Official Luthiers Forum!

Materials:
Back - Ovangkol
Sides- Local Maple
Top- W. Red Cedar
Neck- Local American Walnut
Headplate - Pau Ferro
Bridge -Pau Ferro
Bindings - Local American Walnut (no gaps)
Fretboard - Ebony

I built it from scratch - using a book by Stanley Doubtfire as a guide, but made several changes. It sounds surprisingly good. Has great sustain and volume. I have low tension strings on it for now, but will change to normal if everything seems to hold up.
I got a lot of good tips from this forum, and am very grateful for all of your help and inspiration. Now - on to planning #2.

Ray

Wow. Well done ray, It looks beautiful. Hard to think thats a Nr. 1. its a personally I think Nr2 was more fun to work on !! as then its not as much errors and frustrations. some but not as much.

Lars

very well done!! i love that you've taken so many different species and put them together into such a sharp looking instrument. congratulations.
phil

Great job, Ray! Looks perfect.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Wow!! Nice first guitar Ray!!!

Dave F.

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Cambrian Guitars

"There goes Mister Tic-Tac out the back with some bric-brac from the knick-knack rack"

Ray,

You should be proud of this nice looking instrument. I must say that is very rewarding when you can tell someone that you built it from a pile of wood and see the wonderment in their eyes. Someday I may finish my 1st guitar that I'm still building for my Father. My primary interest is in ukuleles but the reaction is the same when people realize that it was built by hand.

Philip

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aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

Congratulations!! very good!

Nice work!!

Way to go Ray! No better feeling than stringing it up and playing is there? What did you use for finish? The whole package looks great.

Cheers,
Danny

The finish is French Polish, not very good, but I can continue to work on it.

Ray

Fantastic! I love seeing guitars that have been hand made. It is always fun.

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http://www.booneguitars.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stephen-Boone-guitar-builder/488208541257210

Great work Ray, very nice guitar. I love WRC classicals.

Nice pictures, I would be interested to know your photography setup.

Marc,

Here's my Photo setup. A couple of yards of black velvet cloth draped over a chair in my library. The table lamp and the ceiling floodlights were used.
A Sony digital camera was used. I evened out the black background with Adobe Photoshop.

Ray

Looks great, nice to see a local, my son is a classical guitarists he would love to give a pluck or two.

That came out really nice! I like the contrast of the dark neck against the maple sides. I'm building a maple classical right now with a walnut neck too. Does the guitar feel very neck heavy or do you not notice? Very nice job! Wendy

Looks real good! Doesn't it feel good to be finished with Number 1!

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

It looks awesome Ray! Beautiful guitar. Are you happy with the sound?

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

The Walnut neck does not feel noticeably heavy. I have a Sakurai-Kohno guitar which is very heavy overall, compared to mine.
I am pleasantly surprised with the tone, volume, and sustain.
I made the soundhole a bit smaller, on purpose, to possibly accentuate the Bass response as compensation for the "brightness" that Maple is said to impart.
The sides were originally going to be Ovangkol, but I measured Once, and cut twice, ruined them and had to go to plan B. Plan B was to use a maple board that I already had.
I have no regrets.


Ray

As was said by others...a fantastic looking build. ESPECIALLY for a first!!!!

I do like the use of different woods for each major part (sides, back, top, etc). It jazzes things up to have a not matched sides and back, yet have them work well together.

In short....very nice!

-Matthew

If my first is half as nice as that I will be very happy.

J