Guitar Building and Kumiko

Bookmatched Sitka spruce soundboard and sapele back blanks, and sapele neck blanks. Thickness and square sound board and back blanks. Glue joint sound board and back. Rough shape and thickness sound board to thickness profile.    Mount rosette and cut sound hole on soundboard. Braces for soundboard. Glue fan braces, traverse bars, sound hole reinforcement. Voice the sound board. Install the torvanoz. Completed soundboard bracing. Thickness the back. Back braces. Shape and ready for assembly.

Sawn from sapele blanks and glued to form the neck, headstock and heel basic shape. Form and shape the heel. Cutting the slots to hold the side plates. Shape the heel. L Form the rabbet to hold the sound board. Form the headstock veneer stepup to the nut. Form the headstock. Near completed neck ready for assembly and final shaping.

After years of playing, my son's pipa frets have worn down, especially at the treble string location, cutting groves up to 1mm deep. I reconditionned the frets by planing them down to remove the groves, and then reshape the profile using chisels. The frets are aged bamboo, so are easy to work. Then, sand them with 400 grit sandpaper. Finally, string up and fine tune fret height to remove fret buzz. There will be a 1mm reduction in fret height from fret #7 onwards, which can affect the playability. I'll let my son check it out. At best, the pipa can be played for a few more years before refretting. At worst, I'll have to refret the pipa now with the new frets that we've ordered dimension customised to this pipa. Update: apart from the fretted strings becoming a little sharper due to the increased tension from the additional distance, playability is not affected. Fret replacement can be deferred.

2nd CG built Design : based on Torres FE19. Woods : Sitka spruce top, Japanese cypress sides, sapele back & neck, Indian rosewood fretboard & bridge. Scale length : 640mm Differences from FE19: 1. C shaped Spanish heel 2. Modified top brace (due to different heel) 3. Personal head stock design 4. Additional side braces 5. Personal rosette design 6. ... Rosette