Jonathan’s cutaway completed

Jonathan’s cutaway steel-string is now finished and you can see the result below. I’m certainly pleased with it and have enjoyed having a play on it. The 12 fret, cutaway format works extremely well- one immediately apparent advantage is that the nut is closer to the waist so your left arm does not have to stretch as far whilst playing.

Hand made guitars always take a period of time to “play in” and “open-up”; I think that’s particularly true of Sitka tops (like this one) and I’ll be interested to hear this guitar in a few months time. However, some of you may have noticed a new gizmo called a ToneRite which plays the guitar in for you?? Now, I haven’t tried one, so I’m in no position to comment but.....one thing that I do notice is how the tone of a guitar improves considerably over the first week or so, just by being strung up and subjected to the tension of strings. Well, mine do anyway! And when I played Jonathan’s this morning it had clearly improved, just by sitting, strung up, in a case.

What’s interesting, is that more guitar players come to me now with a very clear idea of what they want. Usually they have taken part in forums and generally picked up a lot of information on-line. Jonathan’s guitar is very much a product of this process- choice of tonewoods. 12 fret neck, cutaway, long scale etc. Fortunately, in this case, Jonathan’s ideas were pretty much in-line with mine and I feel that the result is a real thoroughbred rather than a camel! When I look back over the past 30 or so instruments (that’s about as far as I can remember!) no two are the same and looking forward (on my waiting list) that trend continues.