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This has been on my radar for a while now. And since I have some down time I think I will build one for myself. If anyone has any suggestions, tips tricks and so on please chime in. Also if there is a recommended plan out there that would be nice too. I think I am going to design it off an old SS Steward guitar that I have but plans would be useful none the less at least for things like neck dimensions and so on.

One tip.... The sound hole on these is typically pretty small - so unless you have an elf handy, you can't go back in through the soundhole to adjust the bracing (or anything else) once you close the box....

The typical sound you are after on these is BRIGHT and loud. That means stiff and light. For the bridge... You probably want a fairly light wood so you get the bright pop that these have.

Body wise - shallower gives them a faster attack and a little higher main air resonance... Which is beneficial when you don't have the bottom 2 strings.

If you are going to do an X - they generally have to be shifted back or have a fairly narrow angle so you can catch the little narrow bridge.... Shifting the X back wouldn't limit the sound hole too much - but closing it down will.

Last - you may need to make up a little jig to sort out the intonation corrections at the bridge. Most intonation calculators don't really do 4 steel strings tuned in 5ths....

I got a set of tenor guitarplans from elderly instruments,They can be modified to suit your needs.

A suggestion: G*bson made a tenor in the late 30's, early 40's IIRC correctly with a L-OO body. They came in bursts too or at least the one that I have played is a burst.

Anyway the L-OO body shape is excellent for a tenor and historically correct.

Don't know of any plans though but maybe find a G*bson that you can take measurements from.

I use the Gibson LG 3/4 size for the body outline. I think it works well with the shorter scale length of the tenor. I usually make a short scale tenor (21 3/4 inches) and often double strung like a twelve string.

Thanks for the feed back. I think I'm going to keep this one simple and stick to 4 string. I bet that 8 stringer sounds fantastic though. I'm not really concerned with the historically accurate look but my Stewart which was made in '25 actually is pretty close to an L-00. I think I found the Elderly plans so I'll give that a go.

I'm thinking of doing walnut and red spruce.

FWIW I made mine from walnut and WRC, gud luck with your project .Elderly is a fast /reliable shipper