Legendary Irish musician Andy Irvine had a scare when his two main instruments vanished on a journey from Dublin to Denmark.  These were his guitar bouzouki and mandola, both built by me.

It was many weeks before they were finally found and returned, and in the meantime Andy asked if I had a mandola available. Unusually, I did, and he arranged to come to Northumberland to see it. By the time he arrived, the lost instruments were found, but Andy played the new maple mandola and, because he loved it, decided to take it any way.  Here he is playing it and showing off the Birdseye maple back and sides. He took this mandola on his latest UK tour.

This mandolin is now sold subject to confirmation.

Small mandolin available.  Birdseye maple back and sides, German spruce soundboard.  It looks and sounds wonderful.

Email stefan@sobellguitars.com or call 01434 673567 for more information.

A little progress

Before starting this 12 fret New World D, I planned on building an MS model and had cut the rosette slot and fitted a double arrow-head rosette.
When I decided that I would instead build a New World D, I was still able to use this soundboard, but the rosette and soundhole would have been in the wrong place for a 12 fret. There was no possibility of moving the rosette and anyway, no need to, because the soundboard was big enough for me to re-position the guitar shape.

In the photo of the rosette, you can see some of the original MS outline, and how different the soundhole position would have been.

The difference would have been greater except that the 12 fret has one fret fewer between the neck end of the body and the soundhole.  The bridge will of course be closer to the tail by the distance between the 12th and 14th frets, and the bracing pattern has been modified accordingly.

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Above, the centre reinforcement has been cut away to receive the back braces.  You can see from the guitar outline, this back is not quite as wide as the NW body. However, the binding and purfling will add enough width that it will be just wide enough. Otherwise I would have had to add a narrow tapered centre panel to make a three piece back.

Right, the braces have been shaped (all four to the same curve) and glued in place.  Another example of the usefulness of the go-bar jig, this was a much more complicated operation before I had it.

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Just starting

Starting a new guitar is always a special event.  I build one at a time, and the first real woodwork has a good feel.  Previous to this I’ve picked out suitable back and sides (Brazilian rosewood this time), soundboard (old German spruce) and neck (Wengé).  I’ve joined the back, thicknessed back, sides and soundboard, and cut spruce billets into braces.  All this is preparation; the first real building processes are reinforcing the back and fitting the rosette.

Here the back is in the go-bar jig with the spruce reinforcement (taken from off-cuts of the soundboard) glued in place and held by go-bar spars while the glue dries.  The back brace positions are marked; the reinforcement will be cut to accommodate them.

While it is of course the same procedure I’ve shown many times before on this site, I like to show it often.  The different woods can be seen (Brazilian rosewood varies a great deal), and sometimes, as this time, I’m building a particularly interesting guitar.  This is going to be a New World D guitar, based on my 12 fret to the body New World.

12 fret guitars are generally considered to have a special sound, as compared with the more usual 14 fret versions.  Last year I built my first 12 fret New World (see my News item 27 October 2021); it’s now the guitar I play every day and find so hard to put down.  A slightly different sound compared with the equivalent 14 fret, it’s deeply satisfying across the strings and all over the fingerboard.  Sometimes it’s hard to say exactly why a guitar feels and sounds just right, but my New World 12 fret is one that does.

Of course, 12 fret guitars limit how high one can put a capo, and frets past the 11th are hard to get at.  But most acoustic players don’t play up there anyway, and if they do they would probably choose a 14 fret cutaway.  The 12 fret guitar isn’t about access, it’s about sound.

Building a D version involves building a neck two frets longer, thus turning it into a 14 fret guitar.  But the special aspect of the 12 fret guitar is the position of the bridge.  Because the neck moves two frets into the body, the bridge has to move by the same amount and so ends up two frets closer to the tail, and it’s this that gives it the 12 fret sound.  Adding two frets at the head end doesn’t change this.

A longer, therefore heavier, neck will change the sound to some extent.  I’ll be interested to see if this change is noticeable and if so, how different it sounds.

More on this build in the future.

Me, Colin, and the mandolin                                  photo: Janet Fellows

After several years concentrating on guitars and building no mandolin family instruments, we are now building them again.

Colin has now built three mandolin family instruments to my exact design; this is the third.  He has his own workshop a few miles from me, but spends one day a week with me showing his progress and checking with me it’s exactly how I build.
I provide the carved soundboard (and back where this is carved) along with the other materials, and we look together at the build at every stage to ensure these are exactly as I build them.

Not only do I appreciate Colin’s skill, I am also really happy with his down to earth no nonsense attitude.  This third collaboration mandolin looks wonderful and has all of my trademark sound; full details and more photos on my ‘Available now’ page.

A 10 string cittern and 8 string maple bodied mandola are also well under way.

The tail block links the side at the tail and provides a gluing surface for the soundboard and back. Invisible and not an exciting part of a guitar, as with most components it is vital to the structure.

A couple of years ago I had an instrument returned that had clearly been kept in very wet conditions.  The fingerboard had swollen so the fret ends were not visible, the centre join down the back was sunken, and the soundboard was rippled.  A friend suggested it had been kept in a sewer.

But the worst damage was at the tail. I build tail blocks from German spruce, laminated to avoid splitting when stressed, and at the time these laminations were at right angles to one another.  But the extreme damp had caused the horizontal grain piece to expand, which pushed the top and bottom bindings away from the sides, leaving unsightly gaps all around the centre tail strip.

While guitars should never be allowed to get so damp, since then I have laminated tail blocks so the grain is not quite vertical and alternate pieces slant different ways, as in the photo left.  While extreme wet could still allow expansion to take place sideways, this is less damaging than vertical expansion.

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The photos left show the finished tail block, the sides gluing to it and the tail block in place.

Photos below show  the body ready to receive bindings with the centre tail strip in place, and the tail with the Santos rosewood binding in place and mitred into the tail strip.

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The build is now complete.  Next the guitar goes to Dave Wilson and the spraybooth; this will not be until be some time in the new year, so it will be a couple of months or more before I get it back.

When it comes back, I glue on the bridge, check, level and profile the frets, make and fit the bone nut and saddles, fit gold Gotoh 510 tuners (the best) and finally fit the strings.

Even then it isn’t finished.  I adjust the nut grooves, fit the strings and bring them up to tension, check the neck relief and set the string action.

Then I like to let it stand a few weeks while the guitar settles in and I can check the string action again.  By now it will have started to open up, though it will be months or even years before it reaches its peak and we can hear how it really sounds.

The impatient young man who started building nearly fifty years ago has had to learn patience.

Old Brazilian rosewood, aged German spruce and aged ebony are lovely to work with.  It sounds like a cliché, but it really is a privilege to work with such special woods.

Making the Bridge

My bridge is always ebony.  I am currently using ebony from a board I bought from Craft Supplies in Derbyshire.  Goodness knows how long ago Craft Supplies ceased trading, but however long that is, I’ve had this ebony longer.  It is beautiful; straight grained, very black (although I personally don’t mind some lighter figure), and even and creamy to work.

Because the bridge is to be fitted to a curved soundboard, it must be curved to fit.  As the soundboard curve can vary slightly from guitar to guitar, the bottom of the bridge has been shaped to fit this MS soundboard.

Only the outer two holes go right through the bridge; these are used to locate the bridge when gluing.  The middle four are blind so that  they don’t fill with glue during gluing.