approached my visit to Adrian’s workshop with some trepidation. I had no idea what to expect. I’d travelled up early in the day to nearby Gainsborough where I had a work appointment and made sure that I got it over with nice and quickly so that we could make the best use of my time.
Browsing the guitar forums I have been astonished by how much time, effort and detail people put into their commissions. It might just be that they are done this before and so are better clued up than me! Some people are very particular about the woods they use and some even go to the trouble of buying wood sets themselves!
I have to say that this type of stuff leaves me cold. Luthery is an art as well as a craft (or these days science). I’ve heard many makers say that the construction of the guitar is more important than the particular woods or grade of woods that are used. I suppose that for me I’m more interested in the tone and playability of the instrument rathe than the specification. Part of the thrill of the project was to see how a skilled artisan could interpret my wishes!
Anyhow, eventually I was there, greeted by Adrian and ushered into his back room/kitchen.
Adrian’s room was full of guitar case, presumably there for repair. There were caustics and electrics and — from the cases — all manner of high quality guitars, Fenders, Gibsons, Martins and so on. Presumably a lot of player relied on Adrian for repairs and routine maintenance.
Over coffee we simply talked about guitars. One of the highest challenges that we would face, according to Adrian, was getting a shared vocabulary which would help us talk about the shape and tone of the sound we wanted. I’d never thought about this before or seen much written about it on websites but it is quite obviously the case! How do we describe the things we like? Creative writing courses will often suggest that the most difficult thing to write about is smell; well I reckon guitar tone is just as difficult!
We started with the basics. I’ve never really gotten on very well with cedar tops and so we would focus on spruce. For the kind of celtic, alternative, fingerstyle music that I wanted to use this guitar for I’ve always fund that some kind of rosewood suits best. We talked quite a bit about tunings. While I’ve always used a range of alternate tunings I’ve found that IO play in them exclusively since I went to the Martin Simpson guitar residential. Adrian — who is a player himself —told me that he’d once been to a Simpson session about alternate tunings so he knew quite a lot about what I was talking about.
I took our my Santa Cruz OM and played it a bit using some of the tunings and styles that I was looking to use on the new guitar. Then Adrian sat me down to play his own personal steel string and things began to change.
My move to the OM was as a result of some pain or tendonitis in my right hand. I worked out this wasn’t helped by playing a jumbo and the move to the smaller guitar helped a lot. When talking to Adrian on the phone I’d told him about this and had assumed that I’d be commissioning one of his OOO sized models. Adrian’s own guitar was a Pavilion, a small jumbo. This would give me an idea of the kind of spun that Adrian produced.
My first surprise was how conformable this guitar was. It sat on my lap far more comfortably that either of my two main guitars. This was a bit of a revelation, that a non-standard shape could be so comfortable. As I played I realised that I could easily live with the guitar. It had the extra space and overtones that you would associate with a larger bodied guitar: I liked it. I changed my mind. My guitar would be a Pavilion small jumbo, but just to ensure great comfort we decided to utilise the Linda Manzer wedge design which makes the guitar a little less deep at the top of the soundboard so you don’t have to stretch so far.
Adrian’s guitar was a fine instrument made out of spruce and Brazilian Rosewood! I’d liked Adrian’s sweep cutaway design but this was a non-cutaway design.Would the cutaway make a difference to the sound? Nope I was told. A great big tone bar ran inside the guitar between the sound hole and the neck join and this stops vibration. There would be mho real difference in sound using either the cutaway or the wedge design.
Adrian picked out the woods as I played.
Adrian: Sitka spruce I think.
Me: Are you sure?
Adrian: Yes.
Me: Not European spruce?
Adrian: No, Sitka.
Adrian: I think we’ll use Wenge for the back and sides.
Me: What about Cocobolo?
Adrian: No, it’s too cold for what you are doing.
So, there you go. Adrian was matching what I heard me play with his knowledge of woods. This is clearly part of the creative, luthier art. For me, at least, this visit and interchange was at the heart of the commission. I really don’t know how people manage to order cold but I guess there are other ways of doing it. However, I was fascinated by our conversation.
We talked quite a bit about the fan fret and I gave Adrian the space to tai me out of it! Adrian wanted a crack at it though. He teaches guitar making at a local FE college and has watched a number of fan frets being made and, of course, has talked to a lot of other luthiers about it. Fan frets are not quite so new; like florentine cutaways they were fist seen during the renaissance.
The idea of the fan fret is that it gives more tension on the bass strings when using open tunings and I often tune down to C. While bass strings benefit from some extra tension the treble strings apparently suffer and they tighten. To be fair I have heard a lot of stunning guitars that use a longer scale across the board, but the great thing about your own commission is that you can decide! My 1st string is seldom tuned down below D (sometimes C) and so we decided to keep the traditional OM scale length at the top end. We ended up opting for a moderate scale width of 660 to 645. (After the visit I found this interview with Paul Heumillier of Dream Guitars, talking about his own guitar from Jordan McConnell — he seems to be looking for a similar thing to me.)
Then we went back to playing guitars. I didn’t have quite the time to play Adrian’s guitar as I had when I bought my devious guitars. But, did I like the tone? Yes I did. It had a certain class about it. It did not sound like a Martin guitar and that was good. If I’m honest I can't quite describe the sound of Adrian’s guitar (that vocabulary thing again) but I did recognise that I could quite happily spend a lot of time trying to work out how to get the best our of both it and me! And that I suppose is what it is all about.
Wenge is an interesting wood. Adrian seems to have worked with it a lot recently. He reckons that this is the closest you will now get to Brazilian Rosewood which is now very expensive and often of poor quality. He’s not the only person that thinks this way — here is an article from master builder Ervin Somogyi on the use of wenge. I was more than happy to take Adrian’s advice.
I’ve already mentioned Adrian’s views on cocobolo. He had a similar view of the top wood and was adamant that we should use sitka. He showed me a build that was in progress which was a combination of European Spruce and Wenge. The customer had wanted European Spruce but Adrian always prefers sitka. Who was I to argue with him? It is funny but European luthiers seem to prefer Sitka while Americans now look to Europe!
I should say that my age came not my thinking. I’m in my mid fifties now. We could have gone for Adirondack Spruce but this takes ten years or so to open out. I can’t wait that long anymore!
Thee were some other details to discuss, tuning machine heads and so on but here my only stipulation is that they worked smoothly! The heads on my J40 are wonderful but rather annoyingly gold plated! The tuners on the OM are Waverley’s I think and the 3rd string winder is a pig!
Did I want a pickup? Originally I had thought I would keep this guitar pickup free but Adrian was clearly not impressed — if he was going to make this thing I got the impression he wanted it out in the public domain! Strangely the first thing two of my musician mates asked me when I got home was whether I would have a pickup in it. It made sense to have the pickup installed during the build process.
The choice of pickup is another area of great debate. Many rate the K&K devices while others swear about the Baggs Lyric. Adrian is a great supporter of the UK company Headway and I have been very impressed with my Headway preamps. this is a company that really does seem to understand acoustic amplification and so I was happy to go for their top end pickup. I do like the idea of sticking to the Headway line, indeed I’m rather impatiently waiting for their new range of acoustic amps that are due sometime late in the summer.
So, that was it. I left Adrian after a throughly fascinating and entertaining morning. A few emails later and we had agreed the final spec.
Just the commissioning of the instrument has been a fascinating journey. Working with a master craftsman in this way was a real education and — for me at least — is an important part of the project. The guitar will be unique but will also be the product of genuine partnership between builder and player.
I think to commission a guitar like this you have to appreciate the intuitive skills of the builder. This is not the time to be a control freak, rather the time to enter in the world of a different kind of artist. Adrian is an interesting mix of the craftsman and the designer — he was previously an architect and still works with a combination of his hands and Autocad!
For my part all of the hard work had been done. For Adrian the hard work was just beginning. An individual commission means waiting for a number of months. I put the project to the back of my mind and decided not to talk about it too much, and certainly not to mention it online until the build commences.
Roll on September!
www.esomogyi.com/blog.html#wenge
- have a great day and enjoy the new beauty! 
Jo whoever he is.
