Hi all-
Well, Jeff sent me some details on my order today, which suggests that it's time to get this build thread on
my upcoming Traugott guitar moving. It really seems that he's going to get moving on this thing, so I'm incredibly excited and surprised. Who knew that I would be starting this build thread before my Krauts even came into being?
First, I have to say again that since I first called Jeff, he's been a delight with which to work. Certainly, when you're considering dropping this sort of money on a guitar, you want great service. But this is also a guy who has a multi-multi-year list, and is a "big deal." I've never been made to feel I'm lucky or special to get Jeff. He always answers his phone, he's always got time to talk, and he exchanged several calls and emails with me before I ever sent him a deposit.
My Traugott is a larger guitar, with a 16" lower bout, much like
the Modified D that Ray Kraut is building me. However, Jeff's lines are very much different, so this will be an entirely different guitar in shape, as well as tone, as my Kraut guitars. Jeff calls this his
BK model, and the specs are all
online. (Fair warning: when you wander onto Jeff's site, you may not want to wander off.)
Here's a representative sample of his BK, with a cutaway, which mine will also have:
I'm already used to playing a slightly longer scale, as my Ryan has a 25.7" scale; on top of that, the Traugott for me will sit in altered and lowered tunings quite a bit. For those reasons, we want to make this an animal, so we'll be using a 27" scale on the low end, and a 25.625" scale on the treble. I can think of a few songs I play in DADEBA (yes, you read that right, the 1st string is lower than the 2nd string) that will sound great on this guitar. We'll also drop the parallel fret at 5, making playing with my thumb in lower positions very doable, something that wouldn't be as easy if the parallel fret were moved up higher.
(As an aside, the Kraut guitars will both have fans running from 26" to 25" and are a bit easier to play in standard tuning. The parallel fret on these will sit at 7.)
The bridge and fretboard will be choice ebony. The back and sides will be amazing Brazilian Rosewood, and my does Jeff have a stash. The top will be his beautiful German Spruce, hand-picked from Germany by Jeff himself. The rosette will be Jeff's standard rosette, with a vibrant orange in the coloring. We'll go with a 1 3/4" nut width, and a 2 1/4" string spacing.
The top wil have a darker top tint to give it some aging, and yes, Jeff will be photo-documenting the entire process, which is why we're all here, right?
There's more... much more... and over the weekend I'll show you the sets of Brazilian I was offered and the set which I chose, as well as talk to you about some subtle but wonderful inlay we'll be doing.
Let the fun (and drooling) begin.
-B