Laminated Archtop Construction

The timber used is often spruce e g.

Laminated archtop construction. Grez guitars r c. 33s guitar body construction kit. Old harmony guitars for example used laminated and occasionally solid birch as opposed to solid spruce. The video below is a timelapse of a luthier building an archtop guitar.

It shows the work that goes into archtop construction and is a good illustration of why high end archtops cost as much as they do. Drawings are included of his tail and head blocks his neck tenon and locking system and there are comprehensive chapters on all the aspects of guitar making. The majority of his guitars are 16 inchers. This book describes in some detail how jim english makes his laminated archtop guitars with dimensioned drawings of specific parts and the jigs he uses.

Many players find the 16 inch body size more comfortable to play than the 17 or 18 inch. Part 1 of 2. Thanks for tuning in. Let s do the duck walk.

We are a small team creating laminated archtop body parts for diy guitar building. Solomon finds this size ideal. Another guitar from the same era was the gretsch chet atkins model aka the 6120. The 6120 also had a sound post a feature that plenty of archtop players added to their guitars as the volume levels increased during the 50s.

Watch ken walk us through the best practices when trimming down a laminated archtop guitar plate. This provides the guitar with the resonance required to project volume and sustain. Both of these instruments used laminated maple for the top back and sides. Sitka spruce or a similarly strong yet lightweight resonant timber.

Barry grzebik of grez guitars demonstrates the traditional method of building laminated archtop guitars using r c. Laminated archtop construction powered flat and radiused disc sander miniature thickness sander back and side sets click on the thumbnail to enlarge. Guitar kit styles for musical genres archtop guitar construction and design. Allen archtop construction part 1 of 2 duration.

Traditional acoustic guitars feature a flat top most commonly referred to as the soundboard.