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i blame this on my sister! my father died in 2006 and i wanted some fitting way to remember him and the influence he had on me and my music. he had bought me my first classical guitar at 10 and then, though undoubtedly disappointed i wasn't going to carry on my classical studies, my first electric three years later. it was my sister who put the idea in my brain that a guitar might be a fitting memorial to him. despite my journeys off into the fringes of music, he was always interested and encouraging about what i did, both he and my mother. |
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my father's real passion and drive in life was to serve people, and spent over 70 years in the St John Ambulance Service - most often patching up injuries at Maine Road football ground, but always week-in-week-out with never a grumble nor break. this dedication was rightly rewarded in later life. the St John have a number of accolades they can award, but all of them involve a trip to London and one of the last true heraldic ceremonies open to normal folk in the UK. ermine & swords & real knights - and that's how i remember my father, a true knight. maybe this should have been a sword. and in many ways, any musical instrument, creatively is just that. |
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though he eventually achieved the higher rank of Officer Brother in the St John, there was something about Serving Brother that just spoke much more of what his 70+ years of service for StJAS actually meant to him. the guitar is my way of saying thank you to him for unshakingly encouraging me musically from an early age, though he didn't play an instrument himself and even though i'm sure he would rather i hadn't gone down that noisy rock route at an impressionable age! |
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Ben Crowe builds guitars for Robert Fripp and when I had the opportunity to look at a custom job, Ben won head and shoulders against an encouragingly big UK independent luthier field. i was really impressed by his ethos and skill as well as his enthusiasm for a very complex brief, and though still quite young, Ben has a very wise design head on his shoulders. He understands players and instruments and materials so well. Ben's built GR/Sustainer guitars for Mr Fripp and so the esoteric electrics were no problem and his understanding of guitar mechanics made me confident that the baritone was going to have a really great tone. |
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the chance to have a guitar completely custom made come along so rarely and so i really wanted to make the most of this venture. that said, ben's original quotation was actually less than i'd paid for my off-the-shelf Parker guitar over 10 years earlier. i've had a fair few guitars over the years and some have been good, and some have been ok, but with particular features that i really liked - whether electrical, wooden, or constructionally. ben's enthusiasm encouraged me to think very hard indeed, dig deep and go for the guitar i'd always wanted - the ultimate hybrid of all others. it started with a simple piece of paper. |
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i'd had
double cutaways most of my career and though i could think of no good
practical reason for it, design-wise i've always instinctively preferred
the shape of single cuts.
after a few thousand scribblings and rescribblings - this is what i finally sent to Ben to quote on. i was stunned, that aside from the 'bum curve' that ben suggested in the final design, the physical guitar bears an astonishing resemblance to this picture. |
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in terms of specifications, the list to potential luthiers was quite comprehensive. only Ben seemed completely unfazed and enthusiastic about the whole list! |
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Necessities:
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ideals:
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ben works best in-person, so the next phase was a design trip down to see ben at his workshop in somerset. it's a remarkable experience, and a sobering one! if this goes wrong, this is a lot of my own money! this was a highly experimental project so all my trust was in ben to be honest about the achievable and practical. ben's own design process starts with yet another piece of paper - this time, a really big piece of wallpaper! seeing the guitar drawn out life-size helps the process immensely - even control positions and fret positions are drawn out so that everything can be visualised. it's a good double check of technical requirements for a guitar with complex electronics too. note the new addition of ben's genius 'bum curve' in the large drawing. |
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one of ben's most endearing talents is his enthusiasm for all things wood. a good design visit will involve a whistlestop tour around his house being shown examples of different woods, most of which have been turned into pieces of furniture at some point in the past. it may sound odd, but it's staggeringly useful. seeing materials in context, even as a coffee table, can be really useful than looking at a relatively unassuming lump of timber. but ben got behind this project right from the beginning, loved the ethos and story and wanted to input as much as possible into how special this instrument was going to be. he was thinking about timber before the ink was dry on the drawings above. i'd no real idea on colouring or finishes, but something in me really favoured a natural wood finish, even if stained. but when ben dragged out this piece of beautifully spalted beech, i was sold. |
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ebony is a lovely wood, but hopelessly unsustainable. it is a problem even using it now, but ben had a piece that was brought into the country over 30 years ago and had just one small neck sized portion left. he was looking for a special project for it though it was probably not this one, as we would be using a 27" scale neck to cope with the baritone tuning. ben's like me about sustainability and low ecological impact and though that doesn't usually go well with guitar making, we were both happy that we weren't putting any new demands on hardwoods for this guitar. somewhat spookily, when measured, the piece was just over 2-3mm long enough. we smiled, obviously meant! |
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ben advocates the use of multi-laminate necks cross-grained to maximise structural and therefore tuning stability. he also always uses two-way truss rods that allow increased stability. the necks are set into the guitar body with a deep set tenon joint, almost 2/3 way into the guitar body. years of experience have shaped ben's skill with string pulls and headstock break angles, and these are all carefully considered for each guitar. |
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the fingerboard is glued on the proto-neck and the fret positions sawn out by hand using very careful measurements from fret tables. for the 27" scale for the A-A tuning this is particularly critical. |
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the body itself is also a laminate of a back (sapele, a sustainable alternative to rosewood) and cap (the spalted beech) which will be bookmatched (cut in half to give a vaguely symmetrical feel to the guitar). the guitar has a number of honeycomb-like tone chambers routed into it to give the body huge resonance, almost a hybrid between a solid body and semi-ac hollow body. for the baritone deep tuning, this approach makes great sense to get a real depth from the bass strings and a clarity to the treble strings. fortunately, the other spin-off is a weight reduction, which is always good. the deep set tenon joint for the neck can also be clearly seen in the pre-chambered body block. |
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this is what the tone chambers end up looking like after routing and finishing. it's quite pretty as is, tempting to have a polycarb top! |
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the spalted cap wood is then bookmatched (sawn in half and then 'mirrored' to give a symmetrical cap). for this guitar however, because of the amount of top carving there is, the bookmatching was less critical but still looks very pretty. |
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