others

logo title

early designs

	This violin is typical of my designs except that this one has a flat back. The wooden pin that the tailpiece fastens to, allows you to adjust the bridge tension pressing on the face. (this is typical of early bowed instruments) A flying brace and a carbon tone ring remove the string tension from the body of the instrument, allowing the top to move freely. The body is Western Red cedar and Blackwood and the neck is Mahogany with an Ebony fingerboard.

	The neck on this guitar is carved from the same piece as the body, so there is no join. This concept is tonally superior to bolted or glued on necks, but because the instruments have to be hand carved, only a few large companies like Jackson Guitars have ever used this method. This one is made from a plain quarter sawn piece of Tasmanian Eucalypt. I use a 4 way rotary switch and a toggle to get 7 different pickup configurations. This wiring diagram can also be used on a strat. In this recent video I am just using the neck pickup, which is a basic overwound alnico model from guitarfetish.

	This is an original instrument that was designed for my own playing. I call it a talamar. It was inspired by playing an Indian vina. It has a scalloped fingerboard. (This means removing wood between the frets so that your fingers don't touch the wood.) The brass saddle is angled to buzz against the strings. If you look closely you can see that one of the strings doesn't go over the fingerboard but passes through a pin at the 12th fret. This (chakari) string is typical of Indian instruments. recording
	This is one of the acoustic guitars I had made in the 80's. I found that cutaway guitars lacked playability up the neck because of no thumb access. This neck joins the body at the 17th fret, giving the guitar the same thumb access as a Fender strat.
	This was my first solid body design. I have built four including a bass. Being headless, it is very balanced and comfortable to play. The body is one piece of Tas Eucalypt. The top veneer is Queensland Walnut.
	This is a guitar with marquetry soundholes that I made around 1980. I had forgotten it until a friend sent an old photo of me playing it. Not long after that, it was sent to me for restoration, and I made this video with it.
	I called this a guitar-harp because it is played similar to a guitar. A standard upright harp is played back to front from the perspective of a guitarist. The large picture shows the angle that you would see the harp from while playing it on your lap. The left hand plays the bass strings which hadn't arrived when I took the picture.
	I have made a number of solid body violins. This one has five strings tuned from viola C to violin E. I found that the limitation of any solid body bowed instrument is that the strings are slower to respond to the bow. They are great for rock music, but I eventually went back to an acoustic violin fitted with my own sound post pickup to get the fast response that I wanted as a fiddle player.