Tom Sands Model L Baritone ... with all the trimmings

[nobo]

Originally Posted by justonwo

The photos on this build are absolutely insane. Such nice documentation. This guitar looks GORGEOUS.

Yup - I feel so fortunate and am extremely grateful to Tom and Daisy for capturing the birth of this fantastic looking guitar in such beautiful detail. I remember talking to Tom about this at the outset and he was trying to get a sense of how deep I wanted him to go on that. Let's just say I didn't encourage him to hold back - there's no such thing as too many build pics, IMHO! I think there'll probably be around 200 in total ... (!) So ... more to come

[nobo]

SCALE LENGTHS

You’ll be perhaps unsurprised to learn, given my obsessive attention to detail* and maximiser (rather than satisficer) proclivities, that I went deep when it came to scale lengths…

For everyone’s sake, I’ll try to keep it fairly brief here. I set up a string tension calculator spreadsheet and used that to work out what scale length would give me the desired tensions per string and overall (approximately equivalent to that of lights in standard tuning on a standard scale length) for 16-70 baritone strings for the range of tunings I was planning to use.

The twist is that I also plan to use this as a “D guitar”: strung with normal strings, with a different nut and saddle, and tuned D to D standard and down from there to various alternate tunings. The joy of this is that if you put a capo on the second fret, you have a standard tuned, 12 fret guitar. So kinda two guitars for the price of one. Again, the aim was to find what scale length would work best for this using light or medium strings but with tension approximately equivalent to that of lights in standard tuning on a standard scale length.

I also thought about inherent string inharmonicity and the optimising calcuations for string tuning, scale and gauge.

I was keen to avoid going much beyond a fan of 1.3 - 1.4" as that starts to become quite obvious / not very transparent and messes a bit with the overall balance of tensions across strings (unless you get into custom string sets).

Here’s a snapshot of the outputs of that process, with the green highlights showing the overall tensions for the preferred tunings/strings:



What I ended up with was a 27” to 28.25” fan which worked well for my preferred true tunings with 16-70 strings and as a D guitar strung with mediums. Coincidentally, roughly a 1.25” fan centred around my Lowden Baritone scale of 27.56” / 700mm.


* When Tom says this has been his most challenging build to day, I suspect he’s referring to having to put up with me as a customer rather than anything to do with the woodworking requirements!

[nobo]

Of course, scale length etc was decided quite some time ago (at the outset of the build), as it would affect voicing, top thickenessing, etc. But now seemed the appropriate time to talk about it as we've got to the fingerboard and fret slot cutting stage, where the fan is clearly visible...

Tom says “I don’t have a fancy jig, just a set of dial calipers, a scalpel and lots of patience to lay it all out. The slots themselves I cut with a Japanese pull saw with a 0.030” kerf.

You know the old saying ‘measure twice, cut once’? Safe to say I measured at least 5 times. Hopefully this guitar should intonate pretty nicely! (If not, you’ll find me down the pub...).”

[nobo]

Further work on the fingerboard, plus the neck (an ancient piece of mahogany) and the headstock:

In this first photo, Tom is using his beautiful @lienielsentoolworks no.7 to true up the fingerboard. I like the feel of a pretty flat radius fingerboard (which I guess fits with the more classical guitar style theme here of a super slim, super wide neck)



Trimming up the fingerboard ready for binding. Tom says: "‘Why don’t you have a jig for this!?’ I hear you cry! It’s a very good question, I’ll make one. Note to self - make fingerboard tapering jig."















From the man himself: "Really impressed with the triple flute cutters from @radiantools. Here I’m using the double bearing profile trimmer mounted in the router table. Very much looking forward to trying out the binding cutters soon!"

[Dion James]

Originally Posted by nobo

Further work on the fingerboard, plus the neck (an ancient piece of mahogany) and the headstock:

In this first photo, Tom is using his beautiful @lienielsentoolworks no.7 to true up the fingerboard. I like the feel of a pretty flat radius fingerboard (which I guess fits with the more classical guitar style theme here of a super slim, super wide neck)

Tom’s work is superb! This is such a stunner, congratulations!

[nobo]

Originally Posted by Dion James

Tom’s work is superb! This is such a stunner, congratulations!

Thanks Dion! Yes - feeling mighty fortunate to have tom building this lovely looking instrument for me. Been enjoying your amazing work (at least, from afar!) too!

Best,

Dan

[nobo]

More work on the neck ...



There’s a neck in there somewhere...



From Tom: "Clean shop, clean mind, clean work. (It stayed like this for all of 3 minutes...). The low winter sun is streaming in right now and making us very happy indeed!"



Think Tom may be trying a new heel design... Thinking it might be a little chunky, what do you reckon? ��













Neck setting...

[Dion James]

Originally Posted by nobo

Thanks Dion! Yes - feeling mighty fortunate to have tom building this lovely looking instrument for me. Been enjoying your amazing work (at least, from afar!) too!



Best,



Dan

Thanks for the kind words!

[nobo]

Bevel done; neck started - here's a short video update video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdJvvC8gFOA



As to the neck material, Tom’s been using wenge recently and, like Laurent Brondel and Stefan Sobell, is a big fan. I was seriously tempted - thinking that the wood colour would work well with the ovangkol, and that if any guitar I own was going to have a wenge neck, it’d be this one. However… I was a bit concerned about:

• The balance of the instrument. Wenge is very dense, and this it’s going to be a huge neck - not only very wide, but also long given the 27-28.25 baritone scale. And Tom builds a light and responsive guitar body...
  
• I use a *lot* of neck vibrato - might the wenge feel too stiff / not respond in the way I’m used to (all my other guitars have mahogany necks, save for one with a maple neck)?
  
• I gather from someone else who’s built with wenge and hog necks that wenge is a denser neck material that will bring more focus to the tone, faster attack and generally a less diffuse feel. That’s probably the opposite of what I’m after…

So we went with a really lovely piece of (reclaimed, if I remember correctly) antique mahogany.

[nobo]

And on to the neck carve...

A short video from Tom about neck carving and using wenge for necks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZa93z860ag



I recently acquired a fabulous Wingert Model E (German spruce over Brazilian rosewood) which belonged to a dear friend of mine who'd sadly passed. That's a topic for another thread, but … here’s a checky picture or few.



You don’t see Braz like this too often these days!





In the hands of the masterful Clive Carroll at few years back at one of the RMMGA UK gatherines (2009 I think - having played a 2+ hour gig, Clive retired to the kitchen where he played for another 6 or so hours straight!):



The short of it is that I love the neck (well, and the whole instrument - it sounds phenomenal!), which I think it's fair to say are classical dimensions - 51 mm at the nut, 61.5 mm string spacing at the saddle - but very shallow with a lovely profile. I was keen to duplicate that for the baritone, and nip the nut in very slightly to 50 mm. Tom sent me a profile gauge so I could accurate convey the depth (which I could checked at various points with my calipers) and profile to him, and he could recreate it. And here he is doing exactly that...

Tom says: "Super shallow depth of field action shot, carving the neck heel transition. It’s easy to really mess this section up and cause yourself a real headache as you transition from the long grain of the back of the neck to end grain of the heel. Fortunately this one turned out nicely and should be secured to the body later today!"







From Tom: "This picture gives you a sense of just how wide and flat this baritone neck is, 50mm at the nut and 62.5 at the 12th. To compensate for the wide nut and keep this bad boy playable the neck is only 18mm thick behind the 1st fret. New territory for me, and it’s making me scratch my head a little bit, but with help of multiple client supplied templates, I think we’ll do just fine!

Another thing to note is the tooth pattern on this awesome Auriou (made in France) hand stitched rasp. The random ‘stitching’ of the teeth makes for rapid stock removal with limited clogging and an even, surprisingly smooth finish, nothing like the results you’d get with a mechanically stitched rasp. Not cheap but a real game changer. Check out ‘The Hog’ for all your neck carve needs."

[Guitars44me]

This is going to be a killer guitar! I have not checked in on this in some time, so I just binge read the entire thread…

What a mass of info! A whole lotta thinking went into this axe.

All the beautiful photos really give a sense of what Luthiers go through to build guitars.

As a bevel fanatic and recent convert to Manzer Wedge lover, I am sure you will be thrilled with the comfort of this.

The looks and tone will be equally spectacular, no doubt!

Thanks for sharing such a marvelous look at this build.

Paul

[nobo]

Originally Posted by Guitars44me

This is going to be a killer guitar! I have not checked in on this in some time, so I just binge read the entire thread…

What a mass of info! A whole lotta thinking went into this axe.

All the beautiful photos really give a sense of what Luthiers go through to build guitars.

As a bevel fanatic and recent convert to Manzer Wedge lover, I am sure you will be thrilled with the comfort of this.

The looks and tone will be equally spectacular, no doubt!

Thanks for sharing such a marvelous look at this build.

Paul

You're welcome! Thanks for checking in!

Yup - it's been on my mind for quite some time so I went kinda deep on the specs for this one.

It's really coming together beautifully. And to have it captured so beautifully in these photos and videos has made it quite an amazing and insightful journey.

As you say, I'm sure it'll be super comfy, despite it's size. And given what I've heard in Tom's other guitars (which I'm pleased to say I've played most of - including his new Model S white label a couple of days ago), I'm optimistic about this one! Not long to go now...

[nobo]

Time to add some fret position markers. We went with ebony filled copper circles - a lovely way to tie in with the copper details in the rosette and end graft. They also really sparkle in certain light, and who doesn’t like sparkles!?

[colins]

Love that neck Dan; the close ups show it to be a beautiful deep golden colour.

And setting it up like the E is a good move. Kathy does nice necks!

Col

[nobo]

Originally Posted by colins

Love that neck Dan; the close ups show it to be a beautiful deep golden colour.

And setting it up like the E is a good move. Kathy does nice necks!

Col

Thanks Col!

Looks to be a lovely piece of mahogany - under finish I think it's going to tie in nicely with the ovangkol.

And the neck on my Wingert - whilst unconventional - is killer! It was custom built for a friend of mine who was very tall and slender and had giant fists: a mutual friend used to joke that 80% of his body weight was in his hands!

I don't have frying pan hands - pretty average I guess. But I've always gravitated towards wide necks. I suspect that's because the first acoustic I ever got to know was a 1970s Epiphone 12 string strung as a 6! Plus, as an exclusively fingerstyle player (at least I will be on this baritone), I find the extra width at the saddle makes a huge different to string control - attack, muting, general precision, etc.