Post by scripsit on Sept 6, 2013 8:40:09 GMT
I’ve always been a bit of a gear head, not so much because of collector mania but because I’d prefer that any issues with the music come down to me and my skills rather than inferior kit. When this acoustic guitar thing bit me hard I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, at first. I couldn’t afford the top of the range factory guitars available locally, and they didn’t seem to be designed for the sort of music that interested me anyway.
Initially, it was all about a better and more practical guitar for fingerstyle: wider neck, long scale for alternate tunings and the capacity to deliver some overtones and dynamic range similar to that I heard on recordings by people like Martin Simpson and Al Petteway. Plus it had to look right.
I heard some of Jack’s guitars online and on some commercial recordings, and I also liked the look of the different instruments he had on his original elderly and slightly chaotic website. All of our communications were by email, and the first one was basically asking him if he could make a guitar as described in the previous paragraph, in pretty much exactly those terms. He was confident that his 0000 would fill the requirement and so we went from there.
He suggested that he had some nice Cocobolo in stock and talked about a 650mm scale length, a smidge longer than the Martin long scale. I’d originally planned for a figured Blackwood back and sides (it is an Australian guitar, after all), but was happy to go along with his advice that the Cocobolo would have more of a rosewood sound (because, of course, it is actually a rosewood). He advised I go for the wider waisted version of his 0000, to make for a bigger box. I’d already settled on 0.56-0.13 strings, which didn’t seem to be controversial. He sent through photographs of Cocobolo sets to choose from, some full sized drawings of various possibilities, and asked me to consider different cutaway shapes and some of the other aesthetics he wanted me to decide on.
I spent several very enjoyable hours with the various drawings laid out on the floor, occasionally laying actual guitars over them to try and establish what this thing would look and feel like. I chose a Cocobolo back set with sapwood on one edge so that I could have a skunk stripe down the centre of the joined plate.
The cutaway shape I settled on, and his standard bridge, are strongly influenced by his interest in art deco designs (and gypsy jazz guitars in particular). The headstock is one of his standard designs for paddleheads, and the only bling I asked for is the ornate rosette, chosen from several sample images he sent through.
I got lots of photographs from him during the build, from the plate joining stage on. He uses solid linings, a fairly massive neck block and upper bout structure, and his personal variation of X bracing. In later conversations I asked him about glue, and he said that he uses Titebond for almost everything (because he once had some bracing let go with hide glue), but uses hide glue for the tapered dovetail neck joint.
He posted across to me some samples of different woods he had so that I could choose bindings and purflings. This is where I got the notion of the Rose Mahogany, which is at least one native species incorporated into the build, and I thought the red colour would set off the darker Cocobolo nicely.
I bought a Fishman Matrix Blend pickup system on eBay and sent it across to him (he lives and works in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, which is several hundred kilometres from where I live). The plain chrome Gotoh tuners are part of the simple approach I wanted, which means also that there are no position markers on the face of the fretboard (although I couldn’t cope without dots on the side), and no scratchplate. The fingerboard itself is unbound.
After several months Spira #224 arrived in its brand new Hiscox case. His standard offer was that I should play it for as long as I liked before deciding whether or not it fulfilled the requirements, and only then should I pay him. I transferred the money to him the day after I received the guitar.
It’s a comfortable guitar to play, even with the big box, because the waist is sufficiently nipped in to bring the height down as you sling your right arm over the lower bout. As Jack warned, it’s a heavy guitar (the Cocobolo is incredibly dense) but the rich overtones you can get even without digging in seem to confound the often heard theory that the only good guitar is a light guitar.
The neck is lovely to work with; there’s plenty of width for crowded left hand shapes, and I find the large fretboard radius (almost flat) helps with accurate finger placement. Playing this guitar has confirmed that I much prefer the traditional stiletto heel at the neck-body join in contrast to the currently fashionable small flat lump; it makes left thumb positioning easier when going up past the fourteenth fret.
The scale length is just right: low C tunings feel rock solid with the 0.13 strings, and I don’t find any issues with the tension in normal tuning. I like the treble strings to push back a little, which I think makes pulloffs and trills easier. The only disadvantage is that the grooves on my left hand callouses get fairly deep if I have a couple of days of enthusiastic string bending.
For a while this guitar had to handle all of the tunings I use, because I got a bit obsessed with playing it, but more recently it spends 90% of its time in DADGAD, for which it is well suited. I was always suspicious of the theories that guitars ‘wake up’ after a few months of playing (have you noticed the amount of BS that surrounds most aspects of guitar construction and playing?), but either I got a lot better very quickly or something altered over the first six months or so. Certainly I now get very long sustain from single strings and there seems to be a good volume match between bass and treble.
It cost a lot less than any of the factory guitars I was considering before this started.
I like the way it looks, too.
Scale: 650 mm
Nut Width: 45 mm
Lower Bout width: 400 mm
Waist width: 250 mm
Frets to body: 14
Back/Sides: Cocobolo
Top Wood: Sitka Spruce
Fingerboard: Ebony
Neck Wood: Mahogany
Bridge: Indian Rosewood
Rosette: Jarrah, Sycamore, Black Bean, Abalone
Binding: Rose Mahogany
Headplate: Cocobolo and Ebony
Tuners: Gotoh
Pickup: Fishman Matrix Blend (combined undersaddle pickup and internal microphone)
Next time I restring I’ll try to do a recording of this guitar, bare, without EQ or reverb, and post it on the forum. If people are interested I’ll post up a similar summary of the Spira slothead I commissioned from Jack more recently.
All images are from photos emailed to me during the build except the finished headstock: I took this a few minutes ago using my iPad.
Finished guitar ready to leave Jack Spira's workshop
Bridge and rosette
Guitar back
End graft (before pickup and endpin installation)
Cutaway
Bindings
Headstock
Initially, it was all about a better and more practical guitar for fingerstyle: wider neck, long scale for alternate tunings and the capacity to deliver some overtones and dynamic range similar to that I heard on recordings by people like Martin Simpson and Al Petteway. Plus it had to look right.
I heard some of Jack’s guitars online and on some commercial recordings, and I also liked the look of the different instruments he had on his original elderly and slightly chaotic website. All of our communications were by email, and the first one was basically asking him if he could make a guitar as described in the previous paragraph, in pretty much exactly those terms. He was confident that his 0000 would fill the requirement and so we went from there.
He suggested that he had some nice Cocobolo in stock and talked about a 650mm scale length, a smidge longer than the Martin long scale. I’d originally planned for a figured Blackwood back and sides (it is an Australian guitar, after all), but was happy to go along with his advice that the Cocobolo would have more of a rosewood sound (because, of course, it is actually a rosewood). He advised I go for the wider waisted version of his 0000, to make for a bigger box. I’d already settled on 0.56-0.13 strings, which didn’t seem to be controversial. He sent through photographs of Cocobolo sets to choose from, some full sized drawings of various possibilities, and asked me to consider different cutaway shapes and some of the other aesthetics he wanted me to decide on.
I spent several very enjoyable hours with the various drawings laid out on the floor, occasionally laying actual guitars over them to try and establish what this thing would look and feel like. I chose a Cocobolo back set with sapwood on one edge so that I could have a skunk stripe down the centre of the joined plate.
The cutaway shape I settled on, and his standard bridge, are strongly influenced by his interest in art deco designs (and gypsy jazz guitars in particular). The headstock is one of his standard designs for paddleheads, and the only bling I asked for is the ornate rosette, chosen from several sample images he sent through.
I got lots of photographs from him during the build, from the plate joining stage on. He uses solid linings, a fairly massive neck block and upper bout structure, and his personal variation of X bracing. In later conversations I asked him about glue, and he said that he uses Titebond for almost everything (because he once had some bracing let go with hide glue), but uses hide glue for the tapered dovetail neck joint.
He posted across to me some samples of different woods he had so that I could choose bindings and purflings. This is where I got the notion of the Rose Mahogany, which is at least one native species incorporated into the build, and I thought the red colour would set off the darker Cocobolo nicely.
I bought a Fishman Matrix Blend pickup system on eBay and sent it across to him (he lives and works in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, which is several hundred kilometres from where I live). The plain chrome Gotoh tuners are part of the simple approach I wanted, which means also that there are no position markers on the face of the fretboard (although I couldn’t cope without dots on the side), and no scratchplate. The fingerboard itself is unbound.
After several months Spira #224 arrived in its brand new Hiscox case. His standard offer was that I should play it for as long as I liked before deciding whether or not it fulfilled the requirements, and only then should I pay him. I transferred the money to him the day after I received the guitar.
It’s a comfortable guitar to play, even with the big box, because the waist is sufficiently nipped in to bring the height down as you sling your right arm over the lower bout. As Jack warned, it’s a heavy guitar (the Cocobolo is incredibly dense) but the rich overtones you can get even without digging in seem to confound the often heard theory that the only good guitar is a light guitar.
The neck is lovely to work with; there’s plenty of width for crowded left hand shapes, and I find the large fretboard radius (almost flat) helps with accurate finger placement. Playing this guitar has confirmed that I much prefer the traditional stiletto heel at the neck-body join in contrast to the currently fashionable small flat lump; it makes left thumb positioning easier when going up past the fourteenth fret.
The scale length is just right: low C tunings feel rock solid with the 0.13 strings, and I don’t find any issues with the tension in normal tuning. I like the treble strings to push back a little, which I think makes pulloffs and trills easier. The only disadvantage is that the grooves on my left hand callouses get fairly deep if I have a couple of days of enthusiastic string bending.
For a while this guitar had to handle all of the tunings I use, because I got a bit obsessed with playing it, but more recently it spends 90% of its time in DADGAD, for which it is well suited. I was always suspicious of the theories that guitars ‘wake up’ after a few months of playing (have you noticed the amount of BS that surrounds most aspects of guitar construction and playing?), but either I got a lot better very quickly or something altered over the first six months or so. Certainly I now get very long sustain from single strings and there seems to be a good volume match between bass and treble.
It cost a lot less than any of the factory guitars I was considering before this started.
I like the way it looks, too.
Scale: 650 mm
Nut Width: 45 mm
Lower Bout width: 400 mm
Waist width: 250 mm
Frets to body: 14
Back/Sides: Cocobolo
Top Wood: Sitka Spruce
Fingerboard: Ebony
Neck Wood: Mahogany
Bridge: Indian Rosewood
Rosette: Jarrah, Sycamore, Black Bean, Abalone
Binding: Rose Mahogany
Headplate: Cocobolo and Ebony
Tuners: Gotoh
Pickup: Fishman Matrix Blend (combined undersaddle pickup and internal microphone)
Next time I restring I’ll try to do a recording of this guitar, bare, without EQ or reverb, and post it on the forum. If people are interested I’ll post up a similar summary of the Spira slothead I commissioned from Jack more recently.
All images are from photos emailed to me during the build except the finished headstock: I took this a few minutes ago using my iPad.
Finished guitar ready to leave Jack Spira's workshop
Bridge and rosette
Guitar back
End graft (before pickup and endpin installation)
Cutaway
Bindings
Headstock
too!
Jo whoever he is.
