iLuthier

An internet guitar project spanning 7 weeks and 3 continents? Cameron Miller, formally of Maton Guitars, explains how he and a group of friends came to build a custom guitar for musician Ken Stringfellow.

Ken Stringfellow used to play guitar and sing in the seminal 90’s Seattle band “The Posies”. He also did quite a bit of session work and when The Posies disbanded in 1998 he joined R.E.M. as a session musician, both live and on albums. In late 2000 I got together with a few friends and created a guitar for Ken because…well, because it was a really cool idea to do! Although I did all of the actual construction the project involved 6 people from 3 different continents - 4 in the U.S., 1 in England and me here in Oz. Every one was involved right through from the initial planning and design, selection of materials and the construction methods to the finished instrument and we all communicated by phone and the world wide web.

The entire guitar is made from Australian timbers. The core of the body is made from Western Australian jarrah which has a similar density to Brazilian mahogany. In some ways, working wise, it’s comparable to mahogany as well. The body was constructed with two “sound chambers” so it’s not strictly a solid body but you couldn’t consider it a semi-acoustic either. It’s was just an idea I wanted to pursue for a while to see what sort of sound the guitar would produce.

The face and back are made from bookmatched silky oak from Queensland. It’s in no way related to real oak though - early Australians wanting to “Europeanize” much of Australias trees when they arrived here. People Stateside know it as lacewood and the wood that I used was a leftover flitch from veneer making so it probably would’ve been steamed prior to slicing. As well as making the wood more pliable for slicing steaming also makes the wood much more “stable” when it’s dried.

The “committee” who thought up the design of the guitar couldn’t decide whether to have an f-hole or a lute-style rose on the body so we ended up having both instead. The f-hole design is a direct copy from a 1965 “Mastersound” bass made by Maton Guitars - Australia’s premiere guitar manufacturer which has been going since 1946.

There is a piece of 1/4″ thick solid brass measuring approximately 4″ by 2″ sunk and screwed into the body just under the bridge. This is hidden by the face and added mass to the original Tune-o-Matic bridge that was on the guitar. As the guitar sustains extremely well and has “bell-like” qualities then this bar goes a long way in helping to provide that.

The neck is made of 5 pieces of laminated Australian blackwood and jarrah. The blackwood comes from Tasmania and is what you would refer to as a “true” tonewood. That is, it’s use in acoustic instruments - most notably violins and guitars - is well documented. The truss rod is a Maton style “double thrust” type which was developed in the late 50’s/early 60’s. I used that design because it’s simple, tried and tested and was what I was used to when I worked at Maton Guitars in the late 1980’s

The fingerboard and lute-style rose is made from Victorian redgum which was dug up out of the ground and has been carbon dated as being 16,000 years old. Normally redgum is pink to deeper red but this tree has soaked up various minerals over that time to stain it to a very dark brown/black - similar to ebony. Though not quite as hard as ebony this process has hardened the timber considerably. Like the steamed silky oak, once dried the redgum is extremely stable.

The inlay material is hand made polymer clay glued to a protective layer of 1/16″ thick clear polycarbonate. The two main “styles” of material are mother of pearl and malachite and the polymer “blanks” were made in a suburban house in New Jersey before being shipped to me to be cut to shape and inlayed. Because the polymer itself was so soft when compared to traditional inlay materials I decided to laminate a clear polycarbonate sheet material to it to protect it. To my knowledge this is a totally untested inlay material/process so the jury is out on how the whole thing performs. The emphasis though was not on the material itself but the originality and the handcrafted nature of it.

The scale is a standard Fender scale but there are 23 frets symbolizing the significance of the number “23″ in Posie folklore. The inlay at the 23rd fret is, quite appropriately, the number “23″. The other inlay designs include a bow and arrow (playing on Ken’s surname), a sun (after a song titled “Flood of Sunlight”), a flatiron (for “Ironing Tuesdays”, another posies song), a triptych of posies, Ken’s surname “Stringfellow” at the 12th fret, two “Broken Records” (another song by The Posies), a stylized posy, the name “The Posies” followed by another stylized posy and then the number “23″ as the final inlay.

The fingerboard was to also have featured a set of orange LEDs along the top edge, but this idea was quickly discarded when I accidently sliced through the pre-wired and pre-glued fingerboard while doing the inlays. Had I had even an extra day to repair the damage I would have done so, but it was not to be. The deadline was way too close and the LEDs had to be drilled out and top dots glued in their place. Somewhere inside that fingerboard is the skeletal remains of 10 orange LEDs.

The rose features the initials of the six people involved in designing and making the guitar. From memory I think I also laminated it to give it a bit of added strength?

The guitar took seven and a half weeks from initial conception and design to *almost* finished. Some of that time was spent worrying if the US/Australian postal system was going to be kind to our polymer clay samples. Fortunately they were. An extra day or two would’ve been great though so I’m annoyed I didn’t think about making it two days earlier It was presented to Ken while he was on tour here in December 2000 and, although it still needed setting up because I’d run out of time, Ken was amazed when he received it and now says it’s his most prized material possession.

To check out some pics from the project, click here.

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