Sound-board for finger pickers

[Ray Ussery]

Thanks Ken...gives me a good idea and I think this is what she is after.

John, I nailed down the neck width, and the other "Playability" issues with her...
I'm going to give this a try and see what happens. It may well be that MY ability will play a big part in the eventual outcome as well.
In any event, I will try to get some pics as I go along and secure a sound bite in the end.
If it does turn out well as a "First guitar" it will be because of the help of all of you!

Ray

[mike-p]

Mahogany and cedar probably my favourite combo, and I play fingerstyle. For my ears the little martin style in another thread has a classic small body cedar/mahogany sound. To reiterate the subjective nature of these things, because i dig in pretty hard I can often get a brighter, stinging sound from a cedar top than a stiffer spruce but maybe this is because, played hard, I can get the cedar close to the limit of it's headroom, I suspect she will not play in this way coming from a classical perspective.

[ken cierp]

Mahogany and Cedar Size #2

[mike-p]

That's the one I was talking about, great sounding little guitar.

[Ray Ussery]

I love THAT! That's for sure... :>)

[Lonnie B]

Well my currant build a J45 Gibby I had chose African Mahogany and Red Cedar as I too have never heard a Cedar soundboard. Wasn't to concerned as I plan on keeping the guitar myself. I have many guitars but only play a classical Alvarez and Ibanez Electric. The rest of them sit nicely in their cases in my music room. But I don't have one with a Red Cedar top. But that's soon to be rectified. I hope I like it.

[John Link]

Lonnie, I bet you will like it. The first guitar I ever made had one. In retrospect, it was too flexible across the grain, but somehow (instinctively?) I corrected for that by making it fairly thick and using heavier braces than I would now. It came out nice and tubby with a loud dark sound, something that is no surprise with cedar.

Interestingly, it had something like 100 grains per inch. Strange how little that metric has to do with anything. (I still have scraps left from it, so I'm not depending on memory, I just looked at them a couple days ago.)