Venetian Exploration (IW#126)

Some time ago I saw a link on the web site for Bernunzio's Uptown Music in Rochester. It was for a 1930's "Venetian" style tenor from Kay Kraft and it just made my heart stop, it's so good-looking. So I thought I would make one.

 

This is a whole different body style, and required completely starting over, to a certain extent. The original is not an archtop, though it wants to look like one. Instead of actually carving an archtop, though, the makers just put a wicked curve in the braces and bent the top onto them. Still solid spruce, but not carved. This allowed for the floating bridge and tailpiece. So that's what I did. Because I had never built a guitar like this before, the first one came out pretty bad. Here it is, all built out of poplar. I learned a lot on this one, not least that it is really hard to figure out what is "symmetrical" on this body shape. You can see that this body is kind of wonky, and that the lower bout is just too wide. This is also a pretty huge body, bigger in the bottom bout than a standard dreadnought. Back to the drawing board! 

 For the second one (which is #126, and one that I have not taken back apart for parts) I made the bottom bout smaller, and tried to balance it more. I also tried to make an oval sound hole, something that I will not try again. It was really hard to figure out what the proportions of an ellipse would be that do the same thing that a circle does, and I do not think I did a particularly good job. It is also pretty hard to freehand a good ellipse. 

 The other thing that I thought I would try is a sunburst finish. I have been wanting to try that, and this seemed like as good a time as any. It was, unsurprisingly, pretty hard to do well on the first try. It came out ok, but smaller than I would have wanted. I do want to try that again on another instrument, i like the way it looks. I just need to practice it more. 

 The fingerboard is persimmon, which is the only North American relative of ebony. I have several blanks that i got from a persimmon tree that we took down on my folks' land, so I am going to be using it for a while. I like the light color against the sunburst, it shows the scroll work at the end of the fingerboard off nicely. The bridge is an ebony piano key, of course, and the tailpiece is a pie server. The rest of the guitar is all piano wood, naturally (spruce top, poplar back and sides), and the truss rod cover is the ivory veneer off of an old piano key. The usual stuff. 

 All in all a good set of experiments. I have a feeling that more of these are in my future.  Here is what it sounds like: