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Brown - Archtops
A few photos from some of my latest builds. This one is a 17" acoustic archtop, sugar maple, african blackwood, adirondack.
Harmonically tuned string afterlengths 12 gram all rosewood bridge & saddle Stainless steel frets Armstrong Floating P90 with Ultratonic soundboard transducers 25.4″ scale, 1 3/4″ nut Bold rich acoustic tone, lightweight and highly responsive, just over 5 lbs
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brown.guitars Last edited by Tad Brown; 01-13-2023 at 01:02 PM. Reason: updated |
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Good looking stuff Tad! Look forward to seeing you at LaConner.
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Beautiful. I like the burst and the rounded edges on the back of the headstock. Actually, I like pretty much everything about the way it looks.
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Nice!
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Sweet! Love the unique sound holes!
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Thanks Ryan, really looking forward to checking out what you guys are building too. See you at the show.
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brown.guitars |
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Thanks man, I spend a lot of time hand sanding and contouring all edges and corners. Spraying the color coat is also one of the most exciting stages. Lotta masking and detailing.
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brown.guitars |
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brown.guitars |
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brown.guitars |
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Absolutely a work of art. How hours does it take? How do you choose the type of wood and then choose the specific piece of wood that will become a Brown? (I'm not very smartly with these things... can you tell by the looking at the grain? Do you use any high tech equipment?
I'm sorry if I'm a pain. It's just so beautiful
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-- Patience is a strength, not a weakness; and if by practicing patience we stop retaliating to harm and criticism, people will gradually come to understand that our real nature is very special. |
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Very handsome guitar Tad. Beautiful work.
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Quote:
Luckily maple is still readily available, unlike many of the exotic woods. European is nice to carve, bigleaf can be challenging, but spectacularly flamey. They all sound good when carved light enough. Adirondack spruce is particularly stiff and can be thinned way down, super light weight and strong, responsive like a canon. I try to strip away any unnecessary mass in the top, back, heel, and especially bridge, which is brazilian rosewood, for the best tone transfer imo. There are a lot of possible wood choice combos, which can all work, with thoughtful consideration. Yeah handling the wood, flexing, tapping, looking at the end grain, can give you a pretty good idea. As far as hours go, archtops are really intensive. For awhile I was chainsaw carving tops and backs, but have since switched to roughing by cnc. There's still a ton of handwork though, carefully working the plates down to final dimension by hand with a plane and scraper. Usually about 6-8 weeks start to finish. Thanks, Tad
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brown.guitars |
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Nice stuff. Don’t you love that Carruth scraper?
Steve
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www.denvirguitars.com |
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Tad it is nice to see an archtop luthier posting in the AGF custom shop.... Red Maple being native to Michigan was a favorite of Gibson in Kalamazoo. We see way more Bigleaf Maple, Sycamore maple and Sugar Maple (typically flatsawn to show birdseye figure) these days.
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |