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Well after six years of building classical guitars, I figured it was time to finally tackle my first steel string. I strung it up this week and was quite surprised at how good it sounds. I used the John Mayes advanced voicing DVD's and basically built an exact replica of the top in those DVD's, and I used the OLF SJ plans for the rest. I haven't put a finish on the guitar yet because it's way too cold for me to spray now, so I ended up stringing it up with no finish.

Some of the biggest crossover lessons learned:
- A Dovetail neck joint can be quite tricky. Next time I will try the standard bolt-on M&T.
- I really enjoyed building the box in the mold. I'm going to incorporate this into my classical building.
- Next time I will install the trussrod so it adjusts at the headstock, not inside the box.
- Inlay is tough--I will pay somebody next time to inlay my scipt logo. The fret-dots were easy.
- Finally, setup was a little tougher on the SS. I still need more work here. I didn't have any of the radiused tools for sanding frets, therefore there are slight buzzes on the outside strings. I still need to fix these.

Here is a link to a montage of some songs I recorded. Overall I was very pleased with the sound. The clip doesn't do justice--it's just a video camera pointed at the guitar. Disregard the playing errors and mistakes, I'm a little rusty on the SS guitar. Also, the tuning errors are from my altered tunings, not the guitar. I still need to figure out what gauge strings I'm going to settle on.

SS guitar

Thanks for looking!

John

P.S. A can of lard to anyone who can name all the songs in the montage.

Congratulations, John!!! Great sound and impressive playing chops.

More pics please!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Great job John!!!!!!!

nice sounding guitar and excellent playing too!

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Reguards,

Ken H

Nice job, John- sounds great!

John, the sound is great and the playing is wonderful!

More pics please!

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-Rob Eckert
Ann Arbor, Michigan

John, Great job on the first SS. I won't try to name the montage but I recognized them. Well balanced sound on your guitar. Get some pics so we can see it.

Mark

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Wisdom is justified by her children

I couldn't get it to work.  I must have a setting wrong.  Any ideas.  I'm using Firefox.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Thanks for the support fellas, here are a few more details (and pics). The top is spruce from Bob C. (sorry I can't remember what species I bought, it was about 3 years ago). The back and sides are also from Bob, figured Honduran Mahogany. Besides the killer looks, I really must say mahogany is quickly becoming one of my favorite woods as a player. I just love the sound of it. I have mahogany guitars with both spruce and cedar tops and they all sound great. This one really has a complex, woody tone--hard to describe, but the seperation of voices is very clear and even across registers. Flamed maple bindings (also from Bob). I can't wait to get it finished, I think the grain on this will be awesome.

Oh, and I almost forgot--my bible during this build was Robbie O'Brien's DVD's. There are a lot of techniques from his SS dvd that I learned and will incorporate into my classical building. There are a million ways to skin a cat, and a lot of what Robbie teaches just makes sense to me. Thanks for looking!







I'm embarassed to show my inlay work but it is what it is until I get better skills. Somehow I never learned to inlay from building classicals!   

well I know jingle bell hop, and silent night.. recognized a few others too,
but couldn't pull the names from my thick skull...I didn't listen to it all but
you sure can pick it John!

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

[QUOTE=John Mayes] well I know jingle bell hop, and silent night.. recognized a few others too,
but couldn't pull the names from my thick skull...I didn't listen to it all but
you sure can pick it John![/QUOTE]

Thanks John,

I should mention, the top I bought with your voicing dvd's was a huge help also in voicing this guitar. It is much easier when you can shave the braces, flex the top, and then go over and feel the flex from your top. The side-by-side comparison was a huge help, especially for a first SS build. I'm working on a cedar top now and have noticed it's not as stiff as your top. When flexing side by side with your spruce top, it just doesn't feel quite as stiff, of course I'm not done bracing it yet so we'll see how it goes.

Cheers!

John