Serial Number 035

Grand Concert

Started on October 14, 2024; completed on December 02, 2024

With the sale of S/N 021, another Grand Concert sized guitar would be needed. Hopefully there will be more sales to make space for upcoming guitar builds.

Sitka Spruce was quickly decided for the soundboard. It is just easy to go with Sitka as it has a good balance. I would like to try out some Eurpoean Spruce and Carpathian Spruce in the future. But for now, I choose from what I have on hand.

For the back and sides, Machiche was chosen after a look through in the inventory list. Also, with S/N 031 being a lighter coloured wood grain with the Flamed Maple, I wanted something that was darker.

I did want to make a custom rosette for this guitar but decided to make that a future project. I have tried to use up wood that I have in bins to make rosettes before but it really is better to make it out of one piece of wood instead of gluing a couple together.

Whenever I look at my neck woods, I really wished I had more available. It hasn’t been easy to find the correct cut of wood I need to make necks – even with looking for smaller cuts than I had started with. Also, the price of buying two pieces that can only make one neck will be changing future prices on the necks.

I went with the left over piece of White Limba with the Bloodwood lamination and a Black Walnut fingerboard to go on top of the neck combination. The Bloodwood lamination has great colour as well.

The neck angle on this guitar is almost perfect along with the straightness to the centre line of the body. I can see that the work on the dovetail/neck is slowly getting better but it is still a lot of work to get it there.

The head plate was made of mulitple pieces of Machiche and Ebony veneer as well as some purfling. I didn’t want the usual of just the one or two veneers on the top.

Besides a little bit of chip out on of the soundboard, I am overall happy with some progress in getting a better dovetail fit and alignment. This guitar took a little longer to finish because I started the one on one build of S/N 036 in the middle of this build.

SPECS

Body Grand Concert

Scale 24.9″

Top Sitka Spruce 2A

Back Machice 3A

Sides Machiche 3A

Neck White Limba/Bloodwood strip

Fingerboard  Black Walnut

Bridge Rosewood

Tuning Machines Gotoh 381

Strings D’Addario EJ26