Green Acoustic (For Shane)

My friend Shayne, at the end of last year, led me to his house to show me an old classical acoustic guitar. The top had been partially sanded (the finish was pretty terrible); the bridge was missing, it had a crappy plastic nut and the saddle was only attached by the screws. There was also a crack through part of the headstock. Putting aside all these things, though; the neck was very straight, most of the frets were level, and apparently it had taken steel strings in the past despite the lack of any kind of obvious truss rod or other neck reinforcement. My mission was to put a new finish on the top and headstock, glue the crack, carve a new nut and bridge and add a pickup to get the sweet steel strings singing out of amplifiers. This is the finished guitar: (apologies for not posting any work-in-progress pics, I don't actually own any sort of camera at the moment)

This took me way too long to complete. I was working on it (on and off) for about eight months. I learned a lot in that time though, and next time a project like this will take about three weeks.

The largest part of this project was the finishing work; all the sanding and painting and lacquering and so on. First the guitar was sanded to a nice smooth 600 grit, then the first thin coat (a mix of green acrylic paint and oli-based lacquer) went on. Instead of dissolving into the laquer (which would make it more of a stain) the tiny flecks of green pigment caught on the grain of the wood, bringing out interesing patterns. Even if the wood on a guitar is really boring, I still think it's better to try and bring out whatever's there rather than to just completely cover it in paint. The rest of the finishing went like this: 1st coat sanded to 600, second coat of paint/lacquer applied, second coat sanded to 600, rose painted, clear coat of lacquer applied, and then a final few touches of sanding before a final coat of lacquer (4 coats all up). All coats were applied with a 1 inch paintbrush.

The paint for the second coat, rather than just the one hue of green acrylic, was a mix that my sister came up with (starting from blue and yellow) that resulted in a few different hues of green. This new paint (still acrylic) reacted with the lacquer that was used, resulting in a beautiful, chaotic splitting between the two liquids. This didn't happen so much on the body of the guitar, but on the headstock the effect is very visible. In future I would like to replicate this effect; I think its chaotic nature speaks a lot for the amount of possible outputs a musical instrument can have. This is also far more preferable to having a generic solid green with a manufacturer's logo plastered all over it.

The crack in the headstock (still visible from a few angles) was fixed with a drill and a dowel and a clamp. First a fairly sizeable hole was drilled most of the way through the headstock (from the side). Then a dowel was made from some leftover wood (old booms from the tricopter project). After that, the crack and dowel were carefully smothered with wood glue and the dowel was inserted, hammered into place and then cut off. The whole lot was then clamped tight for several days to set. In the end it came out well, and after the tuning hardware went back in you wouldn't see the fix unless you were looking for it. In future I would like to mix up some stain in the same colour as the instrument and get fixes like this to become virtually undetectable.

The rose around the soundhole was painted with black acrylic after the second coat of green/lacquer went on. The design is based on a pattern I've been doodling since my early teens. It nicely mirrors the chaotic effect on the headstock. It's an algorithmic pattern, and maybe someday I'll try and write some code that can copy it. Also in this photo, at the top by the side of the pickup, you can see a small mark my dremel made when it slipped while cutting the hole for the pickup mount. This was after what was going to be the final clear coat (coat 3). This mark (after much swearing and a short break to get some food and cool off) was then sanded down and laquered over with the final coat of clear.

The nut and bridge were hand-carved with various rasps, knives and files from rimu offcuts. The string spacing for the nut was simply taken from the original nut, while the spacing for the bridge came from the holes drilled in the stoptail in the saddle. Both of these pieces came out really well, and it was a blast having unimpeded control over the action and the intonation. The latter of these was difficult to file into the bridge, but it was so satisfying that first time that all the strings played in tune, all the way up the neck. They weren't exactly in tune (and they weren't tested with a tuner) but I felt that the intonation was good enough for most players' purposes. The saddle was glued down with high-strength Bostik epoxy glue after the third coat. Next time I'll use less glue; it's still visible along the edges. It needed to be well stuck down on this guitar in order to hold the tension of the steel strings without coming up off the top. The saddle is also bolted on (there are nuts on the underside, real pain to get your hand to them to hold them still) which was done carefully during the gluing. The holes for the screw heads were filled with little pine dowel cut-offs. The black dots are just sharpie (in future these will be plastic or paint).

There was a bit of run-off of from the green/lacquer combination that got into a few places they shouldn't have been. Here it was sanded carefully and then buffed to within an inch of it's life. One spot here goes almost all the way through the original stain. It still doesn't look as glassy-smooth as the other surfaces, but it'll have to do. It doesn't affect the playability of the the instrument at all (in fact, it feels smoother; in a way that means you can move faster) but aesthetically it lets the instrument down a little. In future I would like to be able to amke this kind of mistake invisible. Unfortunately, what I think that means is that I'd have to sand down the whole lot, back to the wood, and start from scratch with a new stain and a new finish. I hardly found time to do as much as I've accomplished here; proper luthiers must find it difficult to put a small enough amount of time into their builds that they can actually profit from them. Assuming that the luthier's time is worth ~$20/hour, a custom guitar could very easily cost $2000+, and that's not even adding parts, tools and materials.

The pickup I chose is a cheap (~$10-$15 NZ) one from a bulk supplier on eBay. It's a lipstick tube pickup, which means that it's made from a bar magnet (which goes the length of the pickup), wrapped in copper wire, and then slid inside a steel case. These lovely chromed cases used to be how lipstick was packaged. Conventional pickups use a pole-piece magnet for each string, with a coil around the whole lot of them. The conventional design can provide a higher output theoretically, but in practice they're often around the same as these lipstick tube ones. The lipstick tube pickup also has a really lovely tone, with plenty of bass, good clarity in the mids, and a faint coil-distortion sound (you're gonna have to trust me, this is the most descriptive way I can put it) in the highs. This particular pickup was placed on the guitar in such a position that it captures the roundness and fullness of the whole body of the instrument, as well as the characteristic twang the steel strings make nearer to the bridge. It's also in a good spot on the instrument because the hole that needs to be made for the pickup is minimised when the pickup also intersects the soundhole. This picture (above) is of the output jack. The red plastic came from a nerf gun (the back of a Magnus slide, if memory serves).

After being strung up properly for the first time, the guitar was tested extensively for dead notes on the neck. The level-ness of the frets was also checked. Every note sang beautfully except for anything on the 12th and 13th frets, which either buzzed, played the 14th fret, or simply made no sound at all. The 13th fret is not often used, but the 12th fret is a definite neccessity. The source of this problem was that the 14th fret was really, really high, and that the 13th fret was unusally low. Every other fret was pretty much exactly level. The 14th fret was filed down (it was worse on the treble side) in an effort to render the 12th and 13th frets useful again. This can be seen above (the 14th fret is the shiny golden one). There are some unfortunate file marks on the fingerboard too. In future I will be a lot more careful. After a lot of filing, testing, and more filing, the 12th fret worked perfectly across all strings. The 13th was fine on the bass side, but still a bit buzzy on the treble. The high F on the thinnest string still played an F#. After a lot of thought I left it alone, because to get it perfect I would either have to level and dress every fret after the problem one, or go all-out and just replace the problem frets altogether. With no fretwire on hand (let alone any matching fretwire) and barely even the right files for the job, I decided to leave it. It wasn't too bad for the first fret work under my belt.

Finally, this is the back of the headstock. I made an M (my name is Morgan, figure it out) out of the same nerf plastic I used for the jack plate, and stuck it on the back of the headstock. The repaired crack is also visible here; If I had had the time I would have sanded everything back and re-finished the lot of it. The strings I used (if it even matters) were a set of Rotosound 10s, with a 42 on the bottom, so as not to stress the neck too greatly.

Working on this guitar was great because I learned a lot while being granted the freedom to do whatever I liked with it. I transformed an unlabeled, forgotten instrument into a unique tool for future creation, and then slapped a pickup in it and "tested" it with a whole lot of sludge and a big stack of amplifiers. I'm mostly happy with it, but there are things I'd do differently in future projects. Mostly I'm just happy to have made something that will last, and that will multiply my creative efforts with endless future musics.

I made some duct tape straps!

Okay, I've actually been doing this for quite a while. It sort of happens naturally when there's a lack of guitar straps around and there's duct tape. I've made about 20 or so in the past few years. If my memory serves correctly the first one I made was back in 2012 during a particularly slow gig with the Whitireia Live Sound guys. Good times. Anyway, here are some straps. Build description is further down too.

 This is my most recent one, It's got a blue stripe down the middle and some sweet glow-in-the-dark zebra tape down either side. The zebra stuff is top quality too.

Here's a close-up. Often these straps aren't exactly perfect, but for the msot part they look good and do their job. Definitely beats ruining your guitar's finish by taping a busted or old strap directly to the instrument, while still keeping your accessories affordable (I'm not paying $40+ for a nice new leather one, as much as I would love one).

 Apologies for potato camerawork. This all-blue strap has straplocks on the ends so that it stays on my heavy doom bass. Been using it for about a year non-stop now and there aren't any signs of wear.

Black/silver, fairly standard. This one was wearing down a bit on my standard-tuning bass so I doubled it over and made a new hole. These straps don't have an adjustable length, I just measure the distance I want with a piece of string and then make them. I often find myself just copying other straps' lengths too.

Build description: The strap is made from four pieces of duct tape. Two are facing each other, and the other two wrap around the outside edges and meet in the centre. Width is defined by the tape itself. The outside pieces wrapping around to meet on the centre make the edges feel great, as well as strengthening the strap and making it feel thick enough. Colours don't matter obviously, but I like to keep it simple; it shouldn't detract from the instrument but a plain black strap is too dull. My zebra strap was pushing it. The easiest order of operations that I've found is this:

Find the length of your strap. Add a bit of excess for adjustments and holes later.

Pull the first piece from the roll, and stick it to the ceiling by one end.

Pull the second piece from the roll, and (carefully making sure to line it up and to avoid creases) stick it to the first. The two pieces have their sticky sides together. Getting it wrong at this point can be fixed later, but attention to detail will have better results.

Pull your third piece from the roll and tack one corner of it to the other at the ceiling. Half of this piece should be hanging off the side. When you've finished sticking it to the first two all the way down, start pulling it round and sticking it to the other side of the strap too. It should now coat one half of the strap, on both sides, all the way along.

For the fourth piece, repeat what was done for the third, making sure to line it up down to centre. If you want to leave a stripe in the middle, let the first two layers show through by putting a gap between pieces 3 and 4.

Un-tack it from the ceiling. Test fit it with your body and your guitar. Cut the holes with a sharp knife, making sure you go through every layer. Make your holes only just big enough to fit onto the strap nuts, so that it's really hard to get on (and really hard to take off). If you move these around a lot (between guitars) their wear out quickly. For the ends, I tried doing curved ones like conventional guitar straps, but I wanted to coat the edges so I ended up with a lot a small bits of tape conforming to the curves. Honestly I reckon this is just a waste of time. Now I just fold the end over and maybe add one more piece for added strength before cutting the holes. Square ends actually look nicer too, in my opinion.

I hope this was interesing and prompted you to think about the ergonomics and aesthetics of instrument accessories.