Serial Number 017

Left Handed Orchestra Model

Started on October 12, 2023: completed on October 28, 2023

*edited on September 10, 2025

S/N 017 will be a left handed Orchestra Model guitar. I have built 2 left handed guitars so far, but both have been for customers which leaves me nothing for a left handed player to try out.

I have chosen Red Cedar for this guitar’s soundboard: I have recently strummed through a few of my current guitars and noticed that S/N 014 (The Cat Guitar) had a different tone it. I am not sure if it is just the wood combination but I am sure that the Red Cedar soundboard is a factor in there.

I went with trying another new wood for the back and sides set: Japanese Walnut. I find that the grain pattern is very similar to the Bitter Cherry that I have worked with before. Sometimes I wish that when you put finish on the wood, it stays the same colour as it is raw. There have been a few back and sides sets in which I preferred the way it looked before I French polished it. I know that even with spraying EM6000, the colour will change a little.

I used the last piece of New Guinea Walnut I have for the neck. I honestly still prefer to try other woods than the norm that you see all the time. A Black Walnut fingerboard went on as the fingerboard – another new wood I am trying out. The pattern from the fingerboard and neck are quite different from each other – which is a good thing.

The last three necks, I have been trying to use Tung Oil for the neck finishes. This neck seems pretty rough feeling, I may have to take it apart and sand it down and/or possibly use Tru-Oil for a top coat.

I had initially tried to design a headstock to use on this guitar and future guitars but the way it looked didn’t seem to fit an acoustic guitar – to me, at least. It looked a lot more of an electric guitar headstock – it was just a modded Music Man headstock which is essentially a Fender headstock shape. I will have to try to design something else as well as some bridges.

This guitar is the first time routing the second logo. I wanted to use logo on a bigger scale – making it go through the headstock but it seems like we need to test that idea before actually going ahead with it.

The neck wood had eventually turned “powdery”. It almost looked like it was in the middle of being sanded. Even though I did have a couple of customers say that they liked the “raw” feeling of the wood on the neck, I felt that it was time to refinish it with Tru-Oil.

Having to take the neck off, I also reworked the shape of the neck a little – more on the heel as I was struggling with the heel shape for a long period of time. I left the heel little on the thick side to compensate for how little material is at the heel.

A portion of the X brace has lifted from the body and has been reglued but you can see a crack line along the top. It might be just the shellac. If the glue doesn’t hold, I may consider replacing the soundboard altogether.

SPECS

Body Orchestra Model, left handed

Scale 25.34″

Top Red Cedar 1A

Back Japanese Walnut

Sides Japanese Walnut

Neck New Guinea Walnut

Fingerboard Black Walnut

Bridge Rosewood

Tunings Machines Gotoh 381

Strings D’Addario EJ26 Phosphor Bronze