My guitars tend to be surprisingly loud with excellent sustain. For those that like less sustain and more initial attack, a lighter wood such as rosewood or walnut can be used for the bridge. While overall tonal balance is influenced by the size of the guitar and the choice of woods, balance up and down the fingerboard and across the stings is always very even.
Design
My guitars are hand built one at a time with only the finest materials using well thought out designs. I have invested a lot of time in developing the models I offer to optimize tone and playability while maintaining aesthetic sensibility. My body curves are designed using natural ratios to achieve an organic shape. Once the shape is defined, the body depth and soundhole size are determined so as to be in balance with the overall size of the guitar. Balance is the key to all of my designs and I will not enlarge a sound hole or deepen the soundbox just to shift the tonal balance. New designs are only offered once I am satisfied with their sound.^top
Materials
With so much time invested in creating an instrument of great value, it would be foolish not to use the finest materials. Mostly this is reflected in my choice of tonewoods, but it is also reflected in my choice of tuners, nut and saddles, etc. While the choice of tonewoods affects the sound, especially for the soundboard, the design and sensibilities of the builder have a much greater overall effect. With that said, it is important to select high quality wood that will allow the guitar to last for generations.The soundboard in particular needs to be extremely well quartered to resist the tension of the strings over time. Please realize that there are no standards for grading instrument quality wood. While you may be familiar with the terms AAA, AAAA, Master Grade, etc., these terms are defined by individual suppliers and do not correspond with any universal standard. Thus it is important for me to work with select suppliers with high standards that I can trust.
Woods chosen for the back and sides of the guitar have a much subtler affect on sound, therefore aesthetic preferences can play more of a role in their selection. The most important attributes affecting sound are density to stiffness ratios and damping characteristics. Woods with low damping characteristics such as the rosewoods and mahoganies will have a clearer, more ringing tone, while woods with higher damping such as walnut and to some extent koa have a drier, woodier sound. Woods that have a high density to stiffness ratio such as the rosewoods will reinforce the low end, while woods with a low density to stiffness ratio such as a light piece of mahogany will enhance the midrange and high end. Of course different woods have a mix of these attributes and variations within some species of woods can be considerable.^topNeck
All of my necks are hand carved and can be custom profiled to meet your needs. The neck width, taper, and scale length can also be customized. However I prefer to build with my current standard scale length of 25.4 inches, since changes in scale length will affect the overall tone of the guitar. All of my necks are reinforced with two carbon fiber rods and have a two-way adjustable truss rod. This, along with the use of high quality woods, creates an extremely stable and stiff neck. The neck is joined to the body with a tapered mortise and tenon that is bolted to the head block. I use a tapered mortise and tenon to ensure a tight stable fit prior to using bolts to pull it together. With this system I achieve great sustain and increase the overall sound efficiency of my guitars. Finally, I use the venerable Spanish V-joint to join my headstock to the neck shaft. I do this for two very important reasons. One, this joint results in a stronger neck than a one piece neck because the grain of the headstock now has the proper orientation with the tension of the strings actually pulling the joint together. Two, this design is much less wasteful of precious high quality wood than a one piece design. Although, a properly executed V-joint is very labor intensive, I believe it is the right thing to do.^topBody
Inside the box I include some very special features including the judicious use of carbon fiber. The brace just above the soundhole, known as the upper face brace, is largely responsible for receiving much of the load from the forces acting on the soundboard. This brace is always relatively large and helps keep the soundboard from caving in at the soundhole. Over time even well quartered wood relaxes, resulting in a depression in the soundboard in this area and the need for a neck reset. I reinforce this brace by internally laminating it with carbon fiber. Not only is carbon fiber extremely stiff for its weight, but more importantly it never relaxes over time, so that the integrity of this brace will always remain intact. Drawing upon the Spanish tradition again, I now incorporate a mortised Spanish foot in my guitars. This also helps prevent any rotation about the head block that might occur due to deformation of the sides and/or back. Another place I use carbon fiber is for the bridgeplate. I use a laminated carbon fiber/spruce bridgeplate, whose stiffness can be precisely tuned by adjusting the thickness of the spruce. Failure at the bridgeplate is not an uncommon problem. By using carbon fiber, not only are the ball ends of the strings resting against a very hard surface, but the plate itself will not deform. This helps to prevent bulging at the bridge which often occurs over time. Since carbon fiber responds very quickly to vibrations, this type of bridgeplate adds clarity and responsiveness to the guitar, particularly to the trebles. To maintain the sound character of the wood, these are the only places I use carbon fiber. ^topShaping the Sound
My approach towards achieving my signature sound is a mix of art and science, both of which are highly informed by intuition. I use analytical equipment to measure the resonance frequencies of my soundboards and guitar backs during various phases of the building process. I also measure the deflection of the soundboard to determine responsiveness and structural integrity. These measurements however, are really only the beginning in shaping the guitar’s sound. Ultimately, the nuanced tonal character is achieved by listening to the soundboard and the guitar as a whole during each step of the building process. It is here where intuition and experience play the largest role in achieving the results I desire. For your interest, some technical information on guitar acoustics can be found on the “Resources” page. ^topMusings
I believe the need for people to express themselves is as fundamental as the need for air, food and water. Guitar making offers me a wonderful opportunity to express myself by integrating science, craftsmanship and art. Often people contrast science and art, but I believe artists and scientists have much in common. Both are incredibly focused, disciplined and passionate about their work, and both are explorers at heart.I have been obsessed with creating things my entire life. In my former career, I built molecules as an organic chemist. Although it seems like a stretch, my training as a chemist provided an excellent foundation for guitar building, as both require a highly intuitive mind. Sometimes I’m asked, “Do you use a scientific or intuitive approach to building guitars?” I reply by asking, ”Is there a difference?”, as these processes are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a good scientist must have great intuition. How else are innovative hypotheses generated? Although intuition in a subject area is developed through the accumulation of experience and knowledge, some people seem to possess more intuitive minds, while others seem to possess more analytical minds. I have always favored my intuitive mind. What does all this have to do with guitar building? Well, it takes a great deal of intuition to figure out how to build a guitar to produce a given sound, and it takes an artist to imagine what that sound ought to be. Of course people like and have uses for guitars with different sounds. As a builder it is interesting for me to meet this challenge by using different woods and designs to create these sounds. But since I create these guitars using my own ears, my signature is in the sound of all of the guitars I make.
One last thought. I believe things are often greater than the sum of their parts, gestalt so to speak. It is very magical when this happens. This is a very important part of how I approach guitar building, as well as life itself. The sound of a guitar can be analytically described in such terms as balance, projection, volume, sustain, clarity, separation, response, etc. However when all of these come together in the right combination, it just has that something extra that can’t be explained. Like great music.
My goal is to create instruments that have that intangible
something extra that makes you want to pick it up and never put it
down. Instruments like that leave you no choice but to express
yourself.^top