Morgan Kelsey Myrtle/German Spruce build for Artisan 2023

[morgankelsey]

Hi All,

I'm planning on bringing two guitars with me to the Artisan show in April, and wanted to document one of them here.

This will be one of my tongue drum guitars, which have evolved into a "version two". This guitar will have Myrtle back and sides, a German spruce top, Padauk drums, and Lacewood and Sapele appointments. This is a 15" body, 12 fret body join with cutaway. I call it my MK-Ultra model, because hey, when your initials are MK why not?

Let's start with the drums. Some of the challenges I want to overcome from version 1 of the tongue drum guitar is to have more control over the pitch of the drums, and to have them ring more clearly. I found in version 1 that once the drums were mounted to the sides they sounded very different, and their pitches changed in random ways resulting in much carving and fiddling after the fact.

After much research, and making lots of standalone drums, I found that tongue drums sound best when they have a contained air cavity that is appropriate for the note they want to make.



This is the opposite of what we try to do when building guitars. A guitar sounds best when the resonant frequency of its air cavity falls between two notes. If the body of a guitar lands right on a concert pitch you will get a wolf note when you fret that note.

So, I got the crazy idea to try to mount a contained drum inside a guitar body. Well, mostly contained, it does need an air hole to have a good sound. This of course raises a lot of questions about what impact that will have on the guitar's main job - which is to sound like a guitar. To find out, I made two bodies of the same size, with as similar materials as I could, one with drums, and one without. Here are the rims before the tops and backs went on:



I made a YouTube video outlining my findings:



If you like Helmholtz resonators, bigfoot, and improvising on Giant Steps I encourage you to watch it. For those that find those topics distasteful, the main findings are that mounting a resonator within another resonator (a contained tongue drum in a guitar for instance) doesn't have an impact on the larger resonator. It's weird, and not really what I was expecting. I did not finish these bodies and put strings on them, so it's entirely possible that it will sound terrible when done. I'm OK with that, because in general it's always possible that a guitar will sound terrible when completed. It's my jazz musician roots showing, I'm totally fine at this point in life with doing crazy experiments in public.

Here is the drum design I am proceeding with:



Each drum has its own resonating chamber, and we are going to suspend it from the sides of the guitar inside the body.

Here are the completed rims for the Artisan guitar:



The sides are Myrtle, Padauk, and Myrtle, with solid maple linings. The headblock has some mounting locations for the drums.



More to come....

[morgankelsey]

Mounting the drums is pretty tricky. Their walls vibrate, and if anything is touching them you will hear a nasty buzz and they lose their resonance. I have them floating with 1/8" of airspace between the top of the drums and the sides. Using structured (laminated) sides helps make this possible as the sides have very little flex so I'm not worried about them starting to touch the drums down the road.

The drums are mounted to the head block with a 1/4" dowel, and there are supports glued to the sides and linings that hold the bottom of the drums with another dowel. There are solid blocks within the drums at these locations.



Here is a closeup of the head block.



The drums have a raised striking surface that is exposed through the side.





They really sound great, I will post a sound sample when the box is closed.

[dcn]

Intriguing and impressive, Morgan! Look forward to seeing its completion.

[Dogma]

Quite interesting. Look forward to hearing one played.
And MK-Ultra...very good!

[TomB'sox]

Amazing work and so much work just going into figuring out the design and the experimentation. Really excited to hear the outcome of all of this mad scientist stuff!

[morgankelsey]

Originally Posted by dcn

Intriguing and impressive, Morgan! Look forward to seeing its completion.

Thanks, dcn, I'm looking forward to it too!

Originally Posted by Dogma

Quite interesting. Look forward to hearing one played.
And MK-Ultra...very good!

Tangentially related to MK-Ultra (maybe a lot, maybe a little), here is a picture of me with the CIO for the United States taken just a few months ago.



I kid you not, that is her, and here she's thanking me for the work I did as part of the MK-Ultra program, the residual effects of which are still flashing back to me. She's actually an old friend of my wife, and we saw her at a wedding (hence my fancy threads). She really is the US CIO though, and a truly great human being.

Originally Posted by TomB'sox

Amazing work and so much work just going into figuring out the design and the experimentation. Really excited to hear the outcome of all of this mad scientist stuff!

Thanks, Tom, I find the experimenting and figuring out parts to be just as enjoyable as the making of the final thing.

The rosette for this guitar is one of my kumiko style rosettes. Here it is in the early stages.



These are a LOT of hand work and take quite a while to make. This is almost done:



It really is a lot of little pieces. Here it is installed:



I filled this one with resin once installed, as I'm going to be brushing on a varnish finish. It has a nice 3d quality that pictures don't really show. If it's unfilled the only finish option really is french polishing, which I love to do but isn't durable enough for a percussive fingerstyle guitar.

The box will be closed soon, and a sound sample will follow!

[morgankelsey]

Boxed is closed, and binding is done!

Front and back:





Here is the cutaway point front and back, I got such a nice join and grain continuity on the tip I'm going to leave it be:





And up at the neck joint end:

[j. Kinnaird]

beautiful miters and very creative work

[Steve Kinnaird]

Agree with my brother I do. Impressed I am!
Verrry clean work.

Steve

[Tim McKnight]

Dude, you have some serious woodworking chops! Glad to see that some of your dad's skills rubbed off.

[dcn]

As Steve K noted, such clean work! Beautiful - and gotta love myrtle, too.

[morgankelsey]

Originally Posted by j. Kinnaird

beautiful miters and very creative work

Thanks so much, John!

Originally Posted by Steve Kinnaird

Agree with my brother I do. Impressed I am!
Verrry clean work.

Thankful I am

Originally Posted by Tim McKnight

Dude, you have some serious woodworking chops! Glad to see that some of your dad's skills rubbed off.

Thanks, Tim, my dad lives near Harrisburg, I expect he will be coming by the show if you have any old issues of Fine Woodworking you want autographed (B&W years only)

Originally Posted by dcn

As Steve K noted, such clean work! Beautiful - and gotta love myrtle, too.

Thanks, dcn, the sides have some pretty deep curl, I can't wait to get them under finish.

[Guitars44me]

Very beautiful and SO clean

Interested to hear it!!!

Bang the drum all day

And the guitar too

Paul

[morgankelsey]

Originally Posted by Guitars44me

Very beautiful and SO clean

Interested to hear it!!!

Bang the drum all day

And the guitar too

Paul

Thanks, Paul! I'll do a demo when it's complete, or if you are going to Artisan please stop by and try it.

For the endgraft, heel cap and backstrap I'm using the same Sapele I made the purflings from. This piece has a nice "hair-like" quality to it :-/ there's probably a nicer way to put it. "The flowing locks of a fair maiden":



The neck fit went well, and I got a smooth transition from neck to body on the cutaway side.





Neck carving came next!



Here are some details of the completed neck carve:





The headstock face is Ebony, with more of the Sapele purfling:



The backstrap is Sapele:



Here it is wiped with naptha, really pops!



And that brings us to the magic place of woodwork complete, which is a good thing because the Artisan show will be here soon!







Now for the sanding.....lots of sanding, and then on to finish. I'll be brushing on a Uralkyd varnish for this one.

Thanks for reading!

[Carpinteria]

Beautiful fit and design. Your woodworking skills are impressive! Dave