CE Sobel -- A couple 00+'s
 

Hi Everyone,

I'm relatively new to the forum and have been working part time and now full time for the last 4 years as a classical guitar builder in Ridgefield, Washington. This year for some reason I had a large demand for small bodied steel string guitars and so I thought it would be cool to post a couple of the commissions I'm working on right now. The body size is between a 00 and a 000, although closer to a OO, hence the "OO+". It'll feature a 12 fret dovetail joint and a pinless bridge among other things. Guitar 1 is Sitka/East Indian and Guitar 2 is Redwood/Cocobolo. The overall design is based off my mentor Jeff Elliott's hybrid X and fan bracing for really light tension strings, although I've adapted both of these for my customers who prefer regular light tension.

Onto the build... First, cutting the top and rosette. I bought these billets from Jeff and it was somewhat hard to tell initially if it was going to be that good since they were so old. Mmmmmm... thankfully this one turned out to be one nice billet!

The rosette is spalted amboyna burl with bloodwood and satinwood lines.

Here are a couple pics of the redwood and rosette... a sister cut slice of the same amboyna burl but interrupted in the middle by abalone and bloodwood throughout. The white lines are .25mm yellow cedar.

The redwood comes out of a mineshaft in northern California. Apparently the beams were pulled out and replaced with proper concrete supports a few years back. I was fortunate enough to get a couple beams. It must be about 90 years old or so, and has an incredible tap tone like Brazilian RW. There's a pic of another set as well...

Here's a few shots of assembling the box. For these two I assembled the sides and then added the top and then the back. In this pic the end block is being heated up to give some more open time after being sealed with hide glue. A similarity with my classical guitars is that the top is attached to the sides with individual blocks instead of kerfed or solid linings. It takes a lot more time but I really enjoy manufacturing the blocks and installing them while listening to some good music. I like to vary the species mostly for enjoyment and a different look, although using a very heavy rosewood for the blocks instead of mahogany or cedar can make the sound a tiny bit richer and darker. The idea is just the side mass concept.

Some pics of the cocobolo back. This is some dense stuff at almost 1300kg/m3!

Here are some pictures of the internals before closing the box, and a cross section shot of the inside... the bracing is a mix of sitka and euro spruce, both chosen for medium density and very high s/w ratio.

Ok time to take a break... Wolfe guards the stacks of Brazilian RW. He is an ADA service animal for my time in AFG and IZ and an essential part of the shop! Sweet boy.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for posting these fine builds - the rosettes are really something and those redwood beams must have been enormous! Look forward to more posts.

Love the idea of a 00.5 too.

Col

Very appealing builds and beautiful dog.

They call them "working dogs" for a reason ... lol. I have some experience working with service dogs, amazing animals, you are fortunate to have found each other. They really are life altering companions!

Lovely rosettes, please keep posting.

Impressive!!!

Welcome to the forum. Thanks for posting. The guitars look great. Those redwood tops are some fantastic specimens.

I like your furry shop partner too.

I certainly will be following this build thread with anticipation. If you have the ability to post any sound clips of these guitars when they are finished, that would be nice. I would be especially interested in hearing the redwood and cocobolo one.

Hello,

I definitely plan to get recordings on both the guitars for my webpage so I'll post them when everything is done. It won't be till december sine I'm french polishing these and that takes some time, but I'll let you know. I'm planning to tune the boxes to roughly the same intervals and do a side by side to showcase the different combo's of woods!

Edit: I'm probably going to do a Redwood/Brazilian after these ones with some old growth stuff and a sister cut redwood top... I'll send you a clip of that one as well when it's finished. I'm curious to compare the Cocobolo and Brazilian when everything else is relatively the same.

Chris

I bound and purfled the East Indian guitar last night... now to take a break and catch up on the Cocobolo. The bindings are ebony with a birdseye maple purling. The black insert in the middle of the top is a small section of Blackwood that goes through the top and most of the bridge patch to house the piano wire that the strings will hook onto.

Thank you! I'm trying to dig up a picture of one section of a beam that had a metal connector drilled through it to anchor it to the rock... it was actually a really nice section save for the 1.5" hole through the middle of the billet. I guess it could be incorporated into a top haha. When I got the beams they had been cut down to size a little bit but the chunks were still big enough to split and resaw.

Thanks for doing this build thread. Your guitars are looking really nice.

Since you are a classical guitar builder as well as a steel string guitar builder, I was wondering if there is some commonality in their tone. For example, I have a steel string guitar built by Alan Carruth, who started building classical guitars before he built steel string and currently builds both. I feel that my steel string guitar's tone has significant influence/commonality to that of classical guitars.