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size 2 travel guitar http://mowrystrings.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=53182	Page 1 of 1

Author:	Clay S. [ Sat May 02, 2020 9:48 am ]
Post subject:	size 2 travel guitar
Although I've shown bits and pieces of this guitar, I thought I would show how it turned out in the end. I tried several new (to me) things with this guitar, some of which I am happy with and some I'm ambivalent about. The guitar started life as a size 1 set of sides I bent and molded wrong end for end and with facets in the waist and a back set that had a "hole" about the size of a dime when the book matched halves were put together. The soundboard was a very nice piece of spruce, a dozen sets of which were sold to me as tenor uke sets. They were long enough for most guitars, but not wide enough, except for something like a size 2. I didn't have great expectations for how such a small guitar might sound so I didn't want to make a building form for it. Instead what I did was tape spacer blocks in a size 1 form that would help me "squash down" the size 1 sides I molded to the dimensions of a size 2 guitar. This worked fairly well. Compared to a "D" guitar the size 2 is very small.

Author:	Clay S. [ Sat May 02, 2020 10:05 am ]
Post subject:	Re: size 2 travel guitar
One of the things I wasn't really happy with was the way the finish shifted the colors. The orange of the rosewood became more brown and the grey of the iron stained neck went olive. In natural light the originally white sound board went a lemon yellow. On the plus side the finish was relatively easy to brush on and level and buff, but I didn't have much luck touching it up. Because of the shorter body length I used a 24.9 scale and shortened the peghead a little. The sale length was longer than the originals but shorter than the 25.4 scale I usually use, even on size 1 guitars. The scale length worked out better than I thought it might. The peghead still looks a little "stubby" to me - but the neck fits inside the body. One thing I was happy with was the way the dime sized Patch turned out on the back. To the casual observer it's pretty unnoticeable.

Author:	Clay S. [ Sat May 02, 2020 10:13 am ]
Post subject:	Re: size 2 travel guitar
I changed my bridge design to one I think is a little stronger and I glued it on over top of the finish with super glue. being a pinless design I will be interested in how well it holds up. One size benefit of the design I came up with for a travel guitar is the action is adjustable with the turn of a wrench. In the photo you can see where the new finish flaked off the old from a repair I had to make after I knocked the neck off the bench and snapped off the heel. It didn't snap at the glue joint, so I had to fit the fibers back together

Author:	Clay S. [ Sat May 02, 2020 10:38 am ]
Post subject:	Re: size 2 travel guitar
The guitar makes a small package when in travel mode and can be taken as "carry on" luggage with most airlines. "Bagging" rather than "casing" may not offer as much protection, but less may be needed when baggage handlers are not in the equation.

Author:	Bryan Bear [ Sat May 02, 2020 4:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: size 2 travel guitar
How does it sound, I’d love to hear it!

Author:	Brad Goodman [ Sat May 02, 2020 5:46 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: size 2 travel guitar
That’s pretty neat! How is the neck attached? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Author:	Clay S. [ Sat May 02, 2020 9:53 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: size 2 travel guitar
Hi Bryan, The guitar is much better balanced than I thought it would be. It has a good bass response (even with dropped D) and a bright treble. One of the many screw ups I did with this guitar was forgetting to trim the sides down to make a shallower box. It's as deep bodied as a Dred - a fat little pig! Hi Brad, The neck is held on with common hardware store fasteners - a single 10-24 cap head screw screwed into a T nut. I wanted to avoid anything too exotic in case of loss or failure. A replacement could be easily sourced. Plus a buck and a half beats paying for some of the hardware on offer (Rubner at one time sold a version of Stauffer style neck hardware https://www.mimf.com/library/Staufer_ad ... -2011.html ) . I also use a couple of small locator pins made from the same rod I make truss rods from. Here are pictures from another travel guitar (the dreadnought in the first picture is also a takedown travel guitar) showing the neck pocket and also the tail port. The bolt that holds the neck on reverses and locks the neck in the tail port.

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