I'm ordering a new Guitar today..

I'm having a local luthier build me a all mahogany resonator guitar. It will have the same dimensions as the National El Trovador but be made out of solid mahogany. The neck will be a copy of a GF-50 which after a weekend of playing a bunch of guitars was my favorite. Oh it will have a slotted head stock.

I have bought two guitars off of this luthier.. A dobro a few years ago and most recently a mahogany 17" Jumbo. In side to side comparisons with my Guild F-48, the new jumbo sounds much better than the Guild.. The difference is a hand tuned top versus a production guitar.. Oh the dobro sounds great, I just need to play it more. For those interested in the luthier he is Doug Spencer of Short Mountain Guitars... I had to teach him the geological significance of Short Mountain.. it is an outlier of the Cumberland Plateau located some 20 miles west of the plateau on the Highland rim... All of that is here in Tennessee of course.

Hi Howard and congratulations on your new guitar! Your luthier might be geographically challenged but there's nothing wrong the work at Short Mountain Guitars. J

Congrats Howard.

Nice Howard. Do you have pics of those guitars that you had built?

The necks look wide on those. Are they that much wider or is it just the photos?

Graham said:

Nice Howard. Do you have pics of those guitars that you had built?

The necks look wide on those. Are they that much wider or is it just the photos?

Click to expand...

I'll post some pictures of the other two soon One is a square neck dobro.. and it the neck with is inmaterial. The Jumbo I have is 1 11/16's wide and somewhere between a thin Guild neck and a thick Tacoma neck. Doug has a small pyramid of wood on the back of the nec below the TRC hole to add some strength in that area.


It will be a few weeks or more before my new guitar is built.. I took my GF-60 to Doug and he took a bunch of measurements so the neck will be very close.. But more or less this will be a small jumbo (a Kay mold, with slotted headstock, quartermane(sp?) cone, ebony fret board, bone nut, minimal bling (just dots on the fretboard, tiger maple binding and a strip up the back). The label on the headstock is yet to be determined, we just have to see how much room there is. I went with round sound hole instead of f holes (louder Doug tells me and I like loud)