Standard 6-string, Rich Amber burst  New!  

   This rather nice curly Maple top didn't make it  to my "wood pile."  As I cut it, I decided to use it straight away.  It has a deep curl and a fairly dark, natural color that really looked great under this Amber burst.  Just for a change on this guitar, I used a pair of Gibson humbuckers, a 57 Classic at the neck and a Burstbucker at the bridge.  Sounded really sweet!

         Click on Thumbnails !

                                                            (available at Western Guitars)

(July 2008)

                            Click on Thumbnails!

 Standard 6-string, Vintage Yellow  New!

   The Maple top on this guitar was a piece I bought a few years ago from a wood dealer who called it "Fan flame" as the flames spread from a central point outwards in all directions.  Rather interesting!   The guitar has a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard and head veneer.   At the customer's request, I used a pair of Razor Tribute humbuckers, a Wilkinson bridge and imitation Ivory knobs.  Very pretty!
                  

  Semi Acoustic/Electric Mandolin   New!  
  This was a lot of fun to build!  The design was loosely based on an old Gibson A series mandolin but with an added cutaway.    For the body I used a piece of figured African Mahogany which was hollowed out in the same way I do my hollow-body electrics.  I used another piece of the same Mahogany for the neck.  The neck on this mandolin was made considerably wider than a traditional instrument to make fingering a little easier.  Front of the body, fingerboard and head veneer are all cut from the same book-matched piece of Maple - it gives a rather nice continuity to the appearance.  It's finished in a Tiger Eye burst which really highlights the figured Maple.  I made the little Maple pickup cover at the end of the fingerboard, and my good friend Kent Armstrong built a tiny single coil pickup into it.  The Ebony bridge is actually a Fishman transducer.   Both of these pickups run through a Fishman mixer which allows one to use either pickup or both together.   Sounds lovely too! 

  Click on Thumbnails !

 
(July 2008) 

Model T Deluxe Drop-top with a highly figured Maple top and clear gloss finish  
 
   I'm not sure what to call this kind of Maple, but whatever it is... it's a most interesting looking piece!  This is a particularly nice sounding guitar as it's made from a very light-weight piece of Black Limba that rings like a bell. The Seymour Duncan "Seth Lover" humbuckers give it a lovely, warm vintage sound.

(May 2008)

 Standard 6-string, Koa Top, Honey burst finish  
    It's getting hard to find any Koa, let alone nice Koa these days, but I found a few pieces that were lurking in my woodpile.  So it seemed high time to do a Koa top guitar!  It is, as always, lovely stuff!  There is such depth to the color of this wood.  It gives a solid Standard a slightly "warmer" sound compared to a Maple top, very sweet and melodic, and the Wolfetone pickups certainly make the most of it.  I used a Gabon Ebony fingerboard on this guitar to add a little "sparkle" to the sound.  The Tonepros bridge and Grover tuners are gold.
                   (available from Willcutt Guitar Shoppe)

       Click on Thumbnails!

  Highly figured Quilt top hollow body   
    Here is a rather special custom instrument.  The choice of materials for this guitar was left up to me, so I used a gorgeous  piece of Quilted Maple on the top.  For the body I used a very unusual figured piece of  Honduras Mahogany (which also made up part of the neck).  I used Brazilian Rosewood for the head  veneer and finger-board, and  I finished the whole guitar off with a multiple black and white binding with Abalone sandwiched in between.   A little over-the-top perhaps but quite stunning!  It has a pair of Wolfetone humbuckers, a Tonepros bridge and the amazingly good Gotoh 510 tuners.  The Honeyburst finish brings the whole thing to life.  And, yes, it sounds  as good as it looks!

                  


  Click on Thumbnails !

(April 2008)

 Giffin Standard, Quittle Maple Top, Honey burst finish
  I think this guitar came out rather nicely!  The Maple top on here is somewhere between flame and quilt, and sometimes known as quittle (don't ask me why).  It has no raised control panel which I don't often do on a solid body.  It gives the guitar a slightly different look.  It has a Honduras Mahogany neck and body and an Indian Rosewood fingerboard and head veneer.  I used a TonePros bridge and Grover tuners and a pair of great-sounding Zebra-coiled Wolfetone humbuckers.  Don't forget to check out the thumbnails!!

 Click on Thumbnails!

  Giffin Standard, Redwood burl top, Burnt Orange burst   

Straight from the 'weird wood' pile comes this Redwood burl top Standard.    It's the oddest piece of Redwood burl I've seen and quite fascinating!  It has swirls and dots and grain in every direction - definitely not your grandmother's tabletop!    Other than the peculiar wood, it's a regular solid Standard with Honduras Mahogany body and neck.  The fingerboard  is Gabon Ebony, but it's also a little unusual with a very distinct marbling pattern running through it.  Its good to be different, right..? 
I've used Lindy Fralin pickups, a Tonepros bridge and Grover tuners.  The guitar sounds completely different from the Maple top Standards, closer to a Spruce top sound than anything else.  Nice and sweet but with plenty of thump! 

(March 2008)

Click on Thumbnails!

(March 2008)

 The Baby T, Antique White finish   
  This guitar is a bit different......a Model T using a Micro body.  I've had an idea for a smaller T for quite some time, and as I got a request for a model T type guitar but with a smaller body, this was the opportunity to try it out.  The two different styles of the Micro and the T blended together very nicely as you can see in these pictures.
  As this is a custom instrument it has some special features that the customer requested.  It has a Maple neck which is particularly unusual in that it is extremely thick, is all one piece, and has no trussrod.  It relies on it's size and exactly quarter-sawn cut for its strength.  An interesting experiment!  The neck is also a 25 1/2 inch scale for extra sustain.  The mass of aluminum in the Skyway tremolo adds tremendous ring to the strings, and the Wolfetone pickup does wonders to bring it all to life!!   No chance of getting confused over the controls!! :)

        Click on Thumbnails! 

(The last picture
 is for size
comparison
with a regular
Model T)

Model T Deluxe 

The top on this guitar came from the same board as the top on the Model T Deluxe sold in July 2007 (further down on this page).   It is the last piece of this 100 year old Douglas Fir that I have, so there is not much chance of there being any other guitars quite like this. The body and neck are Honduras Mahogany with an Indian Rosewood fingerboard and head veneer. As with the previous guitar, I've used  Amalfitano pickups, this time with no covers. The tuners are Grovers and the bridge is TonePros.  Great looking guitar.  Killer sound! 
                                                                

Click on Thumbnails !

   

(Feb 2008)
 

 Custom standard, Maple top, Oil & Wax finish    Once in a while, somebody asks for an oil finished instrument which I am very partial to.  I think the oil finish has a really nice feel to it.  This Standard has a thicker body than normal (customer's request) to increase the low-end response.  The top is a piece of hard Eastern Curly Maple which looks really nice with its satin sheen finish. The top was actually finished with a clear oil, while the back was finished with a Walnut tinted oil.  It gives the Mahogany a really nice, deep color.  The pickups are Wolfetone custom humbuckers which, although they have cream pickup rings, are actually hard-mounted straight into the wood with no adjusting screws or springs.  This gives the pickups considerably more resonance as they now can pick up vibrations directly from the wood.  I used a Pigtail aluminum bridge and Gotoh 510 series tuners (these are great!).   This guitar has tons of low end and a sparkle to the top end helped greatly by the aluminum bridge.  A very lively guitar!

Click on Thumbnails! 

Giffin Standard, Maple burl top   
   
   I found this piece of burl underneath a pile of other wood in my workshop.  As you can see, that was not the best place for it!  It looks really nice with a Honey burst, and the tortoise-shell and white binding really sets it off. I've used a pair of Lindy Fralin P92 pickups as a change from regular humbuckers, and they sound great.

The fingerboard and head veneer are Macassar Ebony and so is the inlayed heel cap.  The body and neck are Honduras Mahogany which always produces a great sound.  It has Grover tuners and a TonePros bridge, all in Nickel.             

                  


  Click on Thumbnails !

(Dec 2007)

 Double-neck, 6&12, Left-handed, 
   This guitar took a little while to figure out, especially as I'm right handed,  but the end result was well worth the effort.   It was built to my customer's  fairly exact requirements, and the tricky part was to make it all work. 
The body is Mahogany with a Lacewood top which covers a large number of wiring channels which run all around the front.  The ultra-skinny necks are Maple with Rosewood laminates, Rosewood fingerboards and Rosewood head veneers.  The inlays on the F-boards are 'moon phases' with MOP 69s inlayed on the heads.
The pickups on  the 12-string are Gretsch Filtertrons, and the bridge is an ABM 12-way tun-o-matic.  On the 6-string, the neck pickup is a high output Filtertron, and the bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan  Custom humbucker.  The  2-point tremolo bridge is by Gotoh.    The wiring consists of volume and tone for each neck, neck selector switch, and individual pickup selectors for both necks. 
The 12-string is strung 'Rickenbacker style' with the low string first (Pyramid flat-wound strings). 
For a such a large instrument it ended up remarkably compact.  This was a lot of fun to build!

        Click on Thumbnails!