Official Luthiers Forum!

For anyone interested in harp guitars, Alan Carruth has had one of his selected for Great Acoustics in the Feb.2011 edition of Acoustic Guitar Mag. Looks like quite a project and it was built for the MIMF $100 Acoustic Challange.Very impressive and well worth a look.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I've seen it and watched the progress. I still think, if a person had a good shop with tools and jigs, but no wood and had to start by purchasing all of the wood to build that guitar he built, it could not be done for $100. Even if you bought it all at the Borg. At one point, I got the idea that he converted an OM that was hanging around the shop and perhaps the $100 was just in that harp thing he built.

But, I never heard the explanation. Or the rules governing the contest.

Mike

I was lucky enough to see the progress he made on it every other Saturday in class. He used some padauk he had gotten quite cheaply for the back, sides and the arm of the harp and sliced it up himself. He used spruce that he'd gotten from Carleen Hutchins' estate that the MIMF valued at $10. I believe he said they were some rejects from Martin that were sent to her for research purposes. He used $10 tuning machines originally for the contest, as well as autoharp tuners to keep the cost down. He has since replaced these with nicer machines. He accounted for all of his materials and came just under $100 for the whole thing in it's original configuration. I can say for sure that he did not take an OM and convert it. He built the entire thing from scratch. It's not even an OM sized body, it's more like a 00. The thing was very top heavy and had to be held in a classical position to be played comfortably. It was one of the best sounding guitars I've ever heard. Probably had something to do with the padauk and the large resonant chamber of the arm that holds up the harp. That and the fact that Alan builds fantastic sounding guitars.

Matt

Thanks for the info. Alan is indeed very talented. I wondered about the balance.

Mike

I saw it in Montreal last year, it was quite the piece of work - the attachment of hte harp arm to the body was nicely executed (its not as usual, in which the pper arm is bent out of the upper guitar piece as an extension, this is two pieces) .. not only is the balance an issue, but the sub strings are tuned in reverse to a std harp, due to the longest string being first, not last .. the lowest pitch is thus the first harp sub .. makes playing it weird if you are accustomed to the std of highest pitch to lowest on ascending strings

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"