chad
Gooooood evening everybody.
My phtobucket doesn't seem to work, all pictures can be found on my gumtree ad I posted a day or so ago, if you don't want to try find it in gumtree, the link is in the "deals and specials" section, as listed on gumtree by my user name. My pad is not being friendly, so I shall try use a pc over the weekend and see if I can upload some photos in posts about it, until then you can check my YouTube channel too
This is my guitar I offer the world. It is designed with the highest end guitars design principles and philosophy. It's a blend of 3 people. Ervin Symogyi, Ken Parker Archtop's and my own concepts.
Ken Parker philosophy in that,
- my bridge is hollow. Minimizing material in the bridge to unnecessarily absorb vibration and in all honesty, dampen the overall outcome of the instrument.
- my fingerboard does not touch the soundboard, Ken makes Archtop so, the neck break angle is far more aggressive so, he can achieve his neck floating above the deck too, I made an acoustic so, I had to keep the neck angle reslistic to the heights of an acoustic saddle, so. My fretboard has a bevel underneath it, starting where the neck meets the body, and tapers more toward the end.
- keeping the strings aligned from tuning peg heads to the nut, is also an old belief in that, strings which continue without any unnecessary force, will have a more harmonious affect on the overall oscillation of the string, the belief is that when strings are forced off to either side, it creates an unnecessary tension within it. I'm not really one to argue so - it seemed important. And I noted it hahahaha
- lastly he carves his decks down to a thinner thickness, I do this too. But instead of carving them, I prepare my fabric stack in a specific layered design to achieve the same results. Let me clarify on the stack, the deck is not made in a mould, it's made on a flat preformer, which allows me to stack up specific carbon fiber fabrics, I then tag and bag the stack, leaving an inlet valve on one side, an outlet velve on the other, I apply total vacuum and infuse the highest quality epoxy resin through the entire stack. I then cure it at 50 degrees celcius. Once that is complete I remove the bag and boom. I have exactly what other luthiers would use as a blank to start marking off their soundboard. The only difference is there's is a timber sheet, mine is carbon fiber sheet, I still work it, brace it and bond it, The exact same way a timber guitar would be made by hand. I DO NOT use high volume production moulds in any of my processes. - that would defeat the purpose of a high performance instrument.
Going into Ervin Symogyi philosophy, sheesh I would have to recite his books "the responsive guitar" I'll try give my reasons why he is so important.
Carbon fiber guitars are strong enough to not need internal bracing. They won't buckle or break, they won't rip apart. So you don't neeeeed bracing. However, if you read mr Symogyi books, you will know why bracing is so critical, it has less to do with structural strength and more t do with the delivery of the movents of the bridge, across the entire deck,
Why this is so important, is because, essentially the guitar is an air pump, and so when your bridge delivers its diaphragmatic type of movement without a bracing system, it only acts as an initial point of impetus right in the zone of the bridge.
When bracing is added, that point of impetus becomes the whole sound board, and this is the difference in Symgoyi guitars, so much so he even "caps" his bracing to complete their structural strength once they've been notched for intersections. I'll leave it at that as far as bracing goes,
Next up is the fact that the guitar, is an instrument which uses TWO decks to generate sound,
Now a lot of people reference Mr. Torres paper back guitar as evidence for why a back in unimportant. However when you get to masters, they find the back so important that they have their soundboard bracing "tap tuned" in regulation with the back of their instruments. Now Symogyi recommended a simple test to witness this for yourself, put your guitar nice and snug on its back on your bed, and pluck 'dem strings listen to it, now lift it up and suspend the back untouched in the air, then pluck it. You will hear a difference. If thst is not enough evidence as to why a back is important I have no other special tricks to convince you haha you may disregard the test.
Next up is, the reason I've made is long drawn out description of the back, is because all carbon fiber guitars and violins and cellos I've come across so far, use the - moulded back and sides in one piece feature as a salient point, now, it is! And it's done because it makes production far easier, you can bang out many instruments that way. I know because I have 25 years of composite experience behind me and I know how to either make lots of things very fast, or very few Things in a very long period of time.
Haha you have two choices I chose the latter, I didn't really want to create a high production factory, I wanted to make excellent instruments for excellent people, after all..
A 50 thousand Rand Taylor guitar inspired me into wanting something amazing when all I had heard up until that point was a 3 thousand Rand instrument.
Look if there are crazy philanthropist types out there who would like to colab and set up a high production factory, contact me, and we can discuss it, and we can even design a speedster line of instruments, they'd probably need to be electrics, similar to Parker fly type of instruments, whereas what I'm offering now, personally from me is more of his Archtop built by him kind of thing.
But until then, I offer you my boutique acoustic.
The fretboard markers are gold, the trims are gold leaf, it's purely carbon fiber. The frets are Jescar Evo gold you can customize the choice of frets, narrow mediums, narrow narrows, jumbos, whatever you prefer. Let me know what radius you like on your nut and your saddle, and we'll make you a cone fret board accordingly, the string action is I'll be client stipulated, (I prefer s bit of s higher play some prefer low) so it's up to you, it will be your instrument,
First 5 orders off of guitar forum can have their names in gold leaf anywhere on the guitar (except the head stock and sound port) you can also choose your personal fave colours as far as where ever you see cream in the photos is concerned, (either supply me with the Pantone number or a sample of the colour and my paint man will match it) there's a lot custom stuff going on, so if you'd like to.... Come together ? we can totally do that over a coffee and chat about what you'd like, you may want to replace the gold fret markers with a precious stone - you can do that too, and the price won't change, unless of course you want something crazy like diamonds or rubies hahahahaha
Anyway let me know what else you'd like to know.
It's a fanned fret guitar, and I'd prefer to make you it fanned fret because the sound is just sooooo much better, the treble e string length is 24.75 inches and the bass e string length is 25.75 inches long this creates a far more harmonious instrument, compared t the standard 25.5 inch OM scale, (which the guitar is designed around specifications for size wise) the maximum scale length on the bass is 25.75 other wise you'll be losing the "sweet spot" I designed. But you an you go down to 24 on the treble if you'd prefer.
I personally recommend the 24.75 - 25.75 as the ultimate "compensation" as far as tone is concerned, playability is also much better, the frets take on the shape of your hand, a fan.. Rather than a parallel and I gaurantee you, you won't even notice while playing. However if you are hardcore and you would like a regular scale, 25.5 is the standard. And you may certainly have a regular frets.
Lastly. To make this guitar the most accessible neck as far as playability is concerned, I designed a cut out that allows the necks thickness to continue its slight taper all the way to the 17th fret so that I kept the 12th fret neck to body join which according to classical luthiers, is the root of all harmony, and seeing as though 14th fret neck joins only came about for "more accesibility"
There is no point in losing all that tone on a 14th when I got carbon fiber to take advantage of.
I have, in all honesty. Designed what I believe, people like Torres would have made if they could have got their hands on materials such carbon fiber. My guitars are entirely hand made the traditional way the only difference is, I use space age materials.
I am not trying to hate on timber guitars, no.. My dad is a pattern maker, I grew up smelling the wonders of freshly chiseled wood. I simply see the decline in high quality timber availability as very sad, soon there will be no more trade on quality timber, deforestation is a problem, the proof is in the pudding, many trees are now protected and banned from harvest. The world is on a slippery slope of complete forest protection, there will be no trees being cut down in the future, things like flax, hemp and other kinds of fibers will replace them in due course.
People will then begin looking for alternatives to timber for their instruments, and when that happens, carbon fiber will be a damn good candidate, in every single industry it enters, it makes whatever it is perform better.
Planes, were wood and terrifying, stealth jets are now composite.
Ships were wood, beautiful in the harbor but terrifying at sea during a storm.
Even prosthetics, Pirates had peg legs matching their ship. Now they have carbon running blades, matching their ferraris.
I don't want to replace or banish the timber guitar, I simply want to offer an alternative before there is a crisis. And in my option there has been no boutique level carbon fiber guitar.
My inspiration was Luis and Clarck carbon fiber cellos and violins. I wanted to make a guitar which matched their cellos.
I found their instruments absolutely incredible to look at and faaaaaar beyond the quality of what I was finding in the guitar department and set out to fill that gap.
Lots of love people. And if you managed to read through my story..
Thank you!
chad
Thanks so much for the feedback this is awesome!
I had some issues uploading pics, but I found a lot of people having issues with photo bucket so, I just finished making an imgur account in order to upload some pics.
Infact let me give it a bash right now,
https://i.imgur.com/alBiabh.jpg
In regard to rain song and emerald. I've taken note of the forum rules and not bad mouthing other brands, and so I don't want to specify what I personally find wrong with certain instruments, I think it's unprofessional and in all honesty those two companies do make lovely instruments,
So allow me to point out why I believe mine is different,
I removed the heel of the guitar, in order for a more functional neck access, because carbon is so wonderfully pliable compared to wood, you can compensate design for playability, so.
I have retained a 12th fret neck joint as far as bridge placement goes for maximum tone. But my cut out was designed to give the guitar 17 frets "clear" of any body interference.
I also believe Ervin Symogyi has extremely beneficial books to the guitar community on why the guitar replaced the lute, condensed he believes 1 of 3 main factors was that the guitar had a separate back which created a second vibrating diaphragm which adds to the overall instrument, as far as tone, projection, sound quality, and relationships of air moving within the chamber, when compared to single back and sides design of the lute.
I am not going to lie, I am a huuuuuge fan of Ervin Symogyi. So I may sound like I'm fan bombing him and I apologize hahahaha
Lastly, I'm so thrilled others know of these manufacturers and I'm curious what your opinion on Luis and Clark viola, violin, cello and upright basses is? In my opinion these are my favourite carbon fiber instruments on the market and quite honestly I wanted my guitar, to mirror the attention to detail in their instruments. I kind of made a secret pact with myself that, I'd love my guitars simulate their orchestral instruments.
I also quite like the leviora carbon guitar from Germany. I only recently came across the website and I was like wooooow hehe. Okay I won't lie, I have too many favourite instrument builders because I haven't even touched on Mark Maingards guitars or Ken Parkers Archtops ??
That link to acoustic guitar forum, is truly fantastic I'm definitely going to check it out. Thank you, for all the help!
Here's a link to YouTube, I'd say headphones would give you the best impression.
