2007 double top classical: spruce/Brazilian rosewood  SOLD   $ 15,000 Scroll down to see all photos. Click for enlargements, including supersize images and purfling details. Every year I make a guitar "off the list" to exhibit at the annual Guitar Foundation of America convention. This year it's a double top of spruce and cedar with Brazilian rosewood back and sides. The spruce is some of the most extreme "hazelfichte" ever seen, and the Brazilian has remarkable "ink" figuring. My double top is made in the style of Wagner and Dammann; two thin soundboards sandwiched together with a Nomex honeycomb layer in between. This results in an incredibly light but strong soundboard. The same technology is used (with aluminum) to make  wings on the largest jetliners. The result, with this guitar, is concert-hall volume with robust basses that seem to pump sound out into the room, and beautiful liquid trebles that are incredibly even all the way up to the 20th fret. The tonal color palette is huge, the main reason I'm embracing this technology in addition to my traditional model. This guitar projects well and at the same time surrounds the player with sound--one player commented it was like "playing in stereo." The Brazilian back also has a very thin cedar soundboard laminated at its interior, which contributes to its very lush, velvety tone, and provides added stability. Scroll down for more photos and full specifications. Click on any photo for enlargements and details.      Tuners on this instrument are Rodgers of my design. The rosette, headstock, and butt strip consist of handmade wheat and spiral ribbon purflings. Headstock and bindings are ebony; the back of the headstock is quilted mahogany. The 12-hole bridge has a tie block of fossilized walrus ivory that I cut on a diamond saw to expose the "tapioca" core of the tusk. The scale is 650 mm and both the nut and saddle intonation is compensated at each string with the Byers method. The neck is mahogany with my Moorish arch heel cap, and the entire guitar is French polished to a high gloss. This instrument plays very easily, and is set up with a low saddle, with an additional medium-action saddle included with the guitar.

 

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