2 new bar fret guits, sound file added

[printer2]

After all, it is getting to the point that if you sit down and play 2-3 dozen Chinese imports, you will probably find at least 1 that sounds pretty decent....and you probably won't need to spend much over 500 bucks. Hell, you can easily spend that much on parts and materials. So......

Oh great, now I find out, and I could have spent all that building time on playing.


Grant, I gave been following along. Interested but didn't have much to add. I thought of looking into bar frets more but thought I have enough on my plate as it is I did not need another tangent to go off on (you have seen my thread). I am sure we all read and watch what the other guys are doing and appreciate when someone brings something new to the table. As far as I see it the common trait that everyone here has is curiosity and the desire to do things themselves. Otherwise we would have just went out and bought our guitars.

[BRuddy]

Hey Grant

I don't think I've missed reading a post here in several years, sometimes I don't have anything to say, and lots of times I think I say too much. But it's always a learning experience.

But what I like about this place is it seems to be a magnet for folks who'd rather bushwhack then follow the trail.

Even better, everyone lets it happen and even encourages it with honestly constructive criticism.

Talk about nuts, I've built fiddles, banjos and now guitars and all I can play is the radio. I could go buy a guitar but don't know that I need one. But I do like it when an instrument puts a smile on someone else. And love it when something ends up sounding good. And I do like music. Learning to play though would eat into shop time too much. As a pup I got kicked out of the church choir and when I tried to learn guitar my teacher quit.

To me it's the ultimate wood challenge, gotta look good AND sound good adding a whole nother layer. What's life for if not to push yourself and see what happens.

Glad you're still here pushin Grant! And I'm interested in your bar frets so carry on pardner.

Brian

[whitespruce]

Well Joe, Fred, and Brian, thanks for the words of encouragement. I have been on this thing way longer than planned....was hoping to have something to show last Summer. But the other side of the coin is that the time has given me opportunity to think a bit more about some aspects of this venture, so that's a good thing.

Yah Joe, this tempering thing seems backwards. With steel the initial heating and quenching hardens the hell out of the metal. So then, the controlled heating (tempering) actually softens the metal to varying degrees to give it the properties you are after (you can actually do it in an oven, just like I did this stuff). The beryllium copper is starting out totally annealed (soft), and I think they get it that way by heating and quenching, so, yah, 180 degree different process. Did come up against a minor problem....the metal sample originally came off a coil which I had to flatten out after I cut the strips. When I heated the frets, they took on a slight curve that suspiciously resembled the original coil shape. Took about a minute each to re-hammer them flat on a concave hardwood block. Not a big issue, but I may have just heated them too fast. The shelf was only a couple of inches above the heating element, so next time I will raise it a bit and see if that makes any difference.

Probably don't have to get them this hard....I can clip the annealed BC strips to fret length easily with a sharp pair of diagonal cutters....they hardly leave a mark on the heat treated metal These frets will never wear out, but I bet they will be a bear to dress Oh well, still much to learn.

I did get the fret board radiused on the second neck today....took about 10 minutes.

G

[RusRob]

Hey Grant,
I saw your post after you got out of the hospital and thought to myself " Yea Sure... I am sure he is going to be working on a guitar..."

I was going to ask you about these copper frets but I thought it was something that everyone knew and I didn't want to ask about it because I didn't want to sound stupid... I came from "that other forum" where I would have gotten more than a couple of comments about not knowing what I was doing. (that is why I left and came here).

So yea, I am curious about these copper frets. I had no idea that just heating copper up would make it hard. I am guessing that is what the Egyptians did to make their copper chisels? I always wondered how they carved stone with copper...

I am really surprised you are feeling well enough to be out working already. I have known a few people that have had the same surgery you did and they were at least a month before they felt strong enough to do much more than get up out of bed and feed themselves...

Good to see you were serious about getting back to it.

Cheers,
Bob

[whitespruce]

Hey Grant,
I saw your post after you got out of the hospital and thought to myself " Yea Sure... I am sure he is going to be working on a guitar..."

I was going to ask you about these copper frets but I thought it was something that everyone knew and I didn't want to ask about it because I didn't want to sound stupid... I came from "that other forum" where I would have gotten more than a couple of comments about not knowing what I was doing. (that is why I left and came here).

So yea, I am curious about these copper frets. I had no idea that just heating copper up would make it hard. I am guessing that is what the Egyptians did to make their copper chisels? I always wondered how they carved stone with copper...

I am really surprised you are feeling well enough to be out working already. I have known a few people that have had the same surgery you did and they were at least a month before they felt strong enough to do much more than get up out of bed and feed themselves...

Good to see you were serious about getting back to it.

Cheers,
Bob

Bob, thanks for the questions. The metal I am working with is an alloy of copper and beryllium. It is supposedly about the most resonant metal alloy that has been made and is what the high end cymbals, triangles, etc. are made from. The form I get it in is anneal temper, which is the softest form. It is unique in that just heating it hardens it.

Regular copper behaves differently. it starts out soft after heating and can be work hardened by hammering, rolling, or burnishing. I used regular copper and work hardened it on my earlier "organic soundport" guitar. I am also working on a version using spring tempered phosphor bronze for frets. This starts out as hard as it will be, but is quite a bit softer than the heat treated beryllium copper. It still seems harder than regular nickel silver frets.

The current quest is experimental....to try to get the sound that I got with the copper bar frets without having to do the hand hammering and all. While this appears to a labor intensive process, it is still way less work than making the frets from scratch from heavy copper wire.

Hope this explains things a bit.

Yes, I am up and about. I do work slow and observe my lifting limits, but every day is better. In a month of doing nothing, my upper body strength has taken a nosedive. But I am going to cardiac rehab 2 days a week and they make you work your whole body. I can already feel the difference

G

[RusRob]

Grant,
Thanks for that explanation of what you are doing, It sounds like a reasonable experiment considering a lot of people think the neck plays no role in the sound of an acoustic guitar. I personally think the neck does have an effect. My reason is only based on the fact if you put your ear up to the neck and pluck a note you can hear and feel it. So it seems logical that if it vibrates it has to have some effect.

Glad you are taking it easy... My dad was the 3rd person to have open heart surgery here in Michigan back in 1970. He had triple bypass so very similar to yours but he was in the hospital for almost 2 months. Back then they told him he was done working and he had to retire and not do anything strenuous or stressful... as if being retired at 42 and told your life as you knew it was over is not stressful?

Amazing how far they have come since then.

It will be interesting to see how thise copper frets work out, I will be watching.

Cheers,
Bob

[Bilbert]

So, why is it that we do what we do? After all, it is getting to the point that if you sit down and play 2-3 dozen Chinese imports, you will probably find at least 1 that sounds pretty decent....and you probably won't need to spend much over 500 bucks. Hell, you can easily spend that much on parts and materials.

Gets back to the original question...."Why do we do what we do?" Comments and questions are welcome

G

Jeez, Grant - That question, right THERE, is worthy of it's own lengthy thread for a number of reasons............

Let me take a scalpel - ummmmm.............. make that: "take a stab" at answering just that question.

Yikes - after stopping to consider my answer, realized it's prolly too late, and after several glasses of wine, too much to take on at this time, so I'll post this here to "put it out there", and come back at it a bit later on.

For ME, I can cite a number of reasons why I do this:

1. Long time woodworker, and long time guitar player - oddly enough, I started playing guitar, AND woodworking at age 15 (which was 45 years ago, for those that don't know me), and by age 23, was good enough at both, to have the thought: "Shit - I could build one of those!" (meaning Guitars).

2. Appreciator (is that a word?) of good design - I've been fortunate in that my parents exposed me to LOT'S of art when i was VERY young (HATED going to the Detroit Art Museum, until I started loving/understanding it), and majored in Art and Business in college.

3. Scientist - I have always had a love for everything scientific, from Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Physics, etc, etc., I've always had a burning desire to know how things work.

4. Doubter - I am one of those people that LITERALLY questions everything, takes NOTHING for granted, and looks for discrepancies in the narrative - yeah - I'm REALLY low on the "trust" part of what I read and what I hear. Most of the "news" that is presented to me, is by people that know less than me about any given topic. Same goes for "traditional guitar construction" techniques......... I'm also guessing I may not be the only one here, that has studied multiple world religions.

5. Frugality - I'm a bit of a "penny pincher", so why spend $4,500 +, on a custom hand-built guitar, when I can make one myself for..................... Shit!
do I REALLY have $15,000 invested in Machines, Tools, and Wood??

Whoops!! I'm not quite done on this topic, Grant, and certainly don't mean to hijack this thread, but thought you posed an extremely interesting question, and wanted to explore it a bit.....

FWIW - I'm more than a bit of a "perfectionist", and would prolly score mid-range on an OCD test (never taken one, but when sending letters, make sure the postage stamp has equal margins on the top and right side of the envelope............)

I'll leave #6 - "Competitive" - for a future post........ not that seeing amazing work on this forum causes me to: "up my game" even a little bit - NO Siree!!

Great to see you back in the shop, Grant - and as Dennis pointed out - what a difference one month can make!!

Bill

[whitespruce]

Well Bill, we have a lot in common. My Grandfather had a big woodworking shop, and that's kinda where I grew up. Over the years, I have built/made just about every kind of thing you can mention out of wood, up to and including designing and building a house or two. And art has always been a big part of my life....drawing, painting, and up to the competitive wood sculptures/carvings. And I am into all kind of science, but prefer the hands-on end. I have also combined my art and science in making replicas and reproduction items for museum exhibits all across the US and Canada. I keep an open mind, but tend to be a doubter where I have not actually experienced. The "red flag" really goes up when somebody suggests "You gotta do it this way, or else". I also function on the attitude that someone can do about anything if they really want to.

You have likely noticed that I tend to march to my own drum and I relish finding new and unconventional ways of doing things. My bracing pattern and now these frets are but 2 examples. So your comments don't hijack this thread....they are part of the essence of it, so I say Thanks for posting.

Bob, this whole topic goes back quite a while....sometimes things just take way more time to evolve than I anticipate (actually most times). I have tried to explain this before, but it might be helpful to summarize it again. A couple of years ago I got inspired by the Japanese furniture maker, George Nakashima. A photograph of one of his tabletops made from a slab of natural edge wood with voids and such was the beginning point of my "Organic Soundport" guitar. The idea was to use similar wood for backs and sides of a guitar, but once I turned onto that fork of the road, everything was up for grabs. The hand hammered copper frets were simply an attempt to do something appropriate to the rest of the guitar....essentially for looks. I had no concept that it might affect the sound.

But it did, and it really came home when a very talented Canadian musician played it. His name is Garnet Rogers, and he can play anything with strings on it and more. Anyhow, I was talking to him in the lobby before one of his concerts and this guitar came up. I said I had it in the car and he said bring it in. Well, he ended up playing it for almost an hour. I finally said, "Garnet, your concert is due to start in 5 minutes", to which he replied that it couldn't start without him and he played a few minutes more. He was awestruck (he said gobsmacked) by the sound, especially when played way up the neck. Said he never played a guitar that sounded like it (he has played hundreds of guitars and I think he owns around 200). He played a bunch of styles and about a half dozen alternate tunings, and it all worked. We talked about what might be going on, and finally he suggested that it might be the frets. A few months later my Grandson (a very accomplished player) was trying it out, along with 3 of my other guitars. I was carefully listening. Again, this guitar stood out from the rest.

So here I am, pursuing that sound. The handmade frets were a pain, so the beryllium copper and the phosphor bronze are perhaps a simpler way to accomplish the same thing. I guess we will find out. Even so, in the best case, this will probably add a good day or two to the building process (after I get the bumps in the road solved). But back to the question "why are we doing this?". So one reason I see is to maybe make something better than what is available. A carefully hand built guitar is a huge task, but if I can spend a couple extra days (a fraction of the process) and end up with a better sound (at least to some ears), I consider it a no-brainer.

Hope that explains things a bit. And, yes, I am excited about it

G