The new owner of this guitar fell in love with someone else’s classic J-45 and loved the enveloping bass tones and the dry midrange that this style of guitar can do so well. Since it’s wrong to covet guitars belonging to touring musicians, we decided to build him his very own classic slope-shouldered dread to get the sound, look and feel he was dreaming of. We went pretty traditional, using a Honduran mahogany set (from Hibdon Hardwood in St Louis) with rosewood accents. We supercharged the guitar by building around a red spruce–often called Adirondack spruce–top from Old Standard Wood that is perfectly quartered with minimal runout and provides kilowatts of acoustic power to spare.
Yep, I dropped this one in the shop after applying the last coat of finish (the first time around), so got to take another run at the body finish, and practice made perfect. It seems I’ve been only building sunbursted/toned guitars lately, but I enjoy the process of transparently coloring a guitar to bring out everything the wood has to offer. Most of the color is applied using waterbased dyes and rags, to recreate the looks of the best toned instruments I’ve seen. The finish is waterborne lacquer. All of the purflings, bindings and rosette are crafted from real wood, and Taylor Mullins (Holter Pickguards) made a custom celluloid pickguard that looks perfect. This guitar is amplified via a K&K Pure Mini.
It sounds great! It has the big, confident bass we aimed for, the quick decay we wanted, and the mids and high notes travel with more conviction than most guitars this size (that’s the red spruce top kicking in). It strums like a beast with great percussion and tone, can boom-chuck with the best guitars, and is quite nice for fingerstyle. Maybe the best guitars are dropped on their heads during the building process. 😉
This big slop-shouldered beauty was born to sing. She was a deep and crisp voice that will only get better with time.
Using dye in a sunburst shows off the amazing depth and figure of a beautiful red spruce top.
The burst glows through the semi-transparent celluloid pickguard provided by Taylor from Holter Pickguards.
I source beautiful mahogany sets from Hibdon Hardwood in St. Louis.
Honduran mahogany glows when finished well–and I’ve found that sealing with shellac enhances the visual depth more than any other material I’ve tried.
A fine Honduran mahogany back set off by curly maple bindings.
This neck had a nice bit of figure to it, so I used dye to enhance it.
I found a nice dark rosewood fingerboard for this one.
Gotoh makes smooth and precise tuners; plus they look great.
In honor of 2-22-2022, here is a snapshot of the slope-shouldered dread twins showing off their in-process sunburst finishes. Especially in the brighter lower parts of the guitars, you can see how deep and transparent the dyed color is.
The slope-shouldered siblings have been wood dyed, sealed with blonde shellac and now are receiving some darker shellac to deepen the edges. The foreground guitar is Tasmanian blackwood, the other is mahogany.
I’m building two J45s this time around, and this is the second. The commissioner is looking for a pretty classic J45 sound–friendly, unpretentious and loose. I have had a really nice set of mahogany on hand for a decade or longer that was looking for the right project. This is the one. It’ll be paired with the slightly more flexible of the two Adirondack spruce tops to make a fantastic slope-shouldered dread.
This red spruce top is joined and ready to party.
Another terrific Adirondack spruce top from Old Standard Wood.
I glue top and back plates together in a simple jig that keeps the plate flat and applies closing pressure via wedges.
I’ve had this really nice set of mahogany for the back and sides for quite a few years.
The true Honduran mahogany, Swietenia macrophylla.
I cut a fresh batch of spruce bracewood for these guitars and felt like a millionaire, working with all this fine material.
Three good options for fingerboards, left to right: The leftmost piece is actually the mahogany neck blank, then granadillo (a hard, stripey wood), East Indian rosewood and finally katalox (a super hard purple-black wood)
Katalox is the hardest of the three (far right), granadillo is the second hardest, but East Indian rosewood, though not as dense as the other two, is a very popular material for fingerboards.
Bending up the thin wood strips for use in the rosette.
It’s fun to fit the rosette strips to the rosette pocket so that everything fits tightly for a clean result.
The rosette features curly maple which will be used for the purfling on this guitar, too.
I use a go-bar deck to glue in plate braces, so that the plate can be domed for strength.
Rough-shaping the back braces with a handplane.
The red spruce top and back braces are in place and have been roughly shaped.
