electric banjo #1

i built this for the Knotwells former banjo player, joel2 (myself being joel1 or THE joel). here we are side by side, playing a barn show at aspen farm outside of viroqua, wi. this is the only live shot of the banjo i have. i'm playing my paddle bass in this picture by the look of it.

back in those days we were still mainly writing and playing loud and fast. feedback was a constant issue with any acoustic instruments we tried to bring into the band amplified. joel2 had seen some other "solidbody" banjos made by other builders and brought the idea to me.

the concept at work is that the electro-magnetic(guitar-style) pickup is far less prone to feeding back than the piezo or contact pickup (mounted on the drum head) which is more frequently used in acoustic instruments.

so, the guitar pickup is for the loud shows with a p.a. and stage monitors. the piezo is for house shows or practices as it more accurately reproduces the acoustic sound of the banjo. i can't remember how i wired the controls but i think it's mag volume/piezo volume/tone.

the other main feature is the full length 5th string. i had also seen other builders using a similar set up on their banjos and really liked the idea of getting the tuner off the middle of the neck and up on the head with the other tuners where they belong.

the 5th string still begins at the 5th fret as usual, but then goes up to the head though a channel, running under a string ball-end between frets 2 and 3.

the fingerboard is wenge and the inlays are black pearloid shaped like bicycle gears. joel2 co-owned a bike shop in minneapolis before he moved out of state.

the scroll inlay, the corners, and headstock are all supposed to be reminiscent of an f-style mandolin by joel2's design request.

 here's another version of the logo i wish i'd never used.

the body is made of mahogany with a flamed maple top. the neck, cover plates and armrest are flamed maple too. i used a water-based laquer for the sunburst finish. though it was nowhere near as toxic, it was a lot more difficult to sand and buff than regular laquer, so i'll probably not use it anymore either.

really?

i was moving a chair and bumped it into my fridge. of all the places to impact, i hit my cool phillipine guitar magnet square in the middle and cracked the neck in half. i just laughed, "looks like i got some work to do!"

 a drop of glue and my guitar is ready to hold cat pictures once again. i just can't get away from guitar repair.

 

paddle basses

at the complete opposite end of my artistic spectrum from the harbinger fiddle is the paddle bass. it is the solid body electric version of a washtub bass. no frills, just one string made of a bicycle brake cable, and a single coil pickup with volume and tone. the larger one i tuned to A the smaller one to C. you play it by standing on the base and bending the paddle sharp or flat from the open note. i used to play the prototype version (also an A) in the Knotwells when we began so long ago. that one had it's pickup inside of a tin can so it would look like a mini washtub. i still have my prototype, and one of these two is in seattle now. the other is missing.

hardanger fiddle

 i prefer to call this the harbinger fiddle since it doesn't meet all the specifications of a real hardanger. 

firstly and most importantly it was built in minneapolis. 

also, neither the owner nor myself  are norwegian. finally, the body is from a violin which was donated to the shop by a loyal regular. hardangers are arched higher on the top, in other words they have bigger bellies than violins. hardangers also have overlapping f-holes, violins do not.

the painting on the top is called rosing. i went with a slovak/russian inspired design in tribute to myself and the owner respectively. you can see that the top had been split in a few places and was sloppily glued together still gapping in places. the cracks all had to be cleaned out, fit, re-glued and cleated.

the inlays in the fingerboard, tailpiece and corners are made from pipestone(to signify minnesotan origin), corian, blue and abalone colored acrylic, and five snazzy buttons. 

the divider lines are pre-made colored wood. 

i inlayed the corners because they had all been strangely drilled into.

harbinger fiddle is also a more fitting name due to the headstock the owner requested.

 

 the pegs are faced with corian and are supposed to resemble bones. the pegbox on the original neck had broken in half, which is what prompted me to build a new neck in the first place. at the time i was in a band called Eatin' Hogeye with the then future owner who convinced me to build a hardanger neck.

aside from the extravagant decoration on the body and the figure carving on the head, what makes this instrument a hardingfele is the four symathetic strings running through a channel in the neck. you can see the lower second tier on the bridge and the nut at the end of the neck where it is hollow. the fingerboard and bridge arches are also flatter than a violin's so it is easier to bow two or three strings at once to play chords.

this was not the first nor the last instrument i've built that needed a case made just to fit it. i really enjoy custom fitting cases to match the more unusual shaped instruments. i like to know they'll be safe when traveling.

this was the case the violin came in. i just extended and deepened the neck end and cut out some extra room for the bridge. then of course the pushin-up-daisies theme covering to hide the patchwork seams.

world's largest tune-o-matic bridge

some guitar tech humor. the world's largest tune-o-matic bridge. located at the east end of the washington bridge.

my mandolin

this is my f-style mandolin, as in mine. the top is redwood which i got from salvaged floor boards. the back, sides and neck are maple. the neck is from the same log the baroque guitar came from. the bridge and fingerboard are padouk.

i believe i built this in 2004, but  i ought to stamp it 2011 since that's when i completed it. it never got a number or anything since i always planned on keeping it. in fact, it's the first instrument i built without the bad logo, there are still remnants of it in the inlay though.

the nut and lily-of-the-valley inlays are mother-of-pearl which came from shells i've collected.

i took this to an outdoor show  in Winona one very humid hot summer day and camped that night by the river. when i got home i saw the glue in the neck joint had softened and the neck had slid up a little. luckily i had plenty of bass playing to do at the time and shelved the mandolin for a while.

 then about a year ago i pulled the neck to reset it. i also removed the back and carved away more wood from the inside on the top and back and thinned the sides too. i even shaved down the neck at this time. initially i built everything pretty bulky, the plates and rim were way too thick. before the mandolin wasn't nearly loud enough and sounded weak. after removing all that wood it's almost twice as loud as it was and the whole sound has opened.

after i glued the back and neck on i redid the binding and refinished it in shellac. originally it was finished in nitrocellulose laquer which i am here and now officially denouncing. i will no longer be using ncl on any instruments i build.

half of a p-bass pickup is the perfect thing for many four stringed instruments. i've used this same pickup set-up on another mandolin, everything is mounted on the pickguard. there is a volume and tone and the output jack is underneath.

the pictures don't really show but the pickguard, vine and headstock inlays are all matching "mint green".

electric 12-string neck

here is an electric 12 string guitar i built the neck for. the body is an ibanez that a friend in chicago gave me.
she was the one who did the impressionist paint job. 

 the neck is mahogany with a 22 fret rosewood fingerboard, a corian nut and bright yellow vinyl inlays. 

i painted the headstock face to match the body as closely as i could.

 (that's a wall hook the guitar is hanging from that you see.)

this guitar has also just found a new home. may it serve well and last forever.