Picture 1:
The giant plywood 12 string that started it all off in 1963. It still works and has a big jangly sound. The sound knobs are dummies added later for a magic trick which I did with the guitar. |
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Picture 2:
The second guitar, from 1964, as later fitted with a spruce top. A rather square version of the "dreadnought" shape. Bright sound but a bit quiet because the body was quite stiff. |
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Picture 3:
I made this more curvy acoustic guitar in 1988 at Tonbridge, at an instrument making course run by Ken Baddeley. |
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Picture 4 and 5:
A harp made in 1990 when I was still going to the Tonbridge workshop. It sounds sweet - I only wish I could play it properly. |
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Picture 6 and 7:
My first solid electric, made in 1992 using the mahogany from a discarded secondary window frame. With car spray paints and really cheap pickups it has a gutsy sound. Much used by my son Sam as a teenager. |
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Picture 8:
Guitars became almost an annual thing for a few years. This 12-string semi acoustic was from 1993. It has quite a sumptuous sound. |
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Picture 9:
In 1994 it was a bass guitar, made entirely of mahogany and rosewood, even down to the rosewood pickup surrounds and strap knobs. I attribute its warm sound to the wood. |
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Picture 10:
The 1995 guitar was a semi-acoustic with an offset shape. I played around with a variety of sounds with two Schaller twin coil pickups and coil taps. |
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Pictures 11 and 12:
A telecaster in 1996, with Seymour-Duncan pickups and some "improvements" over the original Fender design, including a raked back headstock avoiding the use of a string tree to hold down the treble strings. Sam still gigs with this instrument in his band Jakamo in Coventry. |
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Pictures 13, 14 and 15:
Two mandolins made in 1997, one with f-holes and the other an elliptical soundhole, but otherwise identical. Steve Shorey has one of these. It has a large flat body and a ringing tone. |
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Picture 16:
The guitar I use most is this mahogany and spruce bodied acoustic made in 2001. I made Sam a smilar one in rosewood. With it is a baglama - a very small Greek-style bouzouki made to use up offcuts of various woods in 2005. |
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Picture 17:
The back of the baglama is made from strips of mahogany with thin maple fillets between them. It is surprisingly loud for a little thing. |
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Picture 18:
The 2001 acoustic again, with the partly completed acoustic bass guitar, showing the difference in size. |
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Picture 19:
The bass guitar soundboard is fairly thin but stoutly braced. |
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Picture 20:
Completed early in 2013, a truly acoustic bass guitar. Thanks to the large hollow body it can hold its own with other acoustic instruments without needing to be plugged in. It has a bridge transducer if wanted, like a motor on a sailing dinghy. |
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Picture 21 and 22:
This cittern was made in 2019. It was an interesting project to do. An illustrated booklet about it is available as a downloadable file here. |
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| Making a guitar >> |
