Tag: custom guitar

“Everest” Archtop Guitar

This 18″ oval holed archtop guitar was constructed with a long-aged Sitka spruce soundboard, master grade curly red maple back and sides, and a curly maple neck.  The fretboard, bridge, tailpiece, binding, peghead overlay and diamond inlays are ebony. The yellow purfling and accent lines are Canary wood left in its natural state with some small flecks of red occurring in the bold yellow color. The soundboard is braced similar to my L7 style archtops. It has an X brace along with perpendicular braces at either end of the X.

There are two custom made, hand wound Kent Armstrong pickups with this guitar. In these photos, the humbucker is attached to the end of the fretboard. That pickup can be replaced with a P-90 style, which also conforms to the curvature of the fretboard and sound hole.

This instrument has a very open sound, somewhat like that of a great flattop guitar, while still offering the clarity and note separation of a great archtop. The attached video perfectly demonstrates these properties after a brief interview about the guitar.

Short Scale Solid Body Guitar

This is a short (23 1/2″) scale version of a solid body guitar I have built several times. The design works equally well with a longer scale.  Although it looks a lot like a Les Paul, the body is quite a bit wider at 13 1/4,” and shallower at 1 1/4.” It is a hybrid of 2 models that Gibson stopped making a long time ago, the L5S and the L6S. The body shape is from the original L6S template that I acquired when Gibson moved from Kalamazoo to Nashville. The carved maple top was inspired by the L5S (the L6S was a single-piece body and flat on the top as well as the back.)  The back of the guitar is Honduran mahogany. The 3 piece neck is master-grade hard maple.  The Ebony fretboard holds 22 jumbo frets.  Macassar ebony was used for the peghead veneer. Grover Imperial tuners, Schaller bridge and tailpiece, and Duncan ’59 PAF humbucker pickups complete the hardware. The guitar is finished with amber-tinted nitrocellulose lacquer.