(Oct 2008)

                              

 Highly figured quilt top hollow body, nature's own color scheme  
   I pulled a few really nice pieces of wood out of the pile for this guitar.  The quilt top, quite apart from being a nice piece of quilt, has so much natural color in it that it didn't need anything else other than clear gloss.  The Mahogany that I used for the body and neck is an unusually figured piece of Honduras.  It's not very often that one finds Mahogany with curly figure in the grain these days.  The control cover plate is cut out of the wood and then put back in so that everything on the back matches up.  The neck is laminated with Purpleheart and curly Maple.  The guitar has a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard which is the absolute opposite of a  straight-grain, quarter-sawn board, a great-looking piece of Rosewood!
I've used Amalfitano humbuckers with a coiltap on a push/pull tone control.  This sounds great on the hollow-bodies.  The bridge is Tonepros and the tuners are Gotoh 510 Delta series which are as smooth as butter.  A really nice guitar!             

  Standard 6-string, Rich Amber burst   

   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!

        

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(July 2008)                

 Standard 6-string, Vintage Yellow  

   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    
  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! 

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(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.

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(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.

  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!

                  


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(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!!

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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!                                                                 

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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.             

                  


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(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!

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Giffin Baritone Standard, Black        

    I don't do too many baritones, but they are fun instruments and sound amazing.  On this baritone, I made the body a little thicker than my regular Standards to bring out the low-end frequencies more, and to this end I used a pair of DiMarzio Deactivators which work extremely well with low-tuned instruments.   These pickups look great with their Nickel-topped coils.  The F-board is Indian Rosewood (the camera blanched it out for some reason), and the scale length that I used is 27 1/2 inches.  It rings like a bell!   I used a TonePros bridge and Grover tuners.  The black gloss finish seems very appropriate for this guitar.

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(Dec 2007)

Cust. comment

   
( 2007) 

 Six-string Standard, Upgrade top  
   
Another very nice looking standard made recently.  On this one I left off the raised control panel just for a change.  It's got Wolfetone pickups, TonePros bridge and Sperzel locking tuners. 
A really good looking guitar, great sound!

Model T Deluxe - matching pair.    

    Here is a very nice matching pair.  Both guitars are White Limba (Korina) with Curly Maple "drop-tops." The necks are also White Limba with East Indian Rosewood fingerboards and triple-dot inlays.  Both guitars are fully bound with Ivoroid.  I've used Lindy Fralin humbuckers on these instead of my normal P90s.  The bridges are TonePros and the tuners are Grovers.  The pickguards were an afterthought which turned out extremely well if I may say so..  Good sounding instruments!

                  


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