Guitar No. 29

• African Blackwood Back and Sides
• Lutz Spruce Top
• African Blackwood Bridge
• African Mahogany Neck
• Purple Heart and Maple accents
• Purple Heart Armrest
• 650mm scale length
• 52mm Nut width

This is another guitar made for William Chow in Hong Kong and it was built alongside the guitar for Rebecca Lutz. Both of these guitars use a bracing design that very different from what I have used in the past. It's not quite a radial bracing, but that designation is close enough for now. In addition to using a new bracing design the guitar plantilla was enlarged considerably, both changed with the goal of creating a lower resonance instrument with a "bigger" and "looser" sound - a more piano-like quality.

Both instruments were strung long before any detail work started. This gave me a window of opportunity for making changes that helped reached the aforementioned goal. This particular guitar had a resonance a whole step higher than its predecesor before making some slight changes to the arrangement and density of the bracing. The bracing on this guitar was acutally slightly different than on no. 28 and after the first testing of the guitar it was adjusted to be identical. Maybe there is something we can conclude about first instincts...maybe not.

The resulting two guitars were very much in line with what I sought to accomplish. It's amazing what can be acheived with some patience and the gumption for disassembly and do-overs.