Amazing Grain How Sweet the Sound

[john whittaker]

Found some nice grain recently. Had a piece of 8/4 maple about 14" wide x 48" long that I cut into 15 strips about 7/8" thick to use on some serving boards. I noticed that a few of the strips had some nice quilting. This is not unusual but it's nice when you find it anyway. I also found a great piece of quilted sycamore at the local Woodcraft. Have heard that qlt sycamore was hard to work with but I found it very fairly easy to handle.

SO I thought I'd share some great grain I've come in contact with recently.

1st pic - quilted maple found deep inside a piece of 8/4.
2nd pic - maple, purple heart & quilted sycamore serving board.
3rd pic - walnut, oak, bloodwood, yellowheart and qlt maple.
4th & 5th pic....My Old Guitar. All Koa. Great sounding instrument. This was made by Tacoma in Wash state. Great piece of wood. "How sweet the sound"

LOML is looking into sending me to a local luthier guitar class for a birthday present.:) It's supposed to be a surprise so don't tell her I know...

[Doug Shepard]

Very nice cutting boards! And darn nice looking guitar too. It shouldn't be all that hard to take one of those cutting boards and mount a bridge, pickup, nut, and tuners to it then string it up:D

[Corey Hallagan]

John, some great looking wood on those cutting boards. I would love to take a luthiers class some time. That would be sweet. BTW, that is a sweet looking guitar. My old Gibson acoustic had some of the neatest looking rosewood I had ever seen. I love rosewood! I don't have that one anymore, it was a beautiful sounding guitar.
Corey

[john whittaker]

Just a note about my guitar....

I've been playin all my life. My first two major purchases right out of college were.
1. Wedding ring
2. Guitar....I bought a Washburn I'd been drooling over for the last 4-years. It was hand made in USA and one of the best sounding acoustics I had ever heard. Washburn is now a production type made in Japan, but back then they were really something. Well...several years ago I had a break-in and someone stole my 27 year old guitar. It was like loosing a close friend:( .

It was replaced by the Tacoma pictured here. This is a great guitar...just not my old friend.

[Corey Hallagan]

Well John, maybe one of these days the prized guitar in your collection will be a Whittaker!

Corey

[Keith Burns]

Great looking boards ! :D :D

[Vaughn McMillan]

Nice stuff, John. The guitar is a beaut. My koa guitar is sorta special. It is one of the original handmade prototypes of the BC Rich Mockingbird (made by Bernard Rico himself, as I understand it). I don't have a pic handy, and it's seen a lot of road miles, but it's still my favorite solid body electric.

In the subject of quilted maple, have you seen the guitar kits Grizzley sells? They look very tempting to me.

- Vaughn

[john whittaker]

Vaughn, YES I've been tempted to order one of the Griz kits myself. They look like quality kits & would be a kick to work with. The president of Griz is a guitar builder and makes some fine looking instruments. Why don't you go ahead and pull the trigger and report back.

Mockingbird....very nice....I would love to see/hear it. Post a pic someday.

FYI - I've been wondering about you and the fires. Are they close to you? You're not inhaling any smoke up in dem thar hills are ye? :p

Seriously, Hope you are safe.

[Corey Hallagan]

I bet we could have one heck of a SMC jam session! There are quite a few musicians here it sounds like. Well...in my case I use that term loosely, been hacking away for along time on the acoustic but no where near "Good".
Corey

[Ben Lang]

Just to add on to the guitarist posts. I too have a washburn.mine was purchased for me by my grandfather when I was still pretty new at playing. Can't see the grain because its painted solid blue. But a guitar reply non-the-less. maybe everyone should bring their guitars to the next event? Just a suggestion...:)

[Vaughn McMillan]

OK John, looks like this has taken a turn into a guitar thread (it's still fitting for your Subject Line), so I figured I'd share a few pics...they're not the greatest quality, but they'll give you an idea. I bought this guitar to replace a 1967 Les Paul Custom (Black Beauty) and a 1978 ES-335 that were stolen from my van after a gig one night. It was either given or sold to "The Guitar Shop" in Albuquerque by Bernard Rico for them to test drive. He was making the Seagull at the time, and wanted to get some players trying out the new model. He was friends with the owners of the Albuquerque store, so they got one of the first ones made. (It doesn't even have a serial number on it...it was pre-production.) I'm the third owner, and was buddies with the two previous owners -- we all played the same clubs.

The figure in this koa wood isn't nearly as nice as that in your Tacoma, but it makes for a light, but very sustainy solid body. (The neck-through-body design helps for that.) As I mentioned, this guitar was rode hard and put away wet many, many nights. The guys in the band named it Spot. You can see in the middle pic the place where my pinky wore through the finish and into the wood between the pickups. I completely wore through the edge of the original bridge pickup, first exposing the windings on the pickup, then eventually wearing through the wire and killing the pickup. In addition to replacing the pickup with a Seymore Duncan, I completely rewired it, removing the original active electronics and opting for a passive setup, with individual volumes plus a master volume, and various phase and coil-splitting options.

Sorry for the treadjack, but I think we're in good (guitar-playing) company here...maybe we should have a "show us your wooden instruments" thread in the OT forum. ;)

- Vaughn

P.S. Ben, I've got a couple blue guitars myself, but they're both electrics. If yours is the blue Washburn I'm thinking about, it's a nice guitar.

[Dan Forman]

John---The cutting boards are really nice, and that guitar is simply gorgeous. Hope it sounds as pretty as it looks. Maybe we need a thread in the off topic forum where everyone can post pics of their guitars. Seems like there are a lot of pickers in the creek. I had a guitar stolen back in the seventies, wasn't a great one, but it was devistating none the less. It led to a much better instrument to replace it, so it wasn't all bad, just seemed so at the time.

Dan

[Dan Forman]

Hey Vaughn---I used to live in Albuquerque in the early seventies, and remember that guitar shop. I used to go in and drool over the BC Rich accoustics they had, the first time I ever saw quilted maple was on one of his guitars. I think it was $700 then, unthinkable for me at the time. There was a rosewood one too, which actually sounded a lot better, but that quilted maple left an impression that lingers still today. By the way, it was in Albuquerque that the guitar I mentioned earlier was stolen.

Dan

OOPS, forgot to compliment that lovely guitar of yours. Sounds like it has seen some miles, and more than a few sets of strings.

[Vaughn McMillan]

...Maybe we need a thread in the off topic forum where everyone can post pics of their guitars...
I guess great minds think alike, huh Dan? :D

Wow, you are an old ABQian! What is it about that place and stolen guitars? I grew up there; our band was based there in the late 70's and early 80's, and we played all over the Rocky Mountain states. (Off The Wall was the name of the band.)

BTW, John, the big fire was far enough away as to not cause much problem here. The Burbank fire was close to work and home, but not really threatening either place -- just showering us with ash and making the sky ugly. One night real late, I was watching from my back yard as it crested a ridge a few miles away, and I could hear the crackling as it went through the brush. About a day before either of these fires, we had another one about a half mile from the house, but they knocked it down after only burning a few acres. We live in the foothills on the very edge of town, with a lot of trees, including tall pines. Thankfully, people in the neighborhood have been pretty dilligent in their brush clearing.

- Vaughn

[Dan Forman]

I guess great minds think alike, huh Dan? :D

- Vaughn

I reckon so!

[Dan Forman]

I guess great minds think alike, huh Dan? :D

Wow, you are an old ABQian! What is it about that place and stolen guitars? I grew up there; our band was based there in the late 70's and early 80's, and we played all over the Rocky Mountain states. (Off The Wall was the name of the band.)

BTW, John, the big fire was far enough away as to not cause much problem here. The Burbank fire was close to work and home, but not really threatening either place -- just showering us with ash and making the sky ugly. One night real late, I was watching from my back yard as it crested a ridge a few miles away, and I could hear the crackling as it went through the brush. About a day before either of these fires, we had another one about a half mile from the house, but they knocked it down after only burning a few acres. We live in the foothills on the very edge of town, with a lot of trees, including tall pines. Thankfully, people in the neighborhood have been pretty dilligent in their brush clearing.

- Vaughn


Yikes! Hope fire season is about over for you.

[john whittaker]

SO.......not only did my guitar get stolen....but now my thread. :mad:

Vaughn, don't make me come out there !!! Oh well...:p I was thinking how much we have in common...then I looked at all your hair and...well....I would if I could. And yes, I've noticed quite a lot of muisicians on SMC. Would make for a good get together. Do ya thunk my blue grass would mesh wid yer "Off The Wall" sound?

[Andy Hoyt]

SO.......not only did my guitar get stolen....but now my thread. :mad:

Vaughn, don't make me come out there !!! Oh well...:p I was thinking how much we have in common...then I looked at all your hair and...well....I would if I could. And yes, I've noticed quite a lot of muisicians on SMC. Would make for a good get together. Do ya thunk my blue grass would mesh wid yer "Off The Wall" sound?

John - If you read through a lot of Vaughn's posts, you'll ultimately intuit that his little photo thingie is way out of date by about thirty years. Today, he's mostly bald, but still sports a wicked combover!

[Corey Hallagan]

John - If you read through a lot of Vaughn's posts, you'll ultimately intuit that his little photo thingie is way out of date by about thirty years. Today, he's mostly bald, but still sports a wicked combover!

ROTFLMBO....that was good Andy! Come on Vaughn, show us that combover!

Corey

[Vaughn McMillan]

Andy, you ratted me out! I am NOT mostly bald...see for yourself. :D

- Vaughn

[Vaughn McMillan]

...I've noticed quite a lot of muisicians on SMC. Would make for a good get together. Do ya thunk my blue grass would mesh wid yer "Off The Wall" sound?
It would be fun to see a Creeker Jam. Something tells me we'd have about a bazillion guitars, at least one bass (Dennis Peacock), and a variety of other wooden stringed boxes. Dunno about drums or keyboards, but with a baziollion guitars, who needs drums and keys? I've played a lot of different styles, but I know there's a lot I could learn from you in the blugrass arena. I'm a better flatpicker than fingerpicker, and I get around OK, but I'd love to learn some tricks from a bluegrass player like you. ;)

- Vaughn

[Ben Lang]

I play bass as well!!! thats all we need!

My blue is an acoustic, the EA-16 model.. I scooped it up right before they discontinued that model. I would very much like to build my next bass.. Any suggestions? I was thinking about Aldur body and I didn't get much past that. But, with a CNC on the way, I need to consider it much more seriously!

Any and all help would be great, we can start a new thread for that if need be? I wouldn't want to contribute to the stealing of this one.. lol...

[Corey Hallagan]

LOL....very nice Vaughn!! Heh heh.....

Corey

[Andy Hoyt]

Andy, you ratted me out! I am NOT mostly bald...see for yourself. :D

- Vaughn

Oh the pain. Please make it go away.

[Dan Forman]

Since we are on the topic of disappearing hair... submitted for your amusement: an older pic of a certain gentleman circa 1974, with his new guitar.

Dan