This is actually a really old Post. Somehow it was never posted, but this dates back to around 2013
Mike and Rick are two cool old dudes. I played in various kirtan groups with both of them throughout the years. Both are very good musicians whether it be guitar, bass, harmonium or singing; these guys have a deep catalog of musical explorations.
It had been a few years after attending Roberto-Venn since I had built an acoustic guitar. My shop was slowly growing both in size and in tooling. The time had come to start building acoustics again! But alas, I need money to buy the wood and the tuners and the lacquer and the everything I need to build one. What else to do other than ask a couple of old dudes that have money to let you build them a couple of guitars and all they have to pay for is the materials. It totally works. So yeah, I’m not actually making any money, but I am getting back into the groove. And that was the important thing.
The guitars are straight forward. The only frills on them are an AUM symbol inlayed at the twelfth fret in abalone and an IBeam Element active pickup system installed in each guitar.
The trickiest thing with these two was figuring out how to bend wood binding by hand. At R-V we used the side bending machine to bend the sides and the binding all at once, easy breezy. Now I am bending all my sides by hand with an electric iron which I find really fun to use. Little did I realize just how wet to get the binding before bending. Those suckers were breaking left and right!
My initial idea was to make 5 acoustics all at once. Half way through I was very happy to have only started two builds. Two was plenty to handle and at times, a little overwhelming. But I got through the ups and downs and the “What the’s?” and the “You gotta be kidding me’s?” of the process. I learned what I needed more practice at, what needed more refining and what I want to do differently.
It was good time all the around.
SPECS
-Mahogany back and sides
-Engleman spruce top
-Mahogany neck
-Ebony fretboard and bridge
-Cocobolo binding
-25.5 inch scale
-Lacquer finish on the body and the headstock overlay
-Tung oil finish on the neck
-Grover tuners
-IBeam Element active pickup
