3 Waiting list slots opened

I have found that it is not too difficult to build a Tenor guitar alongside one of my normal builds. As I have had so many enquiries I have decided to open up 3 slots exclusively for Tenor guitars. First come, first served. ALL SPACES NOW GONE

New Pinless Bridge design

I needed a new design of pinless bridge for Julie Matthews. Julie wanted 2 features. She likes a low profile bridge and nothing impairing the right hand when she is damping the strings whilst playing. The pins on pin bridges rub on her hand whilst playing. Another feature she wanted was the ability to change a string quickly and easily with no fuss. Pin bridges are often difficult as the pin either gets stuck or the string sticks in the slot. Frustrating when trying to change a broken string in the middle of a set. I came across a design of pinless bridge which fitted the bill exactly. The bridge is designed by Jeff Elliott and used on all Doolin guitars so it already has a good pedigree. All credit goes to Jeff Elliott for his design. I just borrowed it with permission. The bridge uses steel pins which are fixed in the bridge and are drilled through the top and into the bridge plate. The ball end of the string hooks over the pin and retains the string. It is a really neat design and works very well on six string models. It is a little more tricky with dual course stringed instruments like the Rivelin but I think I got it about right. The strings just unhook and can be swapped very quickly indeed. The sound does not appear to have suffered, in fact it may be a little better. I am thinking of offering this as an optional extra on all my guitars.

Julie breaks her peghead!

Julie's Rivelin had a bit of an accident on stage when it was knocked flying of its stand and landed on the peghead. Not many guitars will survive a blow like this as all the string tension is bearing on the neck joint. The peghead snapped clean through. I was pleased to note that the neck joint itself remained intact (a testament to the glue that I use) and the head snapped off through clean wood. This sort of damage can be repaired but I opted to make a new neck.

At the same time I retopped the guitar as Julie was having problems with the bridge- She had already had the bridge replaced once as she wanted a pinless design. The first bridge was a standard pin bridge so when I removed that to do a pinless version my choices were limited as the top was drilled for the pegholes. We opted for a version where the string is threaded through from the back of the bridge and anchored by the ball end on the back edge of the bridge. This worked quite well but Julie snaps strings on a regular basis and even this bridge takes a while to restring. In order to give her the Mark 3 bridge I needed a clean undrilled top so I removed the top, made a new one, glued everything back on again, rebound the edges and resprayed. I was wanting to do this anyway as Julie had my prototype model and my design has evolved since then. My new bracing pattern produces a better sound and I wanted Julie to have the advantage of that. All models after Julie's and my own take advantage of the new bracing. The finished instrument looks good and sounds better. Julie loves it and Chris Leslie was very impressed with the sound and sustain so I'm happy!

I was very proud and thrilled when this guitar appeared on the 2003 Brit Awards during Ms Dynamite's performance of "Faith" with George Michael. I made the guitar for Kwame Yeboah who is a member of Ms Dynamite's band and also plays with Craig David.