Padauk J-185 w/Piano Soundboard Top

[Ken Hundley]

Nice looking! I am always a sucker for some good padauk!

[Tom OBrien]

HOLY FREAKING COW!!!! This thing is the best sounding guitar I've ever played! No, not the best I've ever built – a relatively low bar – but the VERY BEST I'VE EVER PLAYED! I'm still trying to figure it out, but all indications seem to be that the piano soundboard wood used for the top is the deciding factor in its outstanding sound.

The guitar has been through hell. I shredded the Padauk by thicknessing it with a standard DeWalt planer. Then when I bent the sides, they splintered even more, creating a complete mess that, under normal circumstances, a sane person would have started over with new boards. But I, being young and foolish (as the song goes), decided to forge ahead and cut out a sound port at the upper bout where the damage was most obvious. The problems encountered on the way to giving birth to this Frankenstein are legion: 1) The neck is misshapen (it was only my second attempt at carving my own neck); 2) the head is misshapen; 3) the fingerboard had to be unglued and replaced because I chipped out a piece of the rosewood while trying to drive in an errant fret; 4) the bridge had to be unglued and repositioned; 5) Innumerable forms of professional fakery were employed by Sylvester, the shop finisher, in order to figuratively put lipstick on this pig; 6) I had to refinish the top because I burned it while repositioning the bridge; 7) I then had to refinish the sides because I didn't protect them from overspray when I was doing the top.

In any case, after the first two guitars I built with piano soundboard tops turned in good, middling performances, I had conceptually given up on using the piano soundboards because they demand a lot of effort to extract them from the pianos and then take off the ribs, plane them and get them ready as guitar tops. Ed, the piano restorer, had also convinced me that I wouldn't get better sound from these boards. He accomplished this by demonstrating the difference between the sustain of an older piano compared to that of a new soundboard. Notes on the older piano soundboard decayed more quickly.

To my delight and to Ed's surprise, this guitar sounds better than any guitar I've picked up – not just any guitar I've made – which could be a rather low bar – but ANY guitar I've had the pleasure of strumming. I plucked two or three notes on it for Ed and he immediately exclaimed that it sounded great. This is from a man who's been tuning pianos for over 50 years and has a very discerning ear.

This guitar has given new life to my original thought that these piano soundboard would make great guitar tops. Now I just have to get up the gumption to take these old pianos apart to find the gems that lie within.

[Tom OBrien]

Here are some pictures of the finished product.

[Tom OBrien]

And another.

[Tom OBrien]

And yet another of the back.

[John Parchem]

Looks good, how does it sound? How many tops are you getting from the piano soundboard.

[TonyinNYC]

If you pay closer attention to the direction of the runout in the pieces used for the sound board, you could have made th joints much less visible. However, it still looks great and is definitely something to be proud of. I suspect the sound has as much, if not more, to do with the bracing than the source of the sound board material. Any stiff spruce, free of runout, will make a good top. Your spruce just happens to come with a really cool back story!
Great job. Post a clip or two when you can.