The Guitar Designer's Workshop

Guitar Parts Gathering

 
As much fun as it is to scavenge for vintage parts, there comes a time when everything must be pressed into service. With the impending completion of The Crow, it’s time to gather things together and get ready for assembly.

This is one of the Jensen-made, oil-filled tone capacitors that I’ll be using. I sourced it from my friend Steve at Angela Instruments, and it’s matched perfectly to the single coil Charlie Christian pickups. The idea is to cut some of the highs but not completely kill the wonderful midrange that the pickups produce. I had the reclusive pickup guru John Grail examine the pickups and pots to help me with my decision. John has been restoring vintage pickups for the big boys since the 1960s and he really knows his stuff. True to form, he refused to be photographed.

Here’s the quartet of NOS potentiometers, the caps and the Western Electric wire I’ll be sewing into The Crow. I’ve got a few hundred of the last USA made CTS pots and John and I went through them all to find the matched set for this build.

I made a down and dirty wiring fixture from a scrap of maple that puts all the components in place while I solder everything together. Wiring this guitar  really is like building a ship in a bottle—The Crow has no opening on the back. Everything has to go through the small door in the bridge pickup route.

Everything is noted in the journal. I’ve attached some pieces of the wire and pickup insulation tape to the journal page. One of the pots was so far from tolerance that I decided to take it apart to study. When I was done with it, I glued it into the journal.

Of course, during any build like this things will change. In the journal, I’ll just cross out the old entry and make a new note with my thoughts on why the change was made.

Next up, the hardware.

 

Bound and Glorious

Now that The Crow is ready to receive its frosted Duco finish it’s time to prep the tortoise shell binding that surrounds the entire guitar. There will be no clear coats over the black finish, so I have to polish the binding and then mask it off. It’s a risky and time-consuming move, but it is the only way this will work.

The binding I’m using is made of a cellulose material made in Italy in three hundred pound blocks. It is then shaved into sheets of varying thicknesses, and I cut it into strips to suit my needs.

On the Crow, the binding is a multi-laminate built up from the faux tortoise, ivoroid and black strips. Each layer is individually heated and bent to the shape of the instrument and then glued in place. In the places where a sharp corner is reached, the binding is mitered and fit to the next piece. If you look closely you can see the corner joints that are meticulously matched.  I like the way this looks as opposed to the high-production practice of using a molded piece with no personality.

 

 The entire guitar has been shot with clear nitro, and sanded flat by hand with 600p sandpaper. It is ready to get the color coat of Duco-relica paint that I’ve mixed up, but first I have to hand polish the lacquer over the binding on the front, back, neck and headstock of the guitar. There will be no chance to buff the binding to a gloss after the Duco is appled, so it has to be done now. The polishing has to be confined to just the binding area because the color coat needs the grip for adhesion.

 

The first step is to selectively sand the lacquer over the binding using progressively finer grits of sandpaper. Then using a soft felt pad, I cautiously hand-rub the nitro clear coats using three different polishing compounds until the binding is as glossy as I want.

 

Here you can see the compound applied to the binding areas. After all the binding is polished I went  back and cleaned any residue and then prepped the entire guitar for color. The whole process took about sixteen hours.

Now the newly buffed binding will have to be masked off before spraying—back to work I go.

Testing Frosted Duco Lacquer

It is amazing how followers this blog, and The Crow Guitar build have been very supportive and encouraging. And now the time for color coats has arrived. The back will remain clear to show the flame, but now the rest of the guitar can be painted.

Months ago when I embarked upon The Crow’s journey, I had a vision of it as a living, breathing creation. As the Workshop filled with crow and Kerouac prompts, The Crow guitar became more and more alive in my mind.

Even when working on other projects, The Crow was never far from my thoughts, and its presence hovered over the shop. Friends mentioned that they were noticing crows. People sent me crow photographs and stories. A stuffed crow arrived by FedEx. 

 
I was concerned about the finish. The guitar’s construction was enough to make The Crow a singular instrument, but how was I going to finish the guitar in a way that reflected the theme completely? I knew it had to be black, but it needed something epic to convey the message visually.

One morning I spied a pair of crows in a tree above the shop—I shot a few photos and went inside. When I put the photos up on my computer screen I noticed how the light reflects off the feathers. The birds are black, and they are shiny, but it’s not an even reflection. This played right into my new obsession with lower-gloss nitro finishes. I had an idea, but it wouldn't be easy.

The Vintage Solution

From 1928 to 1941 the National company made resonator guitars from German silver (actually an alloy of nickel, zink and steel) as well as  brass and steel. Some of them were nickel plated—others were painted to imitate wood like this rare Tricone.

Others were coated with what is now referred to as the “frosted” Duco finish. This paint got its name because it dried to a texture that resembled frost on a windowpane. It was available for a short time in a few colors including a greenish gold and a clear.

The original Duco paint was made with tar camphor—the stuff mothballs are made of. It fell out of favor and was discontinued and is considered a lost process by many. I thought that if The Crow could be done in a black version of this finish it would be the perfect thing. I don't think there ever was a vintage National in Duco black, but I was convinced that it could be done. The nitro-based finish would have to made from scratch using the original recipe in order to get results.

  

Starting with a 99% pure naphthalene compound, I added the black nitro and satin flattener until I got a solution that gave me the results I was looking for. It took about three weeks of testing to get a solution that would go through the gun yet still “frost” when it dried. I found that the paint is very sensitive to temperature and the thickness of the coat. It stinks to high heaven too.

There was no way of telling exactly how it would turn out, so I shot a ton of test pieces to get a handle on how to control it as much as possible. Once I had what I wanted, I sprayed a small sample on one page of the journal I'm keeping for the guitar. 

The trick with this paint is that it can’t be topcoated with clear. Any application of finish over the Duco melts the pattern and it disappears. Once you’ve shot it—that’s it. This presents an interesting problem on how to deal with the binding. After some contemplation, I devised a plan. You'll have to check back here to see it.

Rainy Day and the Crow Journal

 The early morning is a great time to walk in the woods and clear your thoughts. Each day I carve out some time to just be outside and enjoy the quiet. Today it was raining lightly and a fog was hanging in the trees, making it look even more amazing. I’ve been stacking stones for some time now—it’s a calming practice that frees up my concentration like a reset button. The piles in this photo are just outside the shop door, but they're all over the property.

Inside, the humidity was better as the climate system struggled to maintain a solid thirty-five percent—the mandated level for optimum building. After a strong espresso, I set about making some entries into the journal that accompanies The Crow. 

My wife Carla is an artist who makes hand-bound books, so I asked her to construct the journals for my guitars. We share studio space, so it just seemed natural that our projects would overlap. Her beautiful photos and collage images are often seen on this blog as well. Here is her cover painting.

Hand-bound spine of the journal.

Archival paper is hand-stitched together to make a one-of-a-kind original that is the companion piece to each instrument I build.

This is the entry about the wiring. The story of the Western Electric wire and NOS pots from 1996 along with actual samples of the parts are all in the journal. The book tells the story—starts and stops included. When ideas are born or rejected they are written in there. I let it all spill out and the new owner of the guitar gets the whole thing.

Building the Soul: Vintage Parts

Following in the footsteps of my last post, I've unearthed more vintage electronic parts from my stash. Both the Sakura and Hell's Half Acre call for the use of three-way blade switches for pickup selection.

This is one of several early 1950s vintage “blade” switches on my bench right now. Technically this type of device is referred to as a model 1454 rotary switch. In this case the rotation, or throw, is 30º. It was used for military and communications equipment because of its reliability—being rated for a minimum of twenty-five thousand cycles. 

In this photo you can see the two patent numbers stamped into the frame. Switches made after 1953 had three patent numbers. You can also appreciate the coarse grain of the brown phenolic which was a trademark look of the older materials. Its simple mechanical construction allows me to refurbish it to a perfect working order without losing its beautiful and rich patina of age.

Salvaged from more telephone switching equipment, my piece was manufactured between 1950 and 1953 by Centralab in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much like the Western Electric plant, rows of operators toiled at punches, riveting the pieces of metal and phenolic together. In the 1980s around the same time that Western Electric was shutting down, the switch division of Centralab was sold off  and shuttered. The buyer, Electroswitch was then acquired by ITT. The modern version of the trusty old 1454, known as E2G0203N is still made in Juarez, Mexico.

Does using vintage wire and switchgear make a guitar sound or play better? If this is what you're asking, you're missing the point. You can cover your wall with a twenty-dollar poster from Target if all you want is something to look at. If you are hoping for a deeper experience from the material things in your life, it has to come from a deeper place. 

More Vintage Americana: Salvaged Electronics

The Western Electric Company was America’s largest producer of electrical gear from 1870 until the 1980s. Known for their Bell Telephones and associated switchgear, they also manufactured amplifiers, speakers, microphones and wire. By 1917 their Hawthorne Works plant in Chicago was one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the world. Although the plant is now gone, what remains is a legacy of American manufacturing might, and a massive research project known as the Hawthorne Studies.

 
The Hawthorne Studies were something I’d read about in high school. It was fascinating, and I struggled to use it as a guide when I became a factory department-manager at age nineteen. This research named for studies done at the behemoth Western Electric Hawthorne Works factory in Chicago was the world’s most comprehensive employee behavioral observation when conducted between 1924 and 1932. The Hawthorne Works sprawled over one hundred acres, employed over forty thousand Americans and generated a staggering $300,000,000.00 per year. This is equivalent to about $3.7 billion in today’s money.

With vast amounts of capital to spend and even more to make through creating efficiencies, the Western Electric Company embarked upon an odyssey to use their employees as lab rats to determine how to make them work faster and better. The research covered all aspects of worker life too. The effects of smoking, alcohol and diet were put under the microscope in an exhaustive attempt to fine-tune Western Electric’s massive operation.

In the workplace, researchers noticed a curious thing while conducting observations. If they increased lighting levels, productivity increased. When they lowered the lighting, productivity increased as well. By the time I read the studies in 1968 it was common knowledge that when workers know they are being studied, they tend to buckle down and try to look good for the bosses. My take-away from all of this was that people just want to be recognized for their contributions. It’s not about manipulating or threatening people, it’s about appreciation.

When W.E. closed down, the assets were scattered to the winds. As part of the Federal Communications Commission’s break-up of AT&T, Western Electric was absorbed by a new entity, AT&T Technologies, in 1984. An American manufacturer was crushed.

 
As luck would have it, I managed to collect a stash of Western Electric parts manufactured in the Hawthorne facility. I’ve always been a fan of tube amplification and mechanical switching mechanisms like the ones produced at Hawthorne, and a lot of this stuff was rescued from telephone switching stations when they went digital.

Here is some vintage cloth-covered Western Electric wire that I plan to use in The Crow, Sakura and Hell’s Half-Acre. It looks great, and is made to an insanely high quality compared to the imported junk available today. Think about the incalculable amount of  energy and human conversation that has traveled through this wire. Routine or romantic calls, cries for help or joyous good news—this wire has heard it all. With its installation in a guitar, the work of the fine Western Electric employees can be appreciated again.

Old Wood for the New Hell's Half Acre

Yesterday was a good day in The Workshop. The Sakura’s finish got sanded and sprayed with new coats of nitro. I selected a nice medium weight mahogany blank for Hell’s Half Acre and began mapping out the body. Because I make guitars one at a time, I can afford the luxury of finding and using really exquisite boards—many of which have been sitting for decades.

This guitar will be a single cutaway solid body with a pair of humbucking pickups. The main section of the body will be a single slab of Honduras mahogany, with a figured maple top and back. The 8/4 billet above weighed in at fourteen pounds, but it’s going to lose well over half of that in machining.

This is what the blank looks like after a few passes through the planer. A nice clean piece, ready to get a top and back. It’s almost a shame to cover up that beautiful grain, but we'll know it’s in there, won’t we?

 

Crow Guitar Paint Prep: Does this sandpaper make my guitar look flat?

In preparation for the color coats, The Crow's base coats of nitro clear must be sanded. This is what I call leveling, because the object of the exercise is to provide a flat foundation for all that comes after. 

This is extra important on this build because I'm using an unusual color coat which won't support being top-coated with clear. To give The Crow a singular appearance, I'm replicating the 1930s frosted Duco finish. A lot of mystery surrounds this finish, and it isn't available any longer so it must be mixed up from scratch. Also, I'm doing it in black to mimic the appearance of crow feathers. I'm confident that it can be done, but for now it's time to prep.

The Crow: Charlie Christian Pickups

I'd been playing guitar for about six years when I first heard Charlie Christian. Of course, everything changed that day in 1970. It was no secret that many of my influences had been influenced by those who had come before them, but it was usually a reference to a 1950s player. My teacher, Mike Bloomfield, implored that I study Muddy. Jeff Beck went on about Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore, and Keith Richards wasn't bashful about citing Chuck Berry. Peter Green and Clapton went on and on about B.B. King, Otis Rush and Buddy Guy. As a well-read (I thought) and curious musician, I assumed that Django and Les Paul had invented shred. Of course, hearing Charlie Christian banging out amazing single-note electric runs in 1939 set me straight. Above all, his mysteriously raw tone floored me.

 

I hadn't even realized that there were electric guitars before World War II. It made sense—big jazz bands were loud. If you've ever heard an orchestra the size of Benny Goodman's you know what I mean. Guitarists were tired of playing "strictly rhythm" and wanted to break out sax-style solos. The crude but effective technology of the day allowed guitarists to plug in, finally giving them a fighting chance. Christian was not the earliest of the adopters, but his amazing chops and visibility with Goodman's band made him the best known. Although not created for him, his guitar's pickup became associated with the man, and became known as the “Charlie Christian” pickup.

The original object of a pickup was to reproduce the sound of a guitar as accurately as possible. Electric blues, jazz and rock and roll changed all that. Players pushed their equipment to the breaking point in search of an expressive voice. To keep pace, builders rolled out new improvements. Time marched on, all but forgetting the crude, rude and singularly raw single coil that Christian first employed. 

But I never forgot. The hauntingly rough-edged tone of Christian's big single coil pickups were never far from my mind. I'd had a few over the years—usually mounted on a big-box jazz machine unfit for cranked up rock or roots music. A few pickup makers offered P-90s with a Christian-style plate on top, but I wanted the real thing. Not available. That is, until I asked my friend Seymour Duncan if he could replicate them. To my delight, he'd just finished doing exactly that. That first set went into a semi-solid guitar a few years ago, and the results were astounding. When I started thinking about The Crow guitar, I knew that I wanted those pickups in it.

 

Built to the original specifications, the CC has a fiberboard bobbin wound with unusually heavy (38 gauge) copper wire with an enamel insulation coat. The Alnico magnets are sand-cast and oriented with their north pole firing upward through a period-correct steel blade polepiece. Seymour hand-bound the top plate to match the originals as well. To add an interesting texture, I internally reversed the polarity of one pickup to create an out-of-phase middle position. Here are my notes and instructions in The Crow's journal.

  

The problem with the CC is that it was designed to be mounted from behind. The original setup involved a huge and heavy cantilever mounting bracket that hung the pickup from inside a hollow jazz guitar.

 
To solve this problem without altering the pickup, I devised a trestle that would allow the unit to be mounted and adjusted from the rear of the guitar. I had a friend make me some in his machine shop. Elliptical slots allow the pickup to be adjusted transversely for string alignment.

Once mounted inside the guitar, the pickups can be raised and lowered via a pair of hex screws counterbored into the back. This also eliminates having to use mounting hardware or bezels on the face of The Crow, which keeps the look pure. Also, because the pickup is mounted to the back, none of the pickup's weight is on the top, leaving it free to vibrate. The Crow is going to be a visually impressive guitar, and the CC pickups will give it an equally stunning voice.