GUITAR COLLECTIONS

Archive for June, 2010

A guitar’s Neck joint or a guitar’s Heel is the level at which the neck is either secured by bolt or glued to the body of the guitar. Just about all acoustic guitars, with the primary exclusion of Taylors, have glued or as differently known have set necks, while electric guitars are fabricated applying both types.

Commonly used set neck joints include:

• Mortise and Tenon joints; simple and strong have been used for thousands of years by woodmen around the world to join pieces of wood

• Dovetail joints; renowned for its resistance to being pulled apart (tensile strength), and

• Spanish heel neck joints; named after the shoe they resemble and normally found in classical guitars.

All of the three types of guitar neck joints provide stability. Bolt-on necks, though while they are historically connected with cheaper instruments, do provide greater flexibility in the guitar’s set-up, and allow easier access for neck joint maintenance and reparations. Another type of neck, only available for solid body electric guitars, is the neck-through-body construction.

These are fashioned so that everything from the machine heads down to the bridge is situated on the same piece of wood. The sides or wings of the guitar are then affixed to this central piece. Some prefer this method of construction as they claim it allows better sustain of each note.

However, some instruments might not have a neck joint at all, having the neck and sides constructed as one piece and the body built around it.

Guitar neck joints, guitar heel

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: Expression of Love for Music.

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To begin building a quality, hand-craftsmanship guitar, you must first choose the timber it will be constructed from. Then essay each piece and make assessments on its visible and tonal qualities. Much of the timber to be utilized needs to be hand selected including Spruce soundboards which are usually from Europe.

Because each piece of timber is different, modifications must be made of each part of the instrument as the structure progresses in order for the completed product to have the optimal volume and tone.

Such a quality Guitar could take more than 200 hours to construct and of course only a few guitars under construction at one time are possible in any workshop. This grants every guitar an extremely high level of attention to detail and a look of traditional hand-craftsmanship.

Each part of a completed guitar, no matter how small, plays a role in the sound and look of the instrument. It is for this reason that elaborated consideration must be payed to each stage of the construction, guaranteeing that the completed guitar is at its maximum potential. Each part of each instrument is commonly produced by hand, mostly employing hand tools.

The bracing and tuning of soundboards is one of the most significant stages of the construction of a guitar. The completed soundboard is the part of the instrument that absorbs the vibrations from the plucked strings to create the sound of the guitar. Therefore, it is very crucial for close attention to the construction of each soundboard, to ensure that it gives the guitar the particular sound trying to achieve.

Using traditional French polish on the soundboard usually completes the guitar. This is a highly thin coating of shellac, which allows the soundboard to vibrate without resistance. The back, sides and neck are completed by using a very thin lacquer; the lacquer gives these areas more protection from playing wear while having no detectable effect on the sound of the instrument.

The guitar now is set aside to cure and then hand polished usually to a high gloss. The whole finishing process takes about a month and about 35-40 hours of labor to complete.

Construction of a Guitar

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: Expression of Love for Music.

Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being a construction of a musical instrument having “a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with in curved sides”. Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 5,000 years.

Guitar construction can fulfill the needs of both left and right-handed players. Traditionally, the dominate hand is assigned the undertaking of plucking or strumming the strings. For the majority of people this implies using the right hand. This is because musical expression (dynamics, tonal expression, color, etc.) is for the most part dictated by the plucking hand, while the fretting hand is assigned the lesser mechanical task of depressing and gripping the strings.

This is similar to the convention of the violin family of musical instruments where the right hand controls the bow. Left-handed players broadly speaking choose a left-handed instrument, although some play in a standard right-handed fashion, others play a standard right-handed guitar reversed, and still others (for example Jimi Hendrix) play a right-handed guitar strung up in reverse.

This last guitar constraction differs from a true left-handed guitar in that the saddle is generally angled in such a way that the bass strings are somewhat longer than the treble strings to better intonation. Reversing the strings consequently reverses the relative orientation of the saddle (negatively affecting intonation), although in Hendrix’ case this is considered to have been an significant element in his unique sound.

Construction of A Guitar

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: Expression of Love for Music.

The group of musical instruments called guitars includes several of the world’s most favorite instruments. The guitar is classed as a chordophone in the plucked lute family. The reasonably large, waisted (hourglass-shape) body that is most representative of the acoustic guitar gives it a better, more resonating sound than most other plucked strings. Read the rest of this entry »

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: Expression of Love for Music.

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