So i’m in sort of a downtime while i wait for the current projects to finish curing. It takes the lacquer 10-15 days to fully harden up before it can be polished. I came up with an idea for a jazz oriented solid body that will be a cool alternative to my full size jazz hollow and semi hollow guitars. Since i have a few days i decided to do a prototype. In a nutshell it starts out as a block of quartersawn sitka spruce (same as the archtop soundboards), I carve a nice arch in the top, include a waist and forearm cut, and rout a couple control pockets. It will have a pretty deep neck set that extends into and underneath the neck pickup. I also made a negative veneering form so that i can put a nice looking veneer face on the front without altering the light woody tone of the spruce. Its gonna be a nice lightweight guitar good for playing in crossover situations where the archtop vibe fits, but where some electric attributes are called for. I could see this guitar in many different body woods and veneer choices!
These pics are the proto- the blocks of spruce are squared up, joined, arch carved and various cuts done, then face veneer added…
