The concept
I was after several things here. I had for a while been intrigued by the concept of a fretless guitar, having loved the sounds of Jaco, Percy Jones, Kai Eckhardt, Michael Manring, and Tony Levin for some years now. But it was running into Neil Haverstick, who served as a marvelously patient and charmingly idiosyncratic "theory teacher" for Dave Cialone and I (after Nathan left for Illinois), that really inspired this project. In addition to teaching us an approach to tonal music theory (read the theory posts on this blog and you'll see the product of a lot of that), Neil was personally in the midst of exploring alternative tuning options for his microtonal music, and was himself just beginning to perform with a fretless guitar. It was compelling.
So, I had identified that I wanted to build a guitar from a Musicmakers kit, and their "Guit-along" teardrop shaped mini-guitar (which is not a currently available kit, it appears) seemed like the right design for compact size and complete access to the upper register. It is designed to be a steel-string, fretted acoustic guitar in standard tuning with a small floating bridge and no electronics. So, naturally, I decided I'd build it as a nylon-string, fretless acoustic guitar in Guitar Craft standard tuning (aka New Standard Tuning or NST to Crafties*) with the addition of an onboard pickup and preamp for amplifying and recording. This would involve coming up with a solution for the provided fretboard, which was already slotted for fretwire, fabricating my own bridge and saddle, and selecting and adapting electronics.
You know, for building my first guitar. :-)
I'm happy to say that I am pleased with the end result. There were certainly headaches in there, but the result is good as it is, and will get better with a couple more refinements.
The tour
The kit came with pre-bent wood for the guitar body, and sound- and backboards. The wood turned out much prettier than I'd expected it to be, but I didn't find that out until the finish (clear lacquer) went on. The plainest piece of wood on the thing is the Sitka spruce laminate soundboard!
Note in the pic on the left, above, the battery box, and look closely inside the far side of the soundhole and you'll see the volume and tone pots supplied with the LR Baggs undersaddle transducer (I got one specifically calibrated for nylon strings). In the pic on the right, you can see the battery box through the other side of the soundhole. Note too that the bridge in these shots is the first-phase bridge, fabricated from a plank of padauk wood from Rockler's in Denver whose color was pretty close to the kit's supplied padauk fingerboard. The saddle in this first iteration is a plastic saddle from an old dreadnaught and was being used as a placeholder; I had not even started work on the bone saddle at this point.
Here's a look at the fingerboard and the headstock. It's a shame that I wasn't able to capture the almost mirror shine that 600-grit sandpaper put on the fretless surface.
Here's a look at the fingerboard and the headstock. It's a shame that I wasn't able to capture the almost mirror shine that 600-grit sandpaper put on the fretless surface.
To solve the problem of the fret slots, the staff at Musicmakers suggested I glue light-colored wood veneer into the 18 fret slots, and then sand the board flat. This was a great idea; it looks really nice and the reference is very useful for someone getting started with fretless playing!
Of interest: despite my using a drill press to cut the peg holes for the tuning machines, I still managed to get one of them off-center. Doesn't affect how it plays, I know, but it still makes me grumpy. I'm much happier with the bone nut (from Stewart-MacDonald, along with the bone saddle, battery box, and electronics) I substituted for the plastic one provided with the kit.
Here's a look at the neck, and a closeup of the volume/tone pots in the soundhole:
In hindsight, I probably should have shaped the neck a little differently, as this one feels a little thick, but it is my first time shaping a neck (the kit's neck was bandsawn, so it wasn't a complete neck blank; essentially the rounding is mine), and I was conservative.
As a woodworking project, it was fun. I learned a great deal about gluing, sanding, and the use of router attachments for Dremel tools, and enjoyed it. The electronics scared the shite out of me, though, as I am no electrician, and I was continually petrified that I'd build the whole thing, plug in and then get...nothing.
The pickup is an undersaddle transducer, which meant that I could not use the kit's supplied bridge--which simply floats on top of the soundboard with no provision for a separate saddle to transmit vibration to the transducer. So...I fabricated a bridge, from a plank of padauk wood from Rockler's, with a Dremel tool and hand sanding, using the Dremel plunge router attachment to fashion a workable but far from perfect channel for the saddle, and then just sanding that thing square with the aid of my shooting micrometer. In the end, I managed to build a little compensation into the saddle, with the bass strings slightly longer than the trebles (this may be somewhat academic on a fretless instrument, but I'm happy I did it).
The preamp is built into the endpin jack, so a giant hole went into the tailblock of the guitar, and instead of using the battery bag included with the pickup, I rewired the battery to Stew-Mac's battery box, which I fitted on the top side of the guitar in the only "flat" spot on the teardrop's curve. I think that will work out rather nicely; the box is much more elegant than trying to negotiate a battery bag through that reduced-size soundhole.
I assembled the whole thing up, mostly to see if the electronics would even work, and strung it up and plugged it in. To my total astonishment, it sounded fabulous through my SWR California Blonde. To my ears, at least.
My thoughts now turned to the guitar's action. For the initial test, I used "throwaway" strings, and acoustic steel roundwounds at that, just to provide a starting point. The action was sky-high, which I kind of expected as I had just fabricated a bridge from scratch, used a placeholder saddle, and had not done anything to reduce the height of the nut. Check out these shots of the initial action. (For reference, note the how thick the bridge is in the first three pictures in this post.)
As a woodworking project, it was fun. I learned a great deal about gluing, sanding, and the use of router attachments for Dremel tools, and enjoyed it. The electronics scared the shite out of me, though, as I am no electrician, and I was continually petrified that I'd build the whole thing, plug in and then get...nothing.
The pickup is an undersaddle transducer, which meant that I could not use the kit's supplied bridge--which simply floats on top of the soundboard with no provision for a separate saddle to transmit vibration to the transducer. So...I fabricated a bridge, from a plank of padauk wood from Rockler's, with a Dremel tool and hand sanding, using the Dremel plunge router attachment to fashion a workable but far from perfect channel for the saddle, and then just sanding that thing square with the aid of my shooting micrometer. In the end, I managed to build a little compensation into the saddle, with the bass strings slightly longer than the trebles (this may be somewhat academic on a fretless instrument, but I'm happy I did it).
The preamp is built into the endpin jack, so a giant hole went into the tailblock of the guitar, and instead of using the battery bag included with the pickup, I rewired the battery to Stew-Mac's battery box, which I fitted on the top side of the guitar in the only "flat" spot on the teardrop's curve. I think that will work out rather nicely; the box is much more elegant than trying to negotiate a battery bag through that reduced-size soundhole.
I assembled the whole thing up, mostly to see if the electronics would even work, and strung it up and plugged it in. To my total astonishment, it sounded fabulous through my SWR California Blonde. To my ears, at least.
My thoughts now turned to the guitar's action. For the initial test, I used "throwaway" strings, and acoustic steel roundwounds at that, just to provide a starting point. The action was sky-high, which I kind of expected as I had just fabricated a bridge from scratch, used a placeholder saddle, and had not done anything to reduce the height of the nut. Check out these shots of the initial action. (For reference, note the how thick the bridge is in the first three pictures in this post.)
Measured with my reloading micrometer, string heights at the nut were .130" for the sixth string down to .085" for the first string. (A general rule of thumb is that 1/16", or .063", is appropriate for this measurement, for guitars, and this measurement is from the crown of the first fret to the bottom of the string.) At the 18th "fret", the heights were .345" for the sixth string and .290" for the first. In general, the lower the action the better, especially for a fretless instrument, and my goal was to get to 1/32", or .0313", at the nut. (My Fender Stratocaster's action, set up for me by a luthier, measures .025" at the first fret and .100" at the 18th, and it is the easiest action I currently own.)
So, I thickness-sanded the bottom of the bridge, sanded down the top of the bone saddle (both to reduce height, and also to observe the "50/50 rule" that you want at least 50% of the saddle to be down in the slot, not above it, to avoid excessive tilt), and filed deeper slots in the nut for the strings I have on, to hit my target.
I was careful, and the result was extremely gratifying. These pics are of the revised bridge with the bone saddle fitted and notched:
So, I thickness-sanded the bottom of the bridge, sanded down the top of the bone saddle (both to reduce height, and also to observe the "50/50 rule" that you want at least 50% of the saddle to be down in the slot, not above it, to avoid excessive tilt), and filed deeper slots in the nut for the strings I have on, to hit my target.
I was careful, and the result was extremely gratifying. These pics are of the revised bridge with the bone saddle fitted and notched:
And these last pics are of the revised action. Compare them to the ones above!
In the end, the numbers were a little better than my target. The revised action has .021" - .030" gap at the nut, and .071" - .080" at the 18th "fret". What a difference!
The revision did highlight a small high spot in my fingerboard, in the area of "frets" 16-18 on the first and second strings. I'm no luthier, but I would think this is an encouraging place to have a minor high spot, and my intent is to sand this area slightly to take care of that, put a final nice polish on the whole fingerboard again, and re-string with my next experiment: flat-wound electric guitar strings (which have the primary advantage of not needing to be purchased; I already have a set of them, in NST gauges, from my previous experiment with the Stratocaster).
When I tuned up and plugged in again, I played for a while for Sabre, who seemed to enjoy the new sound. For me, the sound of the instrument is intoxicating, and I suspect I will learn a number of new techniques to allow me to take advantage of what I've got. (Those will certainly get posted here...)
Now what?
The purpose of this was to experiment with a fretless instrument; hell, mostly it was to see if I could build something worth playing! It started with the idea of "hey, let's try building a guitar" and steamrolled with the additions of the fretless fingerboard and the onboard electronics.
It's got its warts, and I'm sure I'll find things to dislike about it. But I have to say, I'm pleased at the result, and I intend to see what the application of a Crafty mindset to a completely new instrument might yield. (I am certainly treating it as a new instrument!)
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* For those who do not know it, the Guitar Craft Standard Tuning is C2 - G2 - D3 - A3 - E4 - G4, from sixth to first strings. This gives an expanded range over the fourths-based standard tuning, broader chords in general and an orchestral approach to music theory (the CGDA pitches of strings 6-3, are the same pitches as a cello is tuned). I like this tuning, and being a blowhard, all my guitars are tuned this way; I've even brought the intervals of the top four strings to my new kit banjo. Anything to be difficult! :-)
1 comment:
Thanks for the kind words there. As a new father, I suspect my updating may be a bit haphazard (like I'm complaining... :-) but when I do get a chance to pour thoughts out, it will certainly be here.
And I've just bookmarked your link--I'll check in from time to time there too!
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