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Old 02-10-2018, 01:18 PM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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Default 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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Last edited by Tad Brown; 01-13-2023 at 01:02 PM. Reason: updated
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Old 02-10-2018, 01:35 PM
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Good looking stuff Tad! Look forward to seeing you at LaConner.
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Old 02-10-2018, 02:09 PM
Bluemonk Bluemonk is offline
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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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Old 02-10-2018, 02:48 PM
Halcyon/Tinker Halcyon/Tinker is offline
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Nice!

.....
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Old 02-10-2018, 03:11 PM
LouieAtienza LouieAtienza is offline
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Sweet! Love the unique sound holes!
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Old 02-10-2018, 06:27 PM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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Originally Posted by nacluth View Post
Good looking stuff Tad! Look forward to seeing you at LaConner.
Thanks Ryan, really looking forward to checking out what you guys are building too. See you at the show.
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Old 02-10-2018, 06:31 PM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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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.
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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Old 02-10-2018, 06:32 PM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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Nice!

.....
Thank you.
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Old 02-10-2018, 06:33 PM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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Sweet! Love the unique sound holes!
Thanks so much Louie
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Old 02-10-2018, 06:41 PM
Tenzin Tenzin is offline
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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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Old 02-10-2018, 07:00 PM
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Very handsome guitar Tad. Beautiful work.
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Old 02-11-2018, 03:47 AM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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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
No problem, I like highly figured woods, dry, seasoned, well quartered with minimal runout.

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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Old 02-11-2018, 03:48 AM
Tad Brown Tad Brown is offline
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Very handsome guitar Tad. Beautiful work.
Thanks Paul
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Old 02-11-2018, 06:51 AM
JSDenvir JSDenvir is offline
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Nice stuff. Don’t you love that Carruth scraper?

Steve
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Old 02-11-2018, 08:58 AM
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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…
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