Seven string guitar neck constuction

The seven string guitar I'm building is for playing Brazilian Choro music. It is tuned like a regular six string guitar, EADg'b'e' but it has a low fat 'C' string on the bass side so the tuning looks like this: CEADg'b'e'.

There are some structural challenges to building seven strings involving making the neck wide enough for the extra bass string. No big deal really, but you do have to mount three tuners on one side of the headstock and four tuners on the other so the design has a decidedly asymmetrical look. Behind the neck on the towel are all the tools I use for carving and marking out the neck. I never thought I used so many tools for necks, but when I made an effort to leave them out after I finished tonight I was amazed at how many I used. I always thought I just used one or two rasps and a knife, but there are scrapers, round files, rasps, smooth files, knives, calipers, pencil, rulers etc. I just use them like I'm speaking a language, picking up each tool and making a cut is like using a word or sentence to say something. Interesting lesson for me.

Oops! I forgot to finish up the oud posts. Tomorrow, it's late and I have been in the shop all night.

Flat Neck Syndrome- A curable guitar neck defect

Next I'm going to talk about Flat Neck Syndrome or sometimes called Fat Neck Syndrome- a special defect that guitar neck can be born with.
It's curable, but not always pretty. FNS means the luthier did not carve the neck to be totally rounded into the classic 'D' shaped neck profile, this annoys many guitarists as the thumb of the left hand can hang up on that flat area of the neck or in the case of Fat Neck Syndrome be just plain too thick to play comfortably.

The neck profile of a guitar neck can be reshaped if there is enough meat left on the neck and there is no danger of making it too thin or structurally weakening the neck. It is a judgment call that a good repair person or guitar maker can decide on. Once you decide to have the neck modified, it's a matter of carefully reshaping it and refinishing it. Usually you want to use the same finish on the neck as was used on the guitar originally, but sometimes you must use an alternate finish for time sake or because the new finish will actually wear better.

This week I will be finishing up a neck reshaping job on a modest, but otherwise serviceable classical guitar. The guitar has horrible polyurethane finish, UHGG! Poly, the bane of all luthiers, it's thick goopy stuff and it dampens the vibrations of a delicate guitar well made guitar. However on many factory grade instruments the heavy handed long wearing polyurethane finish is often used. You just gotta roll with it a do the best you can when you repair those finishes, it's part of the repair persons territory. You out there should feel great pity for those of us who patch up your poly plastic dipped guitars.

The illustration up above shows the cross section of a classical guitar neck and shows the difference between the 'flat' and 'D' shaped neck profiles. The flat neck shape means the guitar maker rounded off the corners of the rough neck, but did not take it farther and carve the whole thing into a well formed round. Some guitarists like those flat necks and that's fine, but most prefer the 'D'.

I reshaped a neck last week as I said, and I am finishing it right now with French polish, that sounds really haughty, no? French polish is about as French as French Toast. It means using shellac, a natural finish to make a thin tough film on a wood surface. I'm going to talk about what French polishing is and why I choose it to refinish the neck I reshaped. And then I'll get back to the oud.......

Hey it's me!

I don't actually look like this, but I made this drawing as how I imagine my customers see me in my shop. In reality my arms are much thinner and my head more pointy. Self portraiture should always flatter the self.

Tom's Oud #3

The oud top is shown above. This was taken after I removed the old braces from it and saved them to brace the new top which you can see below it. The old top had structural problems, basically it was folding up on itself under the tension of the strings. For an older instrument with this kind of construction it happens frequently. There are two basic cures, rebuild the old top with new supporting structure or replace the top with a new one. In this case it came down to top replacement, but I used the original braces as the structure under the top. I'll show this and tell why in a later post.

The new top turned out well, I made all new appointments for the top, pick guard, that oval shaped thing, bridge and the beard. The beard of an oud is that piece of wood near the neck that looks like an old dudes beard hanging down the face of the instrument. Only it's anatomically weird because if this were actually a face, the beard would be growing over the eyes way up on the face. This is a great reason to refrain from anthropomorphizing an oud and the main feature which distinguishes ouds from human beings.

But I digress. The rosette is made of hand carved walnut as are the other details like the beard and bridge. I had to remake the details of the top with walnut for two reasons. The old parts were made of really bad soft wood and had fallen apart or were deeply scratched. Since this oud is honestly not of historical value, it's a mass produced but good sounding instrument, we decided ( the customer and I) the attention to remaking the details and appointments would be an enhancement both structurally and aesthetically. Had this been an oud of value due to it's maker or other factor a more conservative restoration would have been carried out. This was an old oud about to die and we revived it to have another long music making life. In the end it's a players instrument not a museum piece. It's important for a restorer to understand when to make those judgements.

Oud Continued #2

This is the inside of the bowl before I excavated all the old nasty glue out. Honestly this thing really smelled bad, like rancid glue mixed with some large mammal droppings. My friend Stewart Port asked me why I bothered to even fix this thing, "For the money stupid" I said . Well. I thought about saying that, but since Stewart is one of the best guitar repairer/restorers on the West Coast, I said, "for the money", shrugging my shoulders. For the money, and for the love of ouds and all old beautiful instruments.

I put on the kinky blue nitrile surgical gloves and over several sessions, which totaled twelve hours of work, I finally removed all the black glue and dirt. I had to work slowly and carefully wetting and scraping out the tarry looking mess. As a section would come clean, I worked length wise along the ribs, I would use fresh hide glue and narrow strips of shopping bag paper to reinforce the seams between the ribs. I wish I could say I felt like an archeologist removing debris and rock from valuable rare Chinese dinosaur bird fossils, but that sounds like real drudge work.

After the whole job was done the inside of the oud bowl was no longer stinky. We joked it smelled of camel piss, although I dont know what camels piss actually smells like, I imagine it to be something like what this oud smelled like. When I was in grad school I worked part time for an over educated plumber named Ted and the other part time in a boat yard, thus I understand stink and all it's nuances. The oud never phased me.

The oud restoration for Tom Chandler #1

This oud came to hard times some years ago. I don't know how old it is, but guess it's about sixty years old. The past several months it has been in my shop under going restoration for my friend Tom Chandler who is an oud and guitar player in the the San Francisco Bay Area . He's dry and sarcastic, but generally a sweet guy and a great musician. I'm going to explain a few of the things that I did to revive this oud that he had acquired in a rather dubious state of repair.

Since I don't believe in beginning at the beginning, I'm going to start somewhere in the middle. What you see in the picture is the completed patch work and cleaning of the inside of the oud bowl with the top off the instrument.

Shit, I invited you here and I have no beer in the house. Be right back. .........