
It’s hard to take your time when working on something you’re so excited to see finished. This is not unique to guitar building. I keep learning this lesson over and again: Slow down and I will finish faster (or is it quicker? more quickly? ah who cares.). I’ve spent more time than I care to remember fixing things in the process that I did in haste, overlooked, didn’t consider, measured wrong, didn’t set up correctly (like not checking to make sure the blade is square to the surface and putting piece… and so on). Today I’m going into the shop with a sick feeling in my gut because as I was putting on the frets last night, I could not help but noticed a certain concavity in my latest guitar (the area between the sound hole and the bridge sits “below sea level” (sea level being the imaginary plane between the neck and lower bout of the guitar’s top, usually a pretty straight plane). Hopefully I was looking at it wrong and everything’s gonna be alright. But, I have the sinking feeling I’m gonna have to take off the back and address whatever this problem is, which is something, surely, I probably could have avoided if I had slowed down.