Australian/New Zealand Luthiers Forum

This is number five, made for a young man from church. He paid for the wood, I got to build a guitar, everyone wins .

The specs:
Soundboard: Bearclaw sitka
Back/Sides: EIR
Neck: Port Orford cedar, oak center lam
Fretboard: Madagascar Rosewood
Binding: Bloodwood
tuners: Gotoh 510s
Pickups: K&K minis.

As always, more mistakes along the way than I can count. Had no end of headaches doing the cutaway. Fortunately, none of the mistakes were fatal. In fact, overall this one went much smoother than the last 000 I made.

--Paul

Looks great Paul
Im just about to post my second build which I have strung up today(first was 18 years ago)
The cutaway looks great ,I may have to get some tips but not sure my skills are quite there yet I have enough troubles with simpler things
Im sure the new owner will be pleased
How does it sound?
Dave

Looks great Paul. I also am yet to do a cutaway but I know I have to face that hurdle soon. How do you find the K&K minis? I have been installing LR Baggs so far but would like to get opinions on others.

Cheers, Martin

Hi folks,

It sounds good -- not as good as I'd like, but OK. The mids and trebles are very good, bright with a lot of overtones. But the bass is not as strong as I'd like. I suspect I didn't get the soundboard thinned enough. I'll spend more time on the tap tone on the next build .

The K&Ks are great. I've put them on four of the five guitars I've done, and through a decent amp they sound like the guitar, only louder. Through a cheap amp, they tend to sound like a cheap amp, of course . In my opinion, of which I have too many, they are the best bang for the pickup buck.

There are some drawbacks, but nothing you can't overcome if you are willing to experiment a bit. For instance, using LMII's OM plan, the x-braces cross too close to the saddle, and you can't get the pickups where the instructions want them. On my first OM, I ended up accidentally gluing one of the pickups to the x-brace instead of the bridge plate. It still worked, although I had to push the treble on the pre-amp quite a bit to get it balanced.

On this guitar, I shifted the x-brace towards the neck, and still ran out of space. I ended up putting the pickups behind the pins instead of under the saddle. The change didn't seem to affect the sound at all, they still worked as advertised.

--Paul