The Luthier Community

Here's the guitar being played at our regional Teen Talent competition. The new owner Jacob came in first in his age bracket for instrumental. He is one talented kid.

Yes - it looks larger because the body is so small. The whole body is only 17 1/2" long... It's a 3 1/2" sound hole... This is the original junk guitar's body laid inside a J-45 body.. https://s17.postimg.org/gegjxmr1r/image.jpg Heres a size reference of this body size next to a J-45 body....

That's looking very nice.

It's funny how so few people have ever seen ladder bracing anymore that it's like a new paradigm..

Thanks for the kind words guys. If you like building little parlor guitars - you need to try out ladder bracing... I am getting to the point that for a small body guitar - I think I like ladder bracing better than X bracing. I can build the structure very lightly this way. The top on this one was on...

Somehow - I managed not to take a good picture of the finished top bracing. Here are some in progress shots. You get the idea.

Hey Joe... This one is for you... 3/4 size Ladder braced guitar based on a Stella 3/4 size. Floating bridge with tailpiece. 24" scale, 13 frets to the body, 1 11/16" nut, 2 1/8" string spacing at the bridge Lutz spruce from Mario Hormigo back and sides Cherry neck IRW fretboard Leopar...

Sounds like it came out great. In a way, it's a shame that ladder braced and especially tailpiece guitars have completely dissppeared from the market. I think these are really fun because you can do things outside the box of what you can easily do with an X braced, fixed bridge guitar. Especially so...

I bet this is going to be a heck of a guitar. I think birch ladder braced guitars got a really bad rap because of the millions of cheap unplayable birch boxes dumped into the US market from the 40's through the 70's. They kinda had the same sort of reputation as Asian plywood guitars today. But when...