More Klos improvements

[Aspiring]

I have had my Klos hybrid travel guitar now for about a year.

It has a home beside my bed on a wall hangar and I pick it up before going to bed quite often as well as take it travelling on my boat or other areas where I might have any concerns for risk of damage with a wood guitar.

I initially added a sound port in the upper bout which I found helped the tone overall and particularly for me while playing quite a bit.

I then moved to exp 19 bluegrass and that added a nice bit to the bass that I liked.

And then today I made a new bone saddle up from a MacNichol one that was almost the exact match in radius and intonation from amazon.

Definitely a nice improvement! It was almost perfectly intonated without touching the top of the saddle.

The stock saddle was plastic and was a bit loose in the slot and was also already showing significant groove wear from the strings.

I also tried something different this time as I needed to drop the height of the saddle about 5mm from the blank that came from Amazon and I wasn't feeling the desire to hand sand that off.

Instead I clamped it between two pieces of scrap 1/4 ply with straight edges and then put that flush to the top of my portable work bench clamping it in place and used a finish router with a 1/4" straight bit. What a beautiful way to go! Perfectly straight flat cut square to the sides and I could use the micrometer on the router to take off precisely the height I was looking for

Overall very pleased with the little Klos. I feel like the changes I have made have also changed the tone substantially.

Kudos for your Klos work.

[steelvibe]

Very cool upgrades! I like a bone saddle quite a bit- all of my guitars have been upgraded if they didn't come with one already.

[Aspiring]

Couple pictures with the upgrades.

I'm thinking the cheesy plastic bridge pins are likely next. Not that I'm expecting much sound change but because they chew up easily on the strings

IMG_20201018_113844042.jpgImage.jpg

[Jacobdv]

Could I ask how you went about adding that sound hole? Considering it as well.

[Aspiring]

I taped the area out to prevent tear out and ended up using a hole saw with relatively slow drill speed and light pressure. I then did a little light sanding to clean up the edges.

I have thought about doing something more to finish off the look but I have not gone there yet.

I made the call to drill a hole in mine after playing it facing a corner. To me it helps the sound a lot both for the player and out in front.

Originally Posted by Jacobdv

Could I ask how you went about adding that sound hole? Considering it as well.

[Aspiring]

Oh and here are the latest adds. Ebony bridge pins and graphtec locking ratio tuners Image%20(1).jpgImage%20(3).jpg

[Jacobdv]

Thanks boss. I'll probably give that a shot. I was actually thinking that I was gonna sell my travel guitar because I just recently got their full size full carbon guitar and told myself I don't need both... but I do lol. So the little KLOS will be my experimental one.

[TRW1]

Interesting, I've often wondered if my Klos would sound appreciably better with a bone saddle. I wasn't sure how much that would affect the sound on a small carbon fiber guitar. I have a couple of blanks lying around, I'll have to give that a shot.

[Aspiring]

To my ears the bone saddle helped warm it up a bit and a bit more clarity. Of course that could be due to a better fit in the slot as well as the material but end result was an improvement. The ebony bridge pins and tuning machine change did very little if anything for the sound.

If I had to say contribution wise the things that have done the most changes to the sound;


Sound port
Bluegrass gauge strings
Saddle

Originally Posted by TRW1

Interesting, I've often wondered if my Klos would sound appreciably better with a bone saddle. I wasn't sure how much that would affect the sound on a small carbon fiber guitar. I have a couple of blanks lying around, I'll have to give that a shot.