Hello everyone, today we're hosting the first part of the guitar building diary of an artisan luthier from Città di Castello (Italy), in which he will describe the process behind the creation of a guitar from scratch!
Here Luigi Valenti from Unique-CustomGuitars, I handcraft custom and numbered electric guitars under
request; I've been asked from Atoragon to write a little diary,
following each step of the construction process wich brings from a
chunk of wood to a proper instrument, with a beatiful sound,
perfectly setted and which satisfies its owner's musical needs.
By the way, this is not meant to be an
online tutorial on how-to-build a guitar, I'm not a teacher and also
it will take much more than a single little diary to fulfill all the
topics and building methods; I'm here to show you what's behind the
planning and building of a brand new instrument made by an artisan,
and to give you some advices on tonewoods properties and on how the
components of a guitar affects its tone, with the aim to help you
choosing your next guitar with a little bit more of
knowledge-on-what-you're-going-to-buy (hopefully!).
So, let's start! This is the building
process of the Unique #004:
CUSTOMER'S REQUESTS:
This time I've
been asked to build a seven string guitar with a fenderish sound and
shape (Stratocaster); the customer has also made some other request:
- A neck shape as close as possible to a Fender Stratocaster neck.
- Maple neck and fretboard.
- Scratchplate.
- Tremolo bridge.
- Half-scalloped fingerboard from XII to XXIV fret.
- Possibility to switch from humbucker to single coil.
Nice! I've already
have some ideas...
I would never stop
writing on this topic, so I'll be very simple, but hopefully not
banal: to a certain type of wood that you choose corresponds a certain sound that your guitar will have. How big is the difference? It depends. Let's say that
roughly the wood affects from the 30% to a 40% of your total guitar
sound, the rest is done by the hardware, frets, nuts, string type and
gauges, electronics, and obviously the pickups, which are the biggest
players in this equation.
Now, speaking
about bolt-on and set-in constructions, of this 30-40% the main work
is done by the neck, this because the strings vibrate for a 70% of
their lenght over the neck itself, so the string vibrations are
transferred mostly here, instead of the body! If you take a neck-thru
body construction you'll then have that basically all the strings
lenght is over the neck wood (or woods!) and the two body wings and
eventually the top (if thick) will affect the final tone in a much minor percentage.
You also have to
know that wood acts as a passive equalizer, in other words it cuts
out some frequencies of a given vibrating string. What frequencies
are cut out depends on the type of wood, basically we could say that
hard woods have a tendency to cut out the low frequencies, giving a
bright sound and good attack (hard maple) while a soft wood such as
basswood cuts highs and some middles, giving a bass sound and a
not-so-clear attack; then there are woods such as mahogany (wich I
love) that are pretty much neutral, but with a tendency to boost low
frequencies, which gives a good attack and sustain, with a very
warm sound...
I should stop here because it could become a very long
topic.
Other
characteristics that should to be kept in mind are the elasticity
coefficient (this is very important on acoustic and classic
soundboards, for istance) and the amount of resin and oils (rosewood
has a darker sound compared with ebony not only due to its lower
density, but also because it's an oil-rich wood).
With all this (and
so much more) in mind, lets see what we can do for #004: as I said
before the customer wanted a fenderish sound, and his choice to have
a maple fretboard and neck are coherent with his whishes; as I do
like high figured woods, I'll go for a flamed maple neck and
fretboard. Plus we have to keep in mind that flamed maple could be a
little bit unstable, compared with classic hard rock maple, and the
added tension due to the seventh string might make things even worse.
To avoid problems, I'll go with a 3 pieces laminated flamed maple
neck; remember that a laminated neck (if properly glued) is always
stiffer, stronger, and more stable than a single piece neck, this
because on a ply-neck the single parts are glued togheter in a way
that each piece balances the tendency to move of the others.
What about the
body? If I'd be scholastic, I should go for an alder or ash body, but
I want something very special: some month ago I have found a beautiful
one piece flamed maple body blank that would be perfect for this
situation, so we'll have an all flamed maple guitar!
Talking about
the sound, this brings to a brighter sound than a standard Strat',
but we will compensate this with the pick ups choice and an accurate
selection of the wiring components. Also remember that a single body
piece (especially if highly figured) could be very unstable; to avoid
this, the blank I have chosed is very old, and it has been left to dry for
more than 10 years, giving it the time to stabilize properly; so in this case, there won't be any problem.
Good! The wood has
been chosen, next time we'll talk about the construction method, pick
ups and wiring, and shape, then we can start with the real work!
See
ya, and check out my brand new page
www.facebook.com/uniquecustomguitars
!!
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