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A small girl's guitar
https://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=47962
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Author:  mqbernardo [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 9:27 am ]
Post subject:  A small girl's guitar

I don't usually post my work, too many flaws, shyness, etc. but since I asked quite a few questions about this one , I thought I could at least bother you with the end result. It´s a small guitar for my 5 yo daughter, she wanted a pink guitar, this was the closest i could get on a budget and without using paint :)

Ok, here are the specs:

String length : 486 mm
Body length: 350 mm
Tornavoz in maple

Top : B grade euro spruce
Back and sides and rosette : Bloodwood
Bindings : Brazilian tulipwood (top) and padauk (back)
Bridge, fingerboard and details: Brazilian tulipwood
Headplate: Bloodwood and pernambuco
Neck: Spanish cedar


thanks for watching!

Author:  mqbernardo [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 9:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

ouch... those pics are BIG! posted them through my phone, sorry about that.

will try to resize.

cheers,
Miguel.

Author:  mqbernardo [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 9:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

OK, it´s unfortunately too much hassle to resize all the pics, but you´ll get some more, free of charge:


note to self: next time take the pics _before_ handling the guitar to a 5 year old kid.


ok, thanks again!

miguel.

Author:  Bryan Bear [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Nicely done! Nothing to be shy about posting either. I'm sure she was thrilled. How is it tuned? It is much smaller than it looks. Had you not posted measurements I would have never guessed it to be so little form the pictures.

Author:  jfmckenna [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 10:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

A lot of interesting design elements to it. A very unique instrument and something to be proud of.

What are your plans with that saddle?

Author:  Chris Pile [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 10:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Ya done good.

Author:  johnparchem [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 11:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Nice looking guitar!

Author:  meddlingfool [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 11:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Sweet!

Author:  mqbernardo [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 11:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

thanks guys, you´re too kind.

Bryan: right now it´s tuned to G#, which i feel gives a nice (and normal) tension to the EJ45s its stringed with. by the way, been curious about your sig for a while. what does PMoMC mean?

jf: thanks, i tried to put an asymmetric vibe into it. plans for saddle is, at least, to trim it. possibly make a new one, but i´m giving the top and strings a little of time to settle before adjusting. will probably need a new nut, this was done in an hurry with triangular files!

Author:  Alex Kleon [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 11:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Lucky daughter! Please post more of your builds, Miguel. Flaws and shyness? It's just us here, and we're nice!

Alex

Author:  MikeWaz [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 12:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Looks really nice! What kind of finish did you use?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Author:  J De Rocher [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

What a cool guitar. All the woods look great together and I really like the rosette design and how the angle at the end of the fretboard is reflected in the headstock. What's your impression of how the Tornavoz affects the sound?

Author:  Colin North [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 1:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

It's refreshing to see this guitar posted Miguel.
I like the Asymetric touches, including the differing bindings back and front.
Nice one on the headstock, heel cap and tail treatment too.
Really, you should post your work more often.

Author:  rlrhett [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 2:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

I am curious about the tornavoz. Can you point me to a resource that explains its use?

Thanks,

Author:  truckjohn [ Thu Jun 30, 2016 9:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Very cool.

Author:  senunkan [ Fri Jul 01, 2016 2:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Looks great Miguel.
I like the rosette and the way the tornavoz merged with the edges of the sound hole.

What's the interesting patch at the neck fingerboard top about?

Author:  Robert Lak [ Fri Jul 01, 2016 7:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Looks like you had fun building this Miguel... bet she was tickled pink!
love the look... well done!

Here's to hoping that it inspires her to practice...!!

Author:  mqbernardo [ Fri Jul 01, 2016 12:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Thanks again, guys! You sure do make life easier...

MikeWaz wrote:
Looks really nice! What kind of finish did you use?


it´s just french polished shellac. last 3 sessions were done with 5% benzoin added to the shellac solution, which was then filtered and diluted. i kept sanding to a minimum and just glazed the surface, didn´t even use a burnishing or polishing compound.

senunkan wrote:
Looks great Miguel.
I like the rosette and the way the tornavoz merged with the edges of the sound hole.

What's the interesting patch at the neck fingerboard top about?


Thanks Sen! That "interesting" patch is a cover up for an "interesting" accident when a pointed tool was left to fall upon the soundboard after i had just finished cutting the binding rebates. Should have tried to fix it there, but i just installed the bindings and the pull from the rope worsened it, so i ended up gluing a patch of spruce there - which still looked bad, so there went the tulipwood "lid" - now i kinda like it that way!

rlrhett wrote:
I am curious about the tornavoz. Can you point me to a resource that explains its use?

J De Rocher wrote:
What a cool guitar. All the woods look great together and I really like the rosette design and how the angle at the end of the fretboard is reflected in the headstock. What's your impression of how the Tornavoz affects the sound?


hard to say how the tornavoz affects the sound, because i din´t hear the guitar without one :) it does seem to have some bass for a guitar its size, hopefully the TV is doing something about that.

rlrhett, the purpose of the little tornavoz is to give some extra bass to a very small bodied guitar. As you might know, at its lowest resonance (the air resonance, roughly around 100 Hz) the guitar works sort of like an helmholtz resonator (but with flexible walls, more info here: https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/Helmholtz.html , http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... ty.html#c4 or just google helmholtz resonator) - basically the air inside the box works like a mass-less spring and the plug of air within the soundhole boundaries and its immediacies works like a spring-less mass (if i got this right). When the the body size is decreased, as with a smaller guitar, the main air resonance goes up - but when you add a tornavoz you increase the amount of air that works as the mass plug (and also the drag) within the soundhole tube, so you decrease the frequency. Hope i got this right, here are a couple of replies from Alan Carruth, taken from elsewhere:



Alan Carruth wrote:
[In the case of a normal guitar, if you made the box rigid but left the hole open you'd end up with a Helmholtz resonance somewhere around 125 Hz. With a backless box that has some sort of edge stiffener, the 'main top' resonance would probably be in the range of 160-170 or so. When the box is assembled the two have to work together. The top moving changes the air pressure in the box, and pumps air through the hole, and air moving in and out, changes the pressure on the top, altering it's pitch. You end up with a 'main air' resonance somewhere near 100 Hz, and a 'main top' closer to 200.

Putting is a tornavoz drops the pitch that the Helmholtz resonance would come in at in a 'rigid' box. Also, the added drag of the tube reduces the amount of air that can be moved, and spreads out the resonant pitch. On the assembled guitar you end up with the 'main air' pitch quite a bit lower in frequency than normal, and reduced a lot in strength.

___________________



If you look at Helmholtz' original work, you'll see that there are two variables in determining the pitch of a given size bottle: the diameter of the neck, and it's length. A longer neck works like a smaller diameter, yielding a lower pitch for the Helmholtz mode.

Although most guitars don't have a physical 'neck, there is, nonetheless, some 'length' to the hole. In Helmholtz' work this is called an 'end correction'. It's sort of ad hoc; he basically admits that his model is not exactly right and introduces a fudge factor that makes the equation work pretty well most of the time.

The idea is that the air in the neck acts as a rigid piston of a certain mass, and the air in the bottle is a massless spring. The end correction just allows you to add some of the mass of the air outside of the bottle to the piston, since that has to be moved too, effectively making the neck longer.

Drag in the neck doesn't so much slow things down as just waste energy. You get the same thing when you add drag in the hole in the form of a carved 'rose' or a 'feedback buster'. Those don't alter the Helmholtz pitch, but they do drop the peak height in the spectrum, sometimes spectacularly. Smaler holes have relatively more drag, of course; there's more 'edge' for a given 'area', and it's edges that cause most of the drag.

A tornavoz both makes a longer neck and adds drag.

Author:  dzsmith [ Sat Jul 02, 2016 9:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Sweet!
Love the Tulip wood!

Author:  mqbernardo [ Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

thanks, i love tulipwood too. i got lucky to get hold of some leftover pieces at an huge discount. good enough for small pieces. lovely natural luster and very nice smell.

Author:  Phil Marcus [ Mon Jul 11, 2016 3:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

Very nice, Miguel! Too many good design points to mention them all, but I like the natural bindings as well as the overall color and the execution as a small guitar. Lucky kid!

Author:  senunkan [ Mon Jul 11, 2016 9:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

mqbernardo wrote:
Thanks Sen! That "interesting" patch is a cover up for an "interesting" accident when a pointed tool was left to fall upon the soundboard after i had just finished cutting the binding rebates. Should have tried to fix it there, but i just installed the bindings and the pull from the rope worsened it, so i ended up gluing a patch of spruce there - which still looked bad, so there went the tulipwood "lid" - now i kinda like it that way!


Wow you certainly got me there!
It looks like it's part of the design.
I really thought it has some special purpose!
[:Y:]

Author:  mqbernardo [ Sun Jul 17, 2016 9:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: A small girl's guitar

thanks again guys, you´re too kind. i have too many mistakes in any of my buds so, for once, i just decided to take advantage of some, instead of my more usual cursing.


cheers,
Miguel.

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