by Chris Richards » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:21 pm
Well, this was quite a mission! I'd never seen one of these until a friend gave me a guitar book about a year ago, for a number of reasons I was fascinated with the guitar, probably mostly because of the mandolin style upper bout. I continued my research and found a website with some anatomy pictures and also some other websites that gave quite accurate dimension from which I managed to do a scale drawing.
I didn't want to and to be honest couldn't produce a replica but I was very interested in building a kind of modern version of the guitar with a slimmer neck fitted with a truss rod. It turned out to be a very involved project, I have made one archtop before but this was quite different, some weird top carving around the front of the body and other "not normal" things.
Anyhow it's a carved spruce top, carved maple back and sides, like I say I was very keen to turn out quite an accurate looking reproduction but with modern features, I realise that it probably wasn't going to produce what people would consider a good tone because of the round hole and non suspended neck, at the moment it has been stung for the first time and I'm pleasantly surprised, it plays great and to be honest the sound is good.
The finish is nitro cellulose and I had no intention of doing a perfect finish for two reasons a) it would have taken too long and I have many paying jobs to get on with and b) I wanted it to look like it had a bit of age. The label inside clearly states that it is built by me as a homage to the original Gibson and I really don't think anyone would be fooled that it is the genuine thing.
I have a ton of build pictures if anyone is interested.
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