Archive for August, 2009

Well, here it is ( I have to admit that I didn’t find out if it sold at the Festival or at all) BUT the actual price tag on this instrument is $US400,000:00 presumably that included the Case!!

The Guitar is a maple Instrument (back and sides) and is heavily and exquisitely inlaid

on its back.

Price $US4000000:00

Whilst I did not get to play the Guitar I spoke at length to somebody that did and the reported

that the Instrument was surpassingly light, considering the amount of pearl and other material used in the inlay.

As to what it all means, well your guess is as good as mine. Not my “cup of Tea” but to each his own.

I must say however the Instrument was beautifully made and the Inlay and Marquetry work Impeccable.

Charles fox exhibited at the festival again this year and as one would expect ,attended with a range of stunning instruments. none the least of which was his SJ-!4 Ergo Noir 2005 Guitar or as I like to call it his

Ebony Guitar,( pictured here), this Stunning Instrument is FULL of innovative Features, or possibly more accuratively put ,”Recent Design Trends” such as a Wedge-shaped body,elevated Finger Board and a double top soundboard or Sandwich Laminated Top.

Charles also had a number of other Instruments that engaged the many people that filed past his stand during the Festival.

Charles ,along with a number of other builders exhibiting, were advocating the advantages of the “Double Top”, two very thin pieces (1 mm thick) of soundboard material, be it spruce,Redwood cedar or the like sandwiched between a very thin layer of honey combed Nomex material making  the top, not only very thin and light but extremely strong ,so much so that Charles is making Guitars without any top bracing whatsoever.This Ultra Low Mass Parabolic Soundboard weighs  about 40% than a normal solid wood soundboard and does NOT require Bracing of the top

Charles is seen here holding an OM Cutaway style of Instrument which has been constructed using this method, this Instrument had NO top bracing, of any kind whatsoever.

I had an opportunity to play one of these guitars and was immediately struck by just how light it was, but more importantly, how open and loud the instrument played, further I was very impressed by the evenness and balance across the strings which was immediately evident.

As a lot of you would already be aware, Charles was and is always ready to answer question not only about his instruments and methods of construction, but about anything to do with LUTHERI in general.

I was very interested in this form of construction particularly as it referenced to Acoustic Baritone Construction.

Here is a Photo of Picture of the Laminated top with the Nomex type material displayed lying on top of it. Just note how thin the top is. I estimate that the Laminated top is no thicker than 2.5 mm.

If you read the addendum to the post that I put at the end of the first Guitar Festival Post you will see that the cutter and its table is about a month and a half away.Here are some pictures of the new laminate cutter and housing that will make up half of the new COMPLETE UNIT.

I can however say one thing this unit is as smooth as silk,LMI have done a terrific job on the upward sliding cutter head,the unit is counterbalanced and special bearing etc,etc have been installed and the unit works a TREAT.

Here are the Pics:

There were many fine Luthiers with examples of their Art, in other words there were may Beautiful Instruments on display.

It would be impossible for me to feature then all but I am going to feature some of the examples that took my Fancy.

I will do this in separate posts the first Luthier was from Malaysia and that was Jeffrey Yong.

Jeffrey has been building for may years but this year he pushed the boundaries with three Guitars (he sold them ALL) great work Jeffrey.

The instrument that took my fancy was a “Combination Guitar” i.e. it had the upper bout of a Classical and the lower of a small Jumbo,but as the pictures disclose the instrument was in perfect balance FURTHER it was made entirely of Monkey Pod, a Malaysian timber with stunning figure.

The instrument had a “Players Blow Hole” on the upper bout any was cut away foe player comfort on the upper leading edge of the lower bout a very nice feature that is creeping into the instruments of the makers of top end instruments.

This Guitar was a delight to play being very comfortable in the players hands and extremely well balanced across the range in fact I found it almost impossible to fault. My only criticism would be the gold string pins but Jeffrey assured me that they added to 20 per cent of the Guitars tone,which I doubted.

This was a fine instrument with a load buoyant but mellow tone and was in my opinion a perfect finger players Guitar

Ervin is an Artist in the real sense of the word.

He has been building Guitars since 1970 and has influence on a generation of Luthiers through building writing,teaching,lecturing ,exhibiting and the training a dearth of apprentices.

I first met Ervin, early on the first day of the Festival, in the car park of The Wells Fargo Centre for the Arts, as he staggered towards the main entrance, weighed down by LARGE cloth shoulder/carry bags filled with books papers and other paraphernalia, no doubt associated with his Craft.

I had no idea who he was and visa versa. However we started talking as we walked, he refusing any offers of assistance, it very quickly became evident that this softly and precisely spoken, greying Gentleman was a power house, in sheep’s clothing. He was inquisitive,but with purpose,laconic but at the same time imparting wisdom and knowledge and importantly he was genuinely interested in what I had to say to the point that we could engage intelligently. It was not until we got to the front doors of the Festival Centre that helpers (his apprentices) came to his assistance, that I realised that I had just spent the last 25 minutes talking about Guitars and other things, with the Great Man himself Ervin Somogyi.

Over the next three days I ran into him from time to time and I attended his Booth Location in the Luthiers Atrium on a number of occasions, on every occasion he remembered my name and on one or two occasions he approached me (when I had failed to see him) a truly remarkable man. However I have to say that one of the Highlights of the Festival, for me, was attending Ervin’s Seminar, in a packed Merlo Theater, on Saturday morning the 15thAugust. The Session was being Professionally filmed so I Imagine that a DVD of the Lecture will be available in due course. No doubt LMI will have it for sale.

Available at the Festival was Ervins’ Bound two Volume boxed  Book set. The first entitled “The Responsive Guitar” and the second, “Making the Responsive Guitar,” this compendious work will no doubt become the Seminal reference for the Modern Luthier, as they represent his life’ work that has recently culminated in the exquisitely built, “Patchwork” guitar, (exhibited), which will surly find it’s resting place in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.

I had Ervin sign my Volumes and my cursory viewing of the work has lead me to the conclusion that these volumes will become staple material in my shop.

On the last day of the Festival Ervin appeared in a long Guitar patterned garment which he told me was a bathrobe that caught his fancy some years ago and he keeps it to wear on special occasions such as the LAST DAY OF THE 2009 FESTIVAL.

I took some pictures of Ervin and there is on of myself at the signing together with a picture of the back of the Patchwork Guitar.

For me one of the exciting discoveries at the Festival, and there were many, was the discovery of Thomas Lloyd Guitars.

Luthier, Chris Wynne, the Principal of Thomas Lloyd Guitars (check them out on the link above) who has been hand building and running Guitar Building Classes both in Australia and Italy for the past 20 years, had a stand at the Festival.

I was neither interested in purchasing any of Chris’s Guitars or taking his classes (and that is NO reflection on Chris or his Guitars) BUT what I was interested in  sourcing Old Growth Australian Timbers for Back/Sides, Soundboards and Necks and this was a substantial part of Thomas Lloyd Guitars business.

Chris had on display a number of Guitars made from some of the most stunning sets of Australian Timber  that I had ever see, this does not happen often, but I was “Blown away”. We, at Valleys Guitars, are often asked, “can we make in Australian Timber”, and I have to say that in the past, I have told Clients that they were far better looking at some of the Stunning Timbers that we have in our inventory from Brazil, Mexico Europe and the US, as the Australian Timber were just not up to speed, when one was to compare them with  these imported timber.

I now find that this is just not the case,

(CLICK ON THE PICTURES AND THEY WILL OPEN UP)

In  pictures of one or two of the Guitars that Chris had on display, you will notice that they are

all matt finished, imagine the stunning “IN YOUR FACE” effect when finished in two

pack catalyzing Urethane:

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT the Timbers are Tiger Myrtle, Cooba and Sheoak.

I was particularly blow away with the Cooba. AND I am here to tell you that THEY ALL sound GREAT.

Further and this is HOT off the press, we at Valleys will be making a line of Acoustic Baritone Guitars in some of these woods and offering Guitars in these Timbers together with Fiddleback Blackwood and Blackheart Sassafras, and Soundboards in King William and Bunya Pine.

I believe that Chris builds exclusively in Australian Timbers and I admire him for this stance, we however at Valleys, don’t and won’t, but will be mixing and matching timbers to suit the Guitar and the clients requirements.

The exciting aspect of our NEW relationship is the availability of these beautiful Australian Timbers, hand picked by Chris (in the forests)and then quarter sawn, to bring out the inherent beauty of the Timber, together with the Stunning Acoustic attributes of these Australian Old Growth Timbers Matched with an appropriate top, be it an Australian top ,Italian Alpine or German Spruce, Adarondak, Cedar, Redwood or any other of the Tops that Valleys has in its extensive Inventory of beautiful and rare timbers, the availability of these timbers will add an exciting extension to our range.

I am able to tell you that very shortly, two of our NEW AUSTRALIAN TIMBERED BARITONE GUITARS will be seen in the hands of a couple of Australia’s Leading Country Music STARS, so watch this site for more info.

LMI has come up with a new bending machine at the Festival. The bender is not yet finished and I will be discussing its design and operation at the LMI Facility tomorrow. In my view this Bender has great advantages over the existing Bender. Set out hereunder are some of the Pictures that I took at the Festival.You will notice if you look at the pictures of the new Bender that the controller has received a great deal of A&R This will be a great advantage to ALL users.Further the waist clamp on the new Bender offers greater control and accuracy.the other advantage is the use of Spring steel to replace the existing bending medium this will deliver equal heat and pressure over the whole product being bent. Here are some pictures I will put more up tomorrow after I have had a close look at the NEW bender:

The Festival is now over and today I got the opportunity to visit LMI and amongst other things got an opportunity to talk to the designer of the new equipment and have a close look at it and part of the new Binding cutter.

I am told that the Bender should be on the shelves in about a month followed very shortly by the Binding cutter . I made it know to the Design Engineer that what was really needed was a new table that was self leveling.

He informed me that there was work being done on that although he did not think that the table would come out at the same time as the Cutter. Further the cutter was designed around a particular  Laminate cutter and that at this stage it appeared that purchasers of the New Slick Cutter and it is SLICK will have to purchase a New laminate cutter as well and YES you 240v ‘ers out there the Laminate cutter comes in 240v’ and will cost less than$US100.Here are some pictures that I took at LMI today:

Where to start???

Well the Festival was all and more than I expected, as I type this it is still going although it will wrap up in 40 minutes.

It will be impossible to post all the material that I have Therefor over the next few months I will gather and sort the material, speak to the various builders and attempt to give you a good representation of what was there, and what it was like.

I can certainly say this,I learnt a great deal from the Festival and although I am not  actively selling into the US market (there have been a few feelers, notwithstanding that I had no Guitars with me),I would build if the economics of the sale panned out,this however I would doubt.

Just to give you a taste of the Festival I will posy some pictures of one of the Japanese and Malaysian Luthiers whose work was both exquisite and beautifully made

“Unfortunately the Artist and accordingly the source of this tune appears to have been lost to obscurity. This is unfortunate because its execution and tone is excellent  and its  message poignant and make me feel happy. the Guitar being played is clearly a solid-bodied Instrument and probably a Goldentone,which have also been lost to obscurity  I post it in the hope that somebody listening to it on this site can shed some light on the Artist and the origin of the Tune.”