Posted on December 9, 2021August 3, 2022 by jOhny Corazón — Leave a comment

015 Mahogany nylon string one-of-a-kind guitar.

Disclaimer: I’ve never been able to (and I really never plan to) make guitars that anyone can buy in a big box music store. Factories spit out instruments on such a level that there are literally millions of guitars in stores right now that are pretty, decent playing, and cheap. If you’re shopping for a first time guitar but somehow have landed on my website, just Google search or go to any Guitar Center with $300 and you’ll find a guitar to be satisfied with and most likely with a case or a gig bag. You might even go home with some change in your pocket. I cannot compete with that. Why would I even try to make a factory guitar clone when I have none of the tooling, infrastructure, or skilled labor they have? It’s not even remotely possible nor even close to desirable for me.

What sort of guitars do I make? The only kind of guitar I will ever make is one that has no equal anywhere else in the world. Am I saying that I’m the best luthier in the world? No, not even close! My focus and my passion is making a single-production, unique, inimitable artstruments. When not being payed, my goal is that this guitar (and any other guitar I make) will be one of the most elegant conversational pieces hanging in your home. My ideal client is the discriminating buyer looking for something undeniably special to add to their most cherished possessions. I’m only making guitars for the eccentric collector, the curator of the uncommon. If you’re looking for a truly unique guitar for yourself, your special someone, or for your impeccable collection, then I may have something available for you. If I don’t have exactly what you want, I am open to doing custom builds specifically for your needs (as long as your needs don’t include replicating a factory made that’s already been done).

On to the topic at hand

This particular guitar (number 015) is perhaps the pure embodiment of my building philosophy. It is the intersection of art and science. Under the hood, traditional building techniques are the strong motor and chasis of this machine. The exterior form is shaped asymmetrically using the Golden ratio as much/wherever as possible. It’s a design I’ve created myself using straight edge, compass, and french curve templates. I’m obviously a fan of Victorian voluptuous design. This guitar will cuddle with you.

Back, top, sides: Mahogany
Binding: flaming Maple
Fretboard: Padauk

There is no other guitar in the world that could be confused with this one. Just sayin.’

The Sound

Not exactly a studio recording here, but it can paint a picture of the beautiful music you’ll make with this instrument.

This guitar has a clear, warm, and full tone. It’s malleable to many playing styles and thus suitable for singer-songwriters, couch to porch guitarists, jazz musicians, and classical players wanting a non-traditional classical (nylon string) guitar. Let’s dive in a little….

Volume.

The loudest guitars are steel-string dreadnoughts with spruce tops and those are the best if you’re going down to the campfire kegger hootenanny to play with 17 other pickers (who also have loud spruce-top dreadnoughts or banjos which are even louder). This guitar has been adorned with all mahogany and nylon strings, giving the instrument a completely unique tone and use case, well-suited for use by solo players/singers or with smaller numbers of more finessed playing. Of course, you can have a pickup installed later and then it could be suitable for playing loudly at your first MerleFest or Bonaroo performance.

Sustain.

This guitar has lovely, balanced sustain, meaning that the decay time for a given note or chord held is lengthy. I attribute this to the thicker than normal mahogany top plate and taller bracing underneath.

Evenness.

Sometimes instruments will produce more volume at different fret ranges on the neck or sometimes one or two open strings might produce louder volumes even when these notes are given the same force when played. This guitar has a decidedly even output all up and down the fretboard and with all open notes as well. This is because of the thick top and tall bracing that also produce the sustain mentioned above.

Balance.

Does an instrument produce more output in the bass, in the treble, the bass and treble, midrange only, or is there a broad tonal balance? Some of my favorite guitars that I’ve made have a lot of emphasis in the bass range. That’s because, personally, I do love a heavy bass tone because I like to play jazz chords while using my thumb to mimic walking notes a bass player might play. While this guitar does produce a very nice bass range, it is not stronger than the other ranges. This one has a demonstrably even distribution making it great for singing strummers and finger-pick blues and jazz players alike: appropriate lows, even mids, and crisp highs.

The Wood

I acquired this wood from Carlton McClendon’s Rare Woods and Veneers right here in Atlanta. If you’ve never been, you owe it to yourself to check them out if you have any need for top-shelf wood for your home or woodworking projects. Plan on staying a couple of hours! You will.

Mahogany has been used in instruments for quite some time. Normally, it is used for backs, sides, and necks for guitars. I’ve only seen five or six all-mahogany guitars in my life and four of them are ones that I’ve made right here at Hart’s Guitars. I love the tone of mahogany and the bass-y well-roundedness of those instruments. I have three guitars I cherish and adore….. and every single one of them is an all-mahogany guitar.

Kasha-style bracing? what the…..?

Underneath the soundboard, I have used a bracing style invented by Dr. Michael Kasha in the 1970s. Here is a link to this unusual approach at soundboard bracing. There are very, very few guitars around with this style of bracing because it adds a lot of extra time to the process. But, it produces an evenness in the soundboard and an overall unique quality, adding one more detail to this instrument which makes it rare. I’ve attached a “deep dive” .pdf at the end of this article for anyone wanting more info on classical guitar bracing styles.

*The Guild of American Luthiers has lots of instrument plans, including this one I used for making the pieces for the Kasha bracing.*

I just love to chose ways to make guitar building more difficult, esoteric, and time-consuming. Totally worth it!

It almost looks like a city in there

See those bridges, underpasses, shipping containers, and off-ramp exits east?

If you seek an out of the ordinary instrument that has no equal anywhere in the world, a one-off artisan guitar sculpted and refined by a single pair of hands over 9 months using only top-shelf tonewood, then please add this one to your list of things to see on your quest of curating the uncommon.
$3600

A Deep dive into classical guitar bracing styles

classicalsoundboardsbracing Download

Other items for sale

Madame de Goni Brailian Rosewood classical guitar. $9125

Art pieces for sale

Sold

Paintings $130 – $420 some with and some without frames. If interested please e-mail me.

Posted on December 7, 2021August 3, 2022 by jOhny Corazón — Leave a comment

Guitar 014: a Brazilian rosewood Madame de Goni style guitar – 1840s C.F. Martin tribute.

For this instrument, I decided to make a guitar in the style of an 1840s Martin. In those days, there was a lady named Madame de Goni who toured around the United States playing music on a guitar that would have been the size and shape of the instrument I present very proudly to the world today. Thus, I’ve developed a tendency to refer to it as the DeGoni guitar (or the Madame de Goni guitar).

Soundboard – Western red cedar drying for over 50 years.
Fretboard – Brazilian rosewood drying for over 100 years..
Sides – Brazilian rosewood from the same stock.
Back – Brazilian rosewood ” ” ” “.
Binding – flaming maple
Rosette – traditional Spanish rosette encircled by numerous rings of various species.

Even if you’re not a luthier or guitar player, this coffee table book is a page-turner for anyone who appreciates nice things.

The vision of this guitar began forming back in the spring of this year (2021). I purchased a beautiful book, Inventing the American Guitar, to add to my ever-growing library of luthier and woodworking related reference materials. I’m particularly fond of the craftsmanship of earlier times and this book has a plethora of images demonstrating instruments that are nothing less than works of art and what some might justifiably call lutherie porn. Nearly two-thirds of the way into the chronological display of how the modern guitar evolved from the romantic era Spanish-American guitar, there is an entire chapter dedicated to the story of Madame DeGoni. I fell in love immediately and months later I’m happy to present the guitar I might have made for the touring charmer if I had be asked to do so.

A status update sort of pic I took back in September is the best shot I have because the light in the room was perfect.

Flaming maple/Brazilian rosewood outer rings with small blocks of canary wood, chakte viga and maple.

C.F. Martin made a special guitar for Madame De Goni and it was not the typical Spanish fan-bracing soundboard but a prototype for what would turn into the famous (and some say revolutionary) x-bracing soundboard reinforcement which was codified by the 1850s and is used to this very day!

María Delores Asturias y Navarres de Goni (1813-1892)

The famed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow attended a house concert in Boston, Massachusettes in 1842. In two different letters he wrote days later it is obvious that the lady from Spain charmed his auditory as well as his visual tickle spots:

There is a sweet Spanish woman here, playing the guitar, La Señora de Gony,-delicious.” –La Señora de Gony, whose guitar delights me more, perhaps because it awakens sweet remembrances of early youth and Spain;-perhaps because a woman plays it, and the devil is in it.

Which one would Madame de Goni pick if she had been given the choice? Discuss.

I really made the best attempt I could to make this guitar feel and look like it was snatched up during a time travel drive by of the 1840s. I went so far as to give the finish the appearance of an antique guitar that had been retouched and refinished through the years. I really had a lot of fun with this one.

This De Goni tribute is made by simply the best wood possible. I’m pretty sure I could not be any more fortunate than I currently am with the wood I have at my disposal. For the soundboard, classical guitars are overwhelmingly made using either spruce or western red cedar. In the spring of this year, I acquired a collection of wood that has me set up with the finest tonewood which I can use to make guitars for the rest of my life, most likely. A local luthier named Wade Lowe passed away earlier in the year and I was indeed a fortunate soul, one of the few chosen to view his immaculate collection of wood his family was selling that he built for himself as a luthier and woodworker.

All of those darker pieces are Brazilian rosewood, an endangered species of wood cherished for the life it brings to stringed musical instruments.

for a little more on the topic: https://sheshreds.com/martin-guitars/

For sale now at Village Music in downtown Avondale Estates in Decatur, Georgia.
Village Music

If you seek an out of the ordinary instrument that has no equal anywhere in the world, a one-off artisan guitar sculpted and refined by a single pair of hands over 6 months using top-shelf tonewood, then please add this one to your list of things to see on your quest of curating the uncommon.
$9125

Posted on March 21, 2020March 23, 2020 by jOhny Corazón — 2 Comments

Jeffrey’s finished classical guitar.

At 2:20 am this morning, Jeffrey and I made the last incision into the depth of his high E nut slot to bring the string’s action down at the lower frets 1-3. And…..we were “finished.” HAHAHAHA. If you’ve ever made anything with your hands where you’ve put a lot of time and energy, you know that no such project is every really “finished.” Here’s a shot from around 1:45 a.m., the moment we had been waiting for since we began the journey: bringing out the color of that granadillo and mahogany to its full richness and depth. It was late and the only way we could see it was under the shop lights, which aren’t bad but definitely don’t give the same hues the Sun will.

In South America, it is highly regarded as the best tonewood choice for marimba and xylophone bones and is often referenced as “La Madera Que Canta” (“wood that sings”).

In the shop, it was the beginning of guitar 008 but Jeff was student 001 at Hart’s Guitar’s School of Lutherie guitar building intensive. Along the way, I learned that the body style Jeff was building, a Goya G-10 (classical guitar made in Switzerland in the 1950s), is the same guitar, the very SAME! guitar, held by Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Jeffrey selected wood that makes it look pretty distinct from that famous guitar. We love the shape and size. It feels so good in your hands. Also, the scale length is 630 mm instead of 650 (which is .78″ or about ¾”). That difference of ¾” is enough to make a world of difference when it comes to playing a guitar. The standard for classical guitars has always been 650 mm (25 ½” roughly). Quick fact: Not everyone’s hands are the same size. Countless people have probably not had success in learning to play guitar because this standard scale length made learning not pleasant for their hands. At Hart’s Guitars, we can build your guitar perfectly sized to fit you.

A very cool guitar. With a few questions and measurements using your thumb and pinky, I can determine the best scale length for your guitar and we can build it to fit **your** hands!

We worked mostly on the weekends and a few weeknights. We began in early January. Jeffrey was a great student with cabinetmaking woodworking experience. He picked some really nice wood on our trip to Carlton’s Rare Woods and Veneers.

There’s no such thing as too many clamps!
Tons of scraping and sanding to remove glue squeeze out and blemishes.
Jeffrey’s newfound love: card scrapers.
Filing, shaping, sculpting the neck.
Applying Mahoney’s Oil Wax Finish
Coming down to the finish line around 1:30 am.
Cocobolo binding with granadillo back and sides.
Mahogany neck and headstock veneers. Installing the tuners.
Playing the first chord.
Wowee! Look at that beautiful thing. Mahogany top. Granadillo back, sides, and fretboard..Mahogany gives a really special response in the bass range and has been my favorite tone wood.

My first student at Hart’s Guitar’s Co. Ltd has been a friend of mine for a long time. His wife bought him a spot in my guitar building intensive as what must be the coolest Christmas gift ever for anyone who plays guitar. We’ve had so much fun reliving the time we knew each other Athens, GA where we met. For a short while we were even roommates sometime around the year 1999 or so.

We decided on his first visit to the shop that we’d be building a Goya G-10. The Goya brand name was initially used by Hershman Musical Instrument Company of New York City in mid 1950’s for acoustic guitars made in Sweden by Levin, particularly known for its classical guitars. In the 1970s, CF Martin (Martin guitars) bought the company and kept producing guitars under the brand name until the 90s. The “Goya” name comes from Francisco Jose de Goya, the famous 18th century Spanish painter known as the father of modern art (Francisco drew a lot of Spanish guitar players too). There’s a Goya G-10, made in Sweden, hanging in my house that belongs to my lovely girlfriend and it’s a beautiful antique instrument that plays like a dream.

Jeffrey has woodworking experience so it’s been a joy to give him basic instruction and watch his mirror neurons replicate through his hands exactly what I’ve demonstrated. He’s putting together quite a fantastic instrument.

Jeffrey’s Goya G-10 will be made with Grenadillo back and sides. It’s a very hard wood.

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Posted on February 16, 2020March 23, 2020 by jOhny Corazón — 1 Comment

008. Jeffrey’s Goya G-10 classical guitar, Pt. 1

Posted on December 13, 2019March 2, 2020 by jOhny Corazón — Leave a comment

Guitar 006. Prototype.

This guitar 006 was completed in record time, for me. It has been an experimental guitar in that I drastically changed the shape , moved the sound hole, again, and even shortened the scale to 580 mm (22.8″). This is an ideal shape for a travel guitar or for a young person who is interested in learning the guitar, among other things. It’s simply easier to play but still sounds like a regular guitar. The same construction principles were used as with all the other ones. Sometimes this is referred to as a “half-size.” By the numbers, it’s not a half size but actually 90% of a regular sized guitar. A glass half full is one thing but this is a guitar 9/10ths full. Nevertheless, the little change in size makes a big difference in the change of comfortability of play, especially for people who aren’t professionals or who have hand sizes that are not matching well with the “full size” models.

Yellow Alaskan Cedar, maple fretboard, mahogany sides, and sapele back, cocobolo end piece.

Comfortability while playing an instrument is the number one reason individuals don’t get past certain points in their guitar playing development because their hands hurt after a short amount of time. One of the worst things that can happen to a young person interested in learning to play the guitar is to give that poor soul a guitar that hurts to play. Adults who never learned an instrument and find themselves wanting to learn often buy a cheaper guitar to sort of dip their toe in the pool before diving into serious study. This guitar would be perfect for these situations as would my previous guitar, 005. There is a way to calculate the ideal guitar scale size for any person and that is exactly what I’ll do for you when I make your custom guitar. I hope everyone is having a good Christmas season, a happy Hanukkah, and a cool Kwanza. Here are a few pics of the new instrument.

Last week at a craft show I gave a sneak peak.

This is probably the last guitar I’ll make for 2019. I plan to do some home renovation work I plan to build cabinets for at least a partial remodel of my kitchen and also gonna explore some creative ideas for taking out the carpet In a basement bedroom and doing a mixed harwood floor using plywood and scrap wood. Plywood floors are a thing and they look pretty cool. I also hope to find time to do a thorough setup of my fledgling luthier’s shop. Maybe I’ll sit and write a couple of posts thru all of this.

If you are interested in buying this guitar, let me know with a message. $225.