Global rosette

Here's two shots of the 00-top with rosette installed. Top is european spruce, very stiff and nice looking stuff bought from a chinese seller through american ebay. Rosette with East Indian rosewood and  New Zealand Paua abalone is bought from a taiwanese seller in ebay. Put together in Oulu, Finland. Now figure that globalization out!

The rosette channel was cut with a dremel tool attached to a home made routing base. Two parallel runs was sufficient, as the rosette fits in a single wide slot. Soundhole was cut with the same tool, only deeper.

The rosette opening is a bit offset to get the grain direction right. The opening is nevertheless covered by the fingerboard.

This appears to be one of my cleanest rosette installations so far. Experience? Luck?

DIY internal microphone

Amplifying an acoustic instrument is not an easy task. Picking just the strings isn't enough, because the body resonances are the ones that make the sound "acoustic". My take on the subject is going dual source. The guitars are equipped with a triple soundboard transducer (K&K Pure and JJB Electronics Elite). I like them, because they are pretty inexpensive and offer quite natural response through the frequency range. The dreaded "piezo quack", unnatural high frequency, usual in under saddle piezo transducers, is not so dominant in these soundboard/contact transducers.

Anyway, to add some "air", "naturalness" "whateveryouwannacallitthatsoundsbetter", I use an internal miniature electret condenser microphone. The two passive signals are routed out with a stereo 1/4" cable and into a Presonus Acousti-Q preamp/blender. It's got volume controls for both signals and very nice eq.

I thought I'd report an easy way to make a "gooseneck" condenser mic. This model works only with a preamp feeding 2-12V phantom power to the mic, thou. For a standalone version you'd need a condenser,  a resistor, a 9 volt battery and few inches more wire in addition.

A little sound clip: Dual Source -> Acousti-Q -> Firebox -> Garageband with a hint of EQ and reverb. The delay effect comes from Zoom A2 hooked in the Acousti-Q's efx loop

Gooseneck peeking through the soundhole

Here's the stuff needed to make a mic

Panasonic capsule and shielded cable...

...soldered together

The capsule's got two terminals, one for hot, one for ground. 

They provide a handy silicon sleeve for the capsule.

Heat shrinking tube...

...and some wire...

...shrunk together...

And attached to a metal paper clip...

...and we're ready! The clip attaches to a back brace nicely and is easy to place to an optimal spot because of the bendable shaft.

This unit provides the phantom power the capsule needs, mixes the two signals and more. It's got a vacuum tube too!

Cocobolo back

Here's a few pictures of a nice cocobolo set I got for a birthday project. A friend's brother is turning 50 in 2013, and he's been given a gift of "process of making guitar". It's going to be a J-OM size (equivalent to Martin J & 0000 shape) with spruce top.

Which way to place the sapwood pattern?

Go Baring

Go Bar -method is a simple yet powerful way to clamp braces to the top/back plates with wooden/glassfiber rods. During spring and a bit of summer I built myself one (it's really simple too). Before this built I've been utilizing interiors of what used to be a kitchen cupboard, but it's floor gave in to the pressure so I had to make a more "professional" one. The hardest part is to make a concave mdf disc to arch the braces to achieve the wanted radius on top/back.

Finally I got to try the method today, and it seems really good. The braces are easily radiused with some sanding paper on the disc, and will exactly match the back when gluing on the same spot they were sanded.

Hope a few pics will explain it better.

The "cradle" for routing the concave disc. Behind it the actual Go-Bar system

the railway for the router, with proper radius sanded to it

and here we go. Takes a few passes to make it smooth.

...and is pretty dusty too!

And here is the Go-Bar system in use. The wooden rods provide the clamping pressure

Jyrki, here I come! Not too many months anymore