3 and 4 piece tops for classical and steel string guitars

[ruby@magpage.com]

Check this out:

http://www.guitaradventures.com/taylor- ... itar-story

6 piece top and 5 piece back.

So what is "mediocre wood"? The point is this: The guitar manufacturer matters as much as the quality of wood used to create the guitar.

Ed

[Danl8]

Interesting story. IMHO, there is genuinely mediocre wood...I have some -- looks like Euro spruce, but vibrates like rubber. The Taylor pallet guitar back pictures brought back memories of how expensive a resaw blade can be when those little holes are filled with steel instead of inlaid aluminum.

[ColestineGuitar]

Hey, good topic! I'm thinking of a piece of reclaimed redwood I have in the shop now. It was a large beam, but this piece had a split down the middle, leaving only 6-7 inches of width. It has excellent, tight grain, and I know I can get a good number of slices out of it. Three piece tops, here I come!

By the way, your top looks great to me. It's not obvious where you might have glued, and I will second the comment about character.

[bftobin]

You can even mix materials. I saw a guitar top that was WRC in the center and spruce on either side.
Sergei De Jonge I believe. And there's always Howard Klepper's 'Harlequin' guitar.

Brent

[Danl8]

You can even mix materials. I saw a guitar top that was WRC in the center and spruce on either side.
Sergei De Jonge I believe. And there's always Howard Klepper's 'Harlequin' guitar.

Brent

Thanks for the Klepper reference. Interesting stuff. Mixed materials have been used for hundreds of years. Check out images on a google search for 'baroque guitar'.


-d.

[Diane Kauffmds]

You can even mix materials. I saw a guitar top that was WRC in the center and spruce on either side.
Sergei De Jonge I believe. And there's always Howard Klepper's 'Harlequin' guitar.

Brent

It sounds intriguing and it would look very nice if the materials were chosen carefully.

But, I wonder if this would pose trouble down the road if the materials had a different rate of shrinkage. I'm thinking of the cracks that develop from plastic pickguards on wood, since each material dries out at a different rate. Could this occur if different species of woods were used?

I see a lot of cracks on either side of fretboard extentions on old guitar tops. If different woods were used on the top, I'd be inclined to add some sort of preventive measure, to provide long term stabilization to the joints.

[Mike Baker]

Very interesting thread.
I have been contemplating a three or four piece back for some time now.