Ensor Guitars Memphis Builds

[Too Many Guitar]

Chris, pretty amazing pics...can't wait to see/play them. I might have to give you two tables

[CaE]

Originally Posted by Too Many Guitar

Chris, pretty amazing pics...can't wait to see/play them. I might have to give you two tables

Yeah... I may have gotten a little too excited. But hey, I have been wanting to build these for a while and this is the perfect platform to display them.

[CaE]

The third guitar the I tackled was the ziricote & carpathian spruce auditorium. This is by far my most complicated build for the show. I guess I just like a good challenge.

When I first started looking into lutherie, I came across a ziricote guitar. I don't remember who had made it, but I was smitten non-the-less. When I went to Canada and took Sergei de Jonge's guitar course, I was torn between building a guitar with ziricote and building an all walnut guitar. I ended up going with all walnut and it is still my personal player. I love it. But I have been wanting to build with ziricote ever since. I came across this huge set a while back and have been sitting on it for a while. It just begged to be an auditorium.

I knew I wanted to incorporate turquoise somehow. I wanted it to be nice and subtle rather than screaming. So I avoided my initial temptation to inlay the turquoise around the entire top perimeter like abalone. Instead, I put little pieces of varying size around the top with curly koa in between. I mimicked that same styling in the rosette as well. And since those two elements were so bold, I went for a simple black ebony binding and armrest.

For the neck, I was inspired by our own David Wren. I went with an elevated neck and a faux bound headstock. David was kind enough to give me some guidance on the dimensions of his elevated neck. Thanks David!

The faux bound headstock was fun and took a lot of thought to make the templates necessary for the job. But I like the way it turned out.

This neck is also a bit different from the others in that the fretboard (ziricote) will have gold evo frets and the tuners will be gold as well (with black buttons).

Now for pictures:

[bldrguy]

Its at the Hilton hotel off 240.

[StringMeUp]

Beautiful work, Chris! That BRW is spectacular.

[CaE]

Originally Posted by StringMeUp

Beautiful work, Chris! That BRW is spectacular.

Thanks StringMeUp! I had been drooling over that set of BRW for a while. I just had to build with it.

[CaE]

This is the fourth and final guitar that I am building for the Memphis show. While I was in Canada building with Sergei, I formed a great friendship with the lady building next to me. She was building two guitars at the time and she was able to string one of them up before leaving the course. It was a quilted sapele and german spruce OM. Obviously, the wood itself is striking, but I was amazed by the rich overtones that her little guitar produced. When I got home from the course, quilted sapele was decently abundant and cheap. I thought nothing of it and figured I would build with it eventually. Well, fast forward to present day and now it is getting hard to impossible to get really striking quilted sapele. From what my suppliers have told me, lots of overseas plywood manufacturers are buying up the great logs and cutting it into veneers. This leaves little to no good wood left over that is suitable for guitars. I was exchanging emails with Burton LeGeyt a while ago and he mentioned this stellar set of sapele that luthiers sometimes refer to as brain sapele. I had to have it.

I was in the middle of designing a build for a customer a few years ago. He wanted a cocobolo and german spruce guitar. Well at least at first he did. So I tracked down some old german spruce that came from the Martin factory and was marked 1983. He ended up having a change of heart and we went with bearclaw sitka instead.

When looking through my stash and designing the guitars for this show, I found myself holding the sapele and german spruce. I was thrown back to that time when I got to play my friends guitar and how amazed I was with its sound. I knew I had to build this combo. But since the sapele is so striking, I didn't want to distract from it with a lot of other complicated elements. So I decided that this would be my simple build. When the wood is screaming, don't mute it with other distractions, right? So I chose to use some beautiful and simple bois de rose for the fingerboard, binding, and bridge. This will oxidize to a deep deep burgundy- adding just a subtle bit of color to the guitar that a classic black ebony would lack.

Without further ado, here are the pictures:

[CaE]

I love the look of a busy finish room:

[CoolerKing]

Since I mistook the cocobolo in the first photo for brazilian, it might speak to the visual quality and potential tonal response. IE it looks awesome so it might sound awesome!

[WayneJohnson]

these looks soooooooo good Chris! Excited for you hope all goes well in Memphis.

thanks again for your recent help!

[CaE]

Originally Posted by WayneJohnson

these looks soooooooo good Chris! Excited for you hope all goes well in Memphis.

thanks again for your recent help!

Wayne,
Thanks for the kind words.

Fresh from the machine shop, this should be heading your way tomorrow:

[Marcus Wong]

Oh my gosh.....that Boise de Rose is SO NICE!! Especially the fretboard.....after seeing this, I think my next build has got to have Boise appointments. Too nice!

[CaE]

Originally Posted by Marcus Wong

Oh my gosh.....that Boise de Rose is SO NICE!! Especially the fretboard.....after seeing this, I think my next build has got to have Boise appointments. Too nice!

Bois de rose is a great wood. I love how it oxidizes to a deep burgundy. Plus, it smells AMAZING!

[CaE]

The guitars are starting to come out of finish. Wow we are getting close.

The cocobolo and sapele guitars are the first two to get bridges:

[Coffeeaddict]

Chris, they all look amazing! I hope they don't have to wait long before finding a good home.

I really like the Sapele/ German spruce. The bois de rose was a good call.