Post by nkforster on Jun 14, 2021 11:19:29 GMT
I really like building "dreads" and have made a few in the last couple of years. But recently I thought I'd try to kill a couple of birds with the same stone - make a smaller D style guitar and make a new Session King guitar.
The first lot of Session King guitars were pretty unusual – very heavy, with thin soundboards and a vintage “relic” finish. Great guitars but a bit too unusual to catch on. And they were so affordable, I couldn’t really make a decent living making them. So I stopped.
But recently I’ve been thinking about making a new Session King 6 string. And this is what I came up with:
This is a new shape, based on my Model D. Its called the Model E. I was up all night thinking of that one. It has a Standard soundboard, hence the SS. The SK stands for Session King – stripped down and simple. So its a Model E-SS-SK.
This guitar has a Western red cedar top, Queensland maple back and sides, New Guinea rosewood neck and ebony fretboard, bridge and head veneers.
Like my Session King tenor guitars, only the top is bound, which looks really nice and clean. Yet again this helps make the guitar more affordable. The standard version won’t have the lovely ebony head veneer on the back of the headstock like the photo above, but you can add that as an upgrade if you’d like it.
The finish is a very good, high quality satin finish to keep the price lower than my regular work. The case that it comes in is a Hiscox Pro. A decent affordable case. The guitar is shipped in a custom made plywood shipping crate for added security.
Despite being a “budget” model with a lovely satin finish the guitar has hand-polished evo gold frets with semi hemispherical fret ends. And the 25.4” scale Sri Lankan ebony fretboard is bound with rocklite. The tuners are the same as my more expensive work – Gotoh 510s.
So this guitar isn’t as cheap as the first lot of Session King guitars I made a few years back. But it is significantly cheaper than my regular work.
I hope to make a video with the guitar in a couple of weeks’ time. I'm sending it to Ian and Tom. Should be good.
Nigel
www.nkforsterguitars.com
The first lot of Session King guitars were pretty unusual – very heavy, with thin soundboards and a vintage “relic” finish. Great guitars but a bit too unusual to catch on. And they were so affordable, I couldn’t really make a decent living making them. So I stopped.
But recently I’ve been thinking about making a new Session King 6 string. And this is what I came up with:
This is a new shape, based on my Model D. Its called the Model E. I was up all night thinking of that one. It has a Standard soundboard, hence the SS. The SK stands for Session King – stripped down and simple. So its a Model E-SS-SK.
This guitar has a Western red cedar top, Queensland maple back and sides, New Guinea rosewood neck and ebony fretboard, bridge and head veneers.
Like my Session King tenor guitars, only the top is bound, which looks really nice and clean. Yet again this helps make the guitar more affordable. The standard version won’t have the lovely ebony head veneer on the back of the headstock like the photo above, but you can add that as an upgrade if you’d like it.
The finish is a very good, high quality satin finish to keep the price lower than my regular work. The case that it comes in is a Hiscox Pro. A decent affordable case. The guitar is shipped in a custom made plywood shipping crate for added security.
Despite being a “budget” model with a lovely satin finish the guitar has hand-polished evo gold frets with semi hemispherical fret ends. And the 25.4” scale Sri Lankan ebony fretboard is bound with rocklite. The tuners are the same as my more expensive work – Gotoh 510s.
So this guitar isn’t as cheap as the first lot of Session King guitars I made a few years back. But it is significantly cheaper than my regular work.
I hope to make a video with the guitar in a couple of weeks’ time. I'm sending it to Ian and Tom. Should be good.
Nigel
www.nkforsterguitars.com