaway made from a single slab of Honduras mahogany. My mental vision of this instrument dictates a somewhat heavier weight than what is "popular" right now. I'm a big fan of lightweight guitars, but I've heard dozens of beefy guitars, and there's just something about them that I like as well. In order to tailor the Sakura (or any of my guitars for that matter) I cut the body material into a standardized block to determine its relative weight.

Here I'm weighing a group of likely candidates in order to pick one that will achieve the weight and sound I'm looking for. That's my trusty Pelouze scale that's been with me since high school! I worked at the Pelouze factory in Evanston, Illinois when I was in my teens and this was a "factory second" that was given to me by my supervisor. For you Hamer guitar history fans, this was also the scale that was used in Hamer's shipping department right up through Arlington Heights. If you own a USA made Hamer guitar made before 1997, it's probably been on this scale. Luckily, I saved it from the dumpster after it was deemed "outdated" and with a little internal tinkering I made it work again. I guess that job at Pelouze has paid off more than once.

Now that I've got the sketches done, it's time to lay things out in actual size. I like to use the real components to visualize the ergonomic and esthetic relationships of the final design. I've always done it this way—here's a photo of me in the old Arlington shop designing Paul Stanley's double neck the exact same way.

 About ten years ago I learned AutoCad, and find it useful in a production environment; but I would still draw everything by hand first to see things in real space. In this case, I won't need to create tool paths for CNC routers so the drawing and a few paper templates will be as far as I take it. 

A Crow Reminder

Monday morning, and we're back in the shop ready to take on a slew of new stuff. Over the weekend I was reminded of The Crow guitar when I saw Jim Carroll's last novel, The Petting Zoo. I like to read on the airplane, and a friend offered me the book for the trip home. Right there on the cover was a big black crow.

Carroll is best known for his autobiographical book, The Basketball Diaries, which of course was later made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. More than just a celebrated junkie; Carroll's work in poetry, prose and music spanned over forty years of ups and downs, from New York's lower East Side to San Francisco.

As a singer and songwriter, Carroll burst onto the world stage with his 1980 release Catholic Boy, and its single People Who Died. That song has been covered by quite a few artists, including the Drive-By Truckers. Carroll himself died at age sixty from a heart attack—reportedly while working at his writing desk  in New York, in 2009. Such a loss.

Seeing the book made me think of when I'd played with Carroll on Back to the Streets, a tribute a tribute to Don Covay, many years ago. It was a cover of  "Long Tall Shorty" and it's not what you'd expect from Jim Carroll. He was a fan of Covay's work, and I think it's a good track from a very interesting guy. The rhythm guitar is a Strat into a Vox AC 30 and for lead I used a Chaparral straight into a 50 watt Marshall, you can listen to it here. (Don't forget to pause the Jukebox player in the right hand column first).

I'm going to put on some Jim Carroll music, and get back to work.

Snowy Sakura Guitar Morning

Sweaty and breathing a little hard, I stamped the snow off my boots and leaned the shovel against the barnboard of the workshop. It was a beautiful Winter morning, so I paused for a moment to drink it all in and fill my lungs with the crisp fresh air. 

The sun was breaking coldly through the trees just above the horizon—making the icicles glow with a pinkish light. Turning inside, I was greeted by the Bakersfield boys streaming from the sound system. Don Rich's sweet twang had segued into AC/DC by the time I had my coat off.

Yesterday, the interior carves were finished on The Crow guitar. I'd gotten the spruce top and maple back glued up  and it was still in the vacuum press. As tempted as I was to take it out—I resisted. The Sakura guitar had been the subject of my dreams and I wanted to put some ideas down on paper before they slipped away. I got some books on Japanese art out of my library for reference. The basic idea fell right into place.

Here's a quick look at what I'm thinking. In my dream, the guitar was heavy like a '60s Les Paul, with that banging midrange that sounds so wonderful through a Marshall stack. I'd dropped the idea of an elaborate body inlay, and wanted to concentrate on the engraved front and back plates. The first step was to consolidate my overall design in a series of sketches in the journal that will accompany the guitar through its construction. I like to think of this as building the soul of the guitar.

As requested, here are some closer views of the journal.

This is my sketch of the cherry blossoms, which will be engraved on the metal plates. Check back in a few days to see more progress.

Tossing the Bass into the Chipper

It's early, and Pete Townshend's "Give Blood" is reverberating through the shop. No one is working, but not because of laziness. Every time I hear this song it just stops me in my tracks because Pino Paladino's bass playing is beyond sublime. Most people probably think they are hearing a synthesizer workout—but they're not. Palidino used a low octave effect on his bass. The whole song is one magnificent bass solo—listen to that hand vibrato on his fretless! Good God, it makes me want to throw my bass in the chipper and become a hermit. Oh wait, I already did that.

Years ago I worked with Paladino, designing a fretless bass, and he was a complete gentleman to work with. He showed me the MXR harmonizer that he used to get his sound—he didn't think it was a big deal. Of course, when I played through his rig it certainly wasn't.

So, turn up your computer and behold the genius that is Pino Paladino. And now we return to work—striving to be as good at our craft as Paladino is at his..

 

For those of you who can look past the JM Content there is this: