The making of a harp guitar had been at the back of my mind for some time. I had seen several of them in a museum in Vermillion, Sth Dakota, USA, during one of my trips.The Shrine to Music Museum had one Stradivarius guitar on show. He only made a handful of guitars, so it was great to see it. Anyway, you can’t make a harp guitar from normal guitar wood sizes, so over the years, I kept aside longer pieces of top wood and back and side pieces. Finally, after hearing fabulous harp guitar players like Stephen Bennett play, it just spurred me on to get one finished. I dug out my old issues of the guild of american luthiers mags, and poured over all the pics of harp guitars. A lot of the pics were of the inside of instruments, so the top bracing pattern was on show, and I could get an idea of the amount of bracing required.

The first thing I did was to use my drawing machine to draw up the outline of the instrument. I cheat as much as I can, so I used one of my acoustics with an M38 Martin shape as a guide. I used the pattern from when I made that shape guitar, and copied it onto the drawing sheet. I could only go as far as where the bass side of the body dives off to become the bass arm. The rest of the outline was proportioned from the small pictures I had access to. I have kept this drawing intact, and continue to use it when I make a harp guitar. I have used california redwood for the top, and black wattle for the back and sides. The neck is sapele. Hope you get something out of watching this video.

[flv:http://www.learntomakeaguitar.com/Learnmakeguitarvideos/Learn-to-make-a-harp-guitar.flv 480 290]

I was doing a series of short 30sec. videos, but decided to upgrade to a full length video showing the whole process in one hit. There are more than 60 photos strung together.

I get pretty excited when I finish a new project. This is my latest custom order, a doublenecked 6 string guitar and 4 string bass. It has my own P90 style handwound pickups in the 6 string section and Stewmac “select” bass pickups. There are two output jacks, so the bass can be played through a bass amp, and the 6 string guitar can be played through a separate guitar amp. I would envision this instrument to be handled much like a harp guitar, where both necks are utilized at the same time. My client has a one man show called “the loose and nasty show”, so if you are in Sth-east Qld., keep a lookout for him.[caption id="attachment_160" align="alignnone" width="167" caption="silky oak/sapele double neck guitar/bass"][/caption]

When you learn to make a guitar, you want it to sound good, and you want the shape of it to look good.Guitars of all shapes and colours have been used as a tool to attract attention for some time now. If there is a shape out there that you like, then copy it onto paper or cardboard or plywood. If you would rather have a go at drawing your own shape, then get some drawing paper (newsagents), and begin by drawing a body centerline.The length of this line will basically determine the size of the instrument. You need to mark the upper bout width, waist width, and lower bout width. The parlour guitar is the smallest shown here (photos are not quite to scale), and the dreadnaught is the largest. Once you start drawing freehand, you will soon see how tricky this process is. I was a draftsman for many years, but all my straightline drawing didn’t help much here. You need to draw fluent, elloquent lines.The jumbo guitar size is not shown here, because of the size of the wood needed to make such a guitar. You only need to draw one half of the body, because when you make the wood body template, it is flipped over on its edge to the reverse side to make an identical half.