Archtop Guitar Build - Finished!!!

It has taken a while but I have now turned this...

into this...

I'm very pleased with how it turned out in terms of tone, ease of play and looks.  I also took it in to get a professional opinion and our local luthier (Bill Hatfield) really liked it after he put it through the paces both acoustically and electrically.  This past weekend I played it in church for the first time and it got good reviews so now to build another one.

Here are some close-ups of a few of the details of the guitar.  First off is the finger rest and it's mounting block.  If you look closely you can see that I've cut a bevel into the side facing the strings.  This is because the neck sits low to the body (explained in an earlier post) and I needed a little more clearance between the high E string and the finger rest when finger picking. The pickup is a Kent Armstrong sidemount slimline humbucker.  I really like the sound of this pickup and the shielded wiring make it very quiet.  The single pot is for volume and I thought about a tone pot but there really is no room for it on the finger rest.  The end jack is a Fishman stereo jack that I've wired mono with the leads going through the upper roundrel of the "f-hole."

The tail piece mounts via a sarconi strap to the double ringed end jack.  The bone insert protects the edge of the top and works well.  The strings that I am currently using are nickle jazz 11's.

I hope that you've enjoyed following along with this build and be sure to check out the other cool and eclectic collection of things that I've built that are on this blog!

Archtop Guitar Build - Tail Piece

The more I thought about putting the final coats of finish on the guitar, the more I thought that this is a bad idea seeing that the finger rest, pickup, tail piece and bridge are not built yet.  If I finished the guitar I was taking a chance that one of these pieces would have problems, not fit correctly and something would need to be done to the front plate that would require redoing the finish.

The tail piece is made from ebony and I had to wait a while to find a piece on e-bay that was big enough to make both the tail piece and finger rest.  I looked around at different designs and really liked the tail piece design that McCarthy guitars uses.  Instead of having the strings sit through the tail piece in slots, they run their strings through holes bored into the front end of the tail piece. 

A 12 inch radius was cut into the top of the tail piece and holes were bored for the strings.  Corresponding holes were bored for the ends of the strings and channels were cut into the top to allow for easier passage of the strings.  I made mother of pearl inlays that match up in design and form to the fret markers.  The back of the tail piece had holes bored for the tail strap and channels were routed to accept the retaining nuts for the tail strap.  A channel was cut into the back and a fulcrum of ebony was installed.  I also made side bevels to make the tail piece look less "bulky".  I also used some color-tone black dye in water to make the ebony a uniform black.  Here is the end result with a couple of scrap strings in place to aid in checking the angle for the finger rest.