Osage-Orange cutaway classic guitar. This project began when the future owner came into my studio with a massive plank of this hard-as-the-dickens, canary-yellow hardwood and traded me part of it if I would slice up the rest for him. I was intigued by the visual characteristics of the wood, and consented. Several years later, I made the guitar, and he fell for it, and bought it! It turned out that he had had an arch-top made from the adjacent slices by a fellow luthier. So he just had to own it's nylon-string cousin!
Osage orange was represented to be a timber of the Southwest United States. So I tried to lend a "southwest" design and color scheme, with the cedar top and the purpleheart binding. The rosette is flecked with matching purpleheart-color elements, too. The beautiful finish was realized by my longtime partner, Harry Becker.
A dramatic Brazilian rosewood/ German spruce classic seen below, which features a compound cutaway (note how the side fairs seamlessly and comfortably into the heel). The guitar also features a Fishman dual pickup system (note the small mic in the soundhole). The noted jazz/fusion guitarist, Joe Belmont can be heard playing this instrument, accompanied with traditional South American zampoņas, or panpipes, on the following sound clips from the latest Viva Quetzal! CD Children of the Sun.
Wedge-cutaway Koa nylon-string:
Fairing the cutaway smoothly into the cheek of the tapered heel requires that the side be hand bent in two axes at once. A fairly difficult thing to pull off, but worth it for the unrestricted comfort that it allows when playing in the upper positions. This guitar is slightly wedged, and made from curly Koa.
An abalone/marquetry soundhole on a classic guitar? Outrageous? Not a bit ! Shell incrustation was the norm on European gut-string guitars during the nineteenth century, until Torres established the Spanish style which included only moorish-inspired wood marquetry decorations--but he was not loath to include pearl and abalone on occasion. When carefully blended within a marquetry frame and kept to a tasteful minimum, pearl incrustation can be give a classic guitar a unique, modern look.
I've found a lively market for my classic guitars among players whose first instrument was a jazz or steel-string guitar and as a result, don't want to forgo the features that they have become comfortable with, such as narrow, arched fingerboards, low action, cutaways, stage pickups and distinctive aesthetic design.
This page shows some distinctive examples:
ebony back and sides completed in 1999.
A Cumpiano Brazilian rosewood and cedar classic made in 2007