Fanned fret 9 String acoustic

WezV

Winny_Pooh said:

Great thread. How will the intonation be on the double courses if they are spaced slightly apart? Or will that be part of the appeal? Fascinating build and ambitious too!

its a very good point i was concerned about.  the only way to know was to try it.   it seems to be okay and the saddle can be intonated a little bit too

Andyjr1515

WezV said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Great thread. How will the intonation be on the double courses if they are spaced slightly apart? Or will that be part of the appeal? Fascinating build and ambitious too!

its a very good point i was concerned about.  the only way to know was to try it.   it seems to be okay and the saddle can be intonated a little bit too

Have just been reading a thread on Basschat of a guys experiences with double courses on an 8 string bass (he's now building a double course 10 string) and he comments that the intonation issue is not anywhere near as prelevant as people fear.

ToneControl

Andyjr1515 said:

WezV said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Great thread. How will the intonation be on the double courses if they are spaced slightly apart? Or will that be part of the appeal? Fascinating build and ambitious too!

its a very good point i was concerned about.  the only way to know was to try it.   it seems to be okay and the saddle can be intonated a little bit too

Have just been reading a thread on Basschat of a guys experiences with double courses on an 8 string bass (he's now building a double course 10 string) and he comments that the intonation issue is not anywhere near as prelevant as people fear.

There was a 12 string Bass on the wall for years at  what was Sound Control in Salford (now PMT)
4 courses, each with the main bass string and 2 octave strings. 
Unsurprisingly  hard to sell

ToneControl

ToneControl said:

Andyjr1515 said:

WezV said:

Winny_Pooh said:

Great thread. How will the intonation be on the double courses if they are spaced slightly apart? Or will that be part of the appeal? Fascinating build and ambitious too!

its a very good point i was concerned about.  the only way to know was to try it.   it seems to be okay and the saddle can be intonated a little bit too

Have just been reading a thread on Basschat of a guys experiences with double courses on an 8 string bass (he's now building a double course 10 string) and he comments that the intonation issue is not anywhere near as prelevant as people fear.

There was a 12 string Bass on the wall for years at  what was Sound Control in Salford (now PMT)
4 courses, each with the main bass string and 2 octave strings. 
Unsurprisingly  hard to sell

and I thought people's ears weren't as sensitive to accurate pitch at lower frequencies anyway (with ref to Bass double courses)

PhilKing

It's looking great Wez.  Unfortunately I won't be able to get down to see it .  id you decide to put the 6 machines on one side because of the string pull (or did I just get 3 & 6 - can't remember now!).   Are you still going with a wound and unwound G set?  I'm about to check out the D'Adario Nickel & Bronze set and will let you know how they sound on a regular dreadnought (spruce & mahogany).  

It does look really interesting in the first pic.  A bit of a Dali warp in the head!

The Les Paul Deluxe is looking really good too.

WezV

PhilKing said:

It's looking great Wez.  Unfortunately I won't be able to get down to see it .  id you decide to put the 6 machines on one side because of the string pull (or did I just get 3 & 6 - can't remember now!).   Are you still going with a wound and unwound G set?  I'm about to check out the D'Adario Nickel & Bronze set and will let you know how they sound on a regular dreadnought (spruce & mahogany).  

It does look really interesting in the first pic.  A bit of a Dali warp in the head!

The Les Paul Deluxe is looking really good too.

I wanted to try 3 & 6 as it seems the most logical to my brain when tuning up... but I may not stick with it as the 6 are very close together due to the other consideration, fitting it into a case.   I think its going to work better if I plug and re-drill for 4 & 5 spaced a bit more comfortably.   I left the headstock uncapped to give the option of changing it after.  The tuners are reversible so no issues there.

At the moment its just strung with whatever to see how it held together - still hasn't imploded so I think I am good to go on the next stages

The Deluxe may get a bit of ageing in the next few weeks

WezV

Well nothing happened with that for a while, but I think it's time to get my head back onto this.  I'm bumping the thread for motivation

Test fits were generally positive 6 years ago, with a few issues to sort that delayed me progressing.  Then life changed a few time's and it was always on the back burner... now its suffered from a couple of years of bad storage and some damage thanks to that.  it's been stored better for the last couple of years, so I think it is time to crack on.

the neck join has remained solid and sides are in a good state, but the rest needs some work!  Part of me was tempted to start from scratch, but there is still enough good here to work with

As discussed in the last post, I need to plug and redrill for a 4-5 headstock rather than the 3 -6 it has now, then add a headstock veneer front and back.  That will be the neck finished.  


The top has developed a couple of small cracks near the soundhole .  I still have the option of using a new top, but will try and save this one before I do.  


the back has bowed the wrong way, and suffered a crack.   Not too worried about the crack as that will go together well, but need to spend a bit of time convincing this to go back the other way, make sure it is stable, then brace it

PhilKing

Really nice to see this back on your bench.  The woods still look amazing and I love the neck inlays.

Andyjr1515

Pleased to see this back in play.  Between now and you starting this, I made the guitar bouzouki - straight fretted but in other terms some similar design challenges. 

 Interestingly the same thing happened to the back (red gum walnut).  If I remember correctly, I lightly spritzed both sides, left it for a day to fully absorb and then spritzed just convex side to get that side to gently expand and unbow.  While it was still moist, I then popped it back under the Go-bar rods in the radius dish and left it a couple of days to fully dry in its 'proper' curve.

WezV

Yeah, i spritzed the concave side and put it under some weights, which got it reasonably flat within a day

Now it's clamped in a 15' radius dish.

I need to remake my go-bar deck. I still have the uprights and loads of bars but need a neck deck and top plate.  It does make things like this a lot easier.   My first was  just garden cane under a table, but i may as well reconstruct the proper one

WezV

Go-bar deck has been rebuilt. I got lucky and managed to snag a chipped worktop offcut big enough to do both plates for a tenner. I think this will be strong enough. 

That has been cut into 600mm squares and attached to 4x15mm threaded rods

You can see the tube of go-bars on top. I have a load of the fancy yellow stew-mac ones, as well as some carbon fiber tubes with rubber ends for lighter clamping.

Braces have been removed to allow me to flatten this.

  Its currently in the indoor workshop so i can control humidty better. 

 I might put it on a stand at some point to give better storage underneath and a more comfortable working height

WezV

The headstock has been redrilled for 4x5 layout which keeps the outline small enough to still fit a case, but gives much better spacing for each tuner - just checking fit below before it gets tidied up.


Flattening/re-radisuing the back  is going slowly.  It kept wanting to cup the wrong way again.  Yesterday i ended up wetting it and heating it all up with an iron.  Then when still relatively warm and pliable I put it back in the radius dish.  It now holds the correct curve relatively well, springing back to flat when pressure is removed.

Normally you glue the flat back plate to curved braces to give the correct dome, but I still think I want this holding a correct dome shape a little better before I glue the braces on - the blood wood is pretty damn strong, and will bend the braces if it tries to cup back the other way

The top has had its splits repaired and holding well, but they are still visible thanks to a few years of dust getting in them. i cleaned as much as possible out with rubbing alcohol before gluing, but still a slight tint.  Options are a black top,  splice in some new wood, inlay, or a whole new top if none of those work

its currently held in some big U-shaped blocks of wood to held hold its shape.  it appears i lost the mold i made for this at some point in the intervening years

PhilKing

I'm happy to keep the original top and not worry about the marks.  Worst case, if you want, would be a sunburst top, but I'll let you decide.  Not too keen on hiding the cedar under black.   The headstock is looking great, are they Sperzel tuners?

WezV

Yeah, they are the lightweight open gear sperzels.

guitargeek62

Well this is weird. I’d been starting to spec up my Crimson course build and it’s likely going to be a baritone, potentially a 9-string on the upper register too. On top of that, today I’d been thinking I might have a crack at some triskelion inlays and then… boom, I catch up on this thread!  

WezV

How odd

I also have a more basic 9 string parlour I made before this one, i am considering reviving.

It was a basic acoustic build with flat top and back and a bolt on neck. I made the same error i did here  with the 3x6 layout. It's still the layout that makes most sense to my brain, but you can't squeeze the tuners in closer than a fender to get it to work so small headstocks are off the cards.

Anyway, i tuned it up for the first time since putting it togther the other day and it sounded great.  Im not sure how.  I remember it needing a lot more work, but it is really rather close.  Just hard to tune with so little spacd between the tuners


So many abandoned peojects.  Too litlle time!!

WezV

The back is now holding the correct curve and had braces attached.

Just got a little tidying up to do, then i can close the box.

I need to make some aesthetic choices now.

Im not sure whether to keep the tort binding, or change to something else.    The neck is a very clean mahogany and ebony combo, i'm not sure how to tie it in with the red's and yellows of the body...  black binding may work better and look cleaner

PhilKing

I think the tortoise looks nice against the bloodwood and once there is some lacquer on, both the top and the sides will blend in nicely.  Does the neck have to blend in with the body so much?

WezV

I shall see what I think once the back is on and trimmed back, I will probably put a coat of lacquer on before i cut the rear binding channel.   

My current feeling is they look like they belong to different guitars and the tort is a little lost, but it might pop again once it has some finish on it

WezV

The back is on and waiting to be trimmed back and have its binding channel cut.

One thing I have been unable to test to this point is how difficult it will be to attach the neck via the soundhole.  Its 2 bolts into threaded insert's in the heel.  Thankfully there is also a side hole on the upper bout for the electrics that I can just about fit my hand through - i think it would be a real struggle without this,  maybe i need to change to hex bolts as it might be easier to find tools that fit well.  I already have some acoustic truss rod wrenches that would work well for this




So far so good.

One small aesthetic detail I am thinking about is the bit inbetween the end of fretboard and soundhole.  Obviously it's a little odd not having these meet and I wonder if I should add a fretboard extension to the body to fill the gap... but I guess the whole thing looks pretty odd anyway