Vicky the Photonic Guitar

Today was a productive day in the Dagmar Shop. I faired the inside of the Queen's guitar and named her Vicky after Queen Victoria who chartered Queen's University.
She is almost ready for the Carbon Fiber laminations. I'm thinking about using a different combination of Carbon Fiber in the efforts to save weight and add strength in the direction of the grain. I'm flirting with the idea to use 5.5 oz twill for one layer and 11 oz unidirectional for the second. With all of my previous guitars I've used two layers of 11 oz unidirectional. Using 5.5 oz twill might save a couple of ozs - must do some research.
Hmmmm....

Vicky is made of the same Cooked Maple as Mary Lou W except I have used Bass wood for the glue surface vs using Cooked Maple. This will save weight and Bass wood is traditional kerf wood. I'd like to use Cooked Maple for the back with a Sitka Spruce top.

I'm also thinking about introducing a traditional F hole design. I'm still up in the air about that.

The theme of the guitar is to do a simple aesthetic. The inlay around the outside of the soundplates will be black white black black white black. The fret board will be just Ebony with white side dots, The peg Head will have Ebony veneers on both top and back with Waverly tuners that have Ebony buttons. I will be using X Bracing using Sitka Spruce. The neck heel will be made largely of Bass wood and the rest will be my usual Cooked Flame Maple and Carbon Fiber nine lamination design with a two way adjustable truss rod.

The tail piece will be the Dagmar standard one with an Iron hinge. I am still thinking about the inlay. Maybe the Queen's "Q" or a crown. Hmmmmm....

I'd like this blog to be interactive and encourage my followers to write or comment on what they would like to see. You can post a comment on the blog or drop me a line at rizoratzo@aol.com. I'd love to hear some feedback.

Lastly, I am considering doing a hand rubbed sunburst to give the guitar a true vintage vibe.

I know I promised pictures today but tonight was dinner at the inlaws - My inlaws cooked me up a birthday Duck and it was divine! Pictures tomorrow.

What do you think?

Photonic Guitar Link

This is a link to the Queen's Photonic guitar abstract.
http://www.chem.queensu.ca/people/faculty/loock/research.htm#_guitar

I hope to start posting pictures of the guitar tomorrow.

Queen's University Photonic Guitar

Hi Pete :) and all other of my blog friends.

Today I finalized the shape of the Queen's guitar! She is a 17" single cutaway with a 3" body depth. The wood I chose is cooked flame maple (like Mary Lou W) and I must say that the wood Rene supplied me is the sickest stuff I have ever seen! This guitar is going to be pretty special I will be posting pictures soon. My brother is lending me his camera for the purpose of this blog and I just got it today. The pictures will start at the point where I laminate the carbon fiber in. All the work that I have done with the math and cutting procedure is still top secret as I finalize things. Sorry kids!

This should be an interesting journey as Dagmar Custom Guitars constructs and delivers the world's fist Photonic guitar to Queen's University.

It's my Birthday!

It's my Birthday!

Biography

I am an emerging artist, self-taught in custom lutherie. In my first year of business as Dagmar Custom Guitars, I have succeeded in creating an innovative guitar design that has garnered international attention. The acceptance and excitement around my exclusively unique design has been both humbling and overwhelming.

I began woodworking several years ago, self-taught for practical reasons: I had bought a house and was determined to do the renovations myself. Watching TV shows such as The New Yankee Workshop and This Old House, I picked up tips and became inspired to design and build my own furniture as well. This interest soon became my passion. Even though I was enrolled in a Bachelor of Technology degree at Ryerson University, I decided to leave and make woodworking my life’s work.

While paying the bills with a job in graphic design, I took an Advanced Woodworking course at Niagara College to refine my skills. There I learned everything from shop safety, design and joinery to CNC milling and finishing. Upon the successful completion of this course I accepted a position with a local custom yacht building company, Saga Marine. Over a seven-year period I learned the art of boat building, which included how to read and loft plans, mold making, interior construction and installation along with a complete understanding of composite materials such as fiberglass, carbon fiber and resins.

While at Saga Marine I continued to hone my woodworking skills on the weekends with various projects. I had great fun customizing vintage bicycles into motorized scooters. An idea, which intrigued me, was to find a way to make bicycle fenders out of wood. At this very time I had witnessed a colleague of mine construct a wooden urn - a vase shape using strips of wood cut and glued to shape using precisely-calculated angles. I was struck with the idea of curving wood tightly in two opposing directions. I drafted a plan to construct my first bicycle fender set, calculated all the angles needed and prepared the wood using precise machining. I dove headfirst into the project and was successful at making my first set of solid wood fenders. I took my bicycle to local car shows where it would always gather crowds of interested people. Admirers of the bicycle would sometimes call me an artist, something that I had never considered myself to be.

I developed my fender idea and discovered that I could reverse the curve at the back of the fender set creating a “ducktail”, which is a stylized line of the fender that swoops up at the rear. Once it was realized that I could change directions with the curve the idea of building a guitar rim and body came to me very clearly. I saw a more rewarding and marketable opportunity in the art of custom-made boutique guitars.

Having had such success as a self-taught woodworker, I chose to follow the same self-directed approach to lutherie. I became obsessed with learning about acoustics and guitar construction. I purchased or read everything I could find on the topic, including master luthier Bob Benedetto’s magnificent instructional set of DVD’s, which I studied intensely. The woodworking industry was hit hard even before the current recession, and while building the prototype of my new guitar I had to deal with being laid off twice from different employers. I took my prototype guitar and used it as the model for a business plan and was accepted into the Self Employment Benefits program for entrepreneurs through Niagara College. I was subsidized and mentored in my first year of business, which allowed me to dedicate myself full-time to my calling of becoming a custom guitar builder and innovator. Over this year I was able to evolve my prototype into three world-class guitars. The highlight was receiving the official invitation to show them at the prestigious Montreal Guitar Show. Being invited to participate in this show in the first year of one’s business is virtually unprecedented.

My debut at the Montreal Guitar Show was amazing! I received lots of attention from the media and had one of the busiest booths at the show. I made many contacts, one of which was the incredible opportunity to be commissioned by Queen’s University to build a guitar to help debut and develop their state of the art photonic pickup. Premier Guitar Magazine interviewed me for the video segment of their Montreal Guitar Show coverage (which is also available on YouTube). I have had two major articles written about me in local newspapers and recently scored the cover of Pulse Niagara Magazine. I have also been invited to submit pictures and text descriptions of my guitars for a book by the noted French author Antoine Pascal. The book is to be the most exhaustive collection of guitars in a single volume and will be published in French, German and English with global distribution. Finally, a short documentary film on my lutherie work is in development with Sheridan College.

My self-directed pursuit as an innovator into the world of custom lutherie has been fast and furious. I am humbled by the amount of attention my artistic expression, design and innovation has gathered and I am excited to have had such high levels of success in gaining recognition in such a short period of time. I look forward to developing my ideas even further and continuing a life-long career as a Canadian artist and innovator in the fascinating world of custom lutherie.

All About Eve

Eve is my prototype cutaway archtop. She is my largest guitar to date measuring 18" at the lower bout with a 3" body depth. I made this guitar with Ancient Kauri wood from New Zealand. A forest of these ancient trees was unearthed by Kiwi farmers and has been carbon dated at 50,000 years old.

It is an overwhelming and humbling thought to think that the wood had been in waiting for tens of thousands of years before it came to me to be made into Eve. I feel honoured by the wood and I am very proud of this guitar. It was lutherie romance at it's best rendering the Kauri into what I think is my most successful guitar to date.

To build Eve was an extreme challenge and at times I had my doubts that I would be able to finish her. This guitar fought me hard but with an enormous amount of patience and perseverance I became her master.

Kauri is a wonderful tone wood and the only gamble was to make all of Eve's parts from the same kind of wood. Usually guitars are made with a Spruce or Cedar top, hard wood sides and back, like Maple, with a Hard Maple neck or one of Mahogany. The unknown for me was whether or not all the parts would phase well with one another to produce a well balanced guitar that captured that traditional archtop sound. It did perfectly!

Her voice is smooth and mellow with a belly rubbing bass, long sustain and a resonance that can produce a faint flangey effect when the strings are picked clean. Her tone is like cognac by the fire with the kids in bed and a quiet house after a fun days end. (Where's the puke bucket!) Seriously though she has a very pretty voice with a low break angle at the bridge that enhances the pianissimo or soft touch playing. She can be strummed hard too maintaining great string separation with a volume that has slightly less amplitude than Spruce. I love it!

The X bracing on the top plate is Engleman Spruce with carbon fiber for added stiffness. The lower bout was carved thinner than the upper bout to ready the guitar for a floating humbucker. The guitar could easily be left alone as is or one could also use a K&K pickup with a remote preamp. I think it would cool to have both a humbucker and a K&K together with stealth controls on a pick guard.

I had weight savings as one of my themes. The heel of the neck is largely made of Bass wood as is the glue surface for the top and back plates. I shaved the guitar sides down to 4.5mm with a tolerance of .25mm in either direction. Again, leaving the neck to waist a bit thicker than the lower bout. Having more mass in the upper bout is good for fighting feed back and is known for producing better sustain.

In my previous guitars I have used through laminations of carbon fiber cloth in my necks. The carbon fiber stiffens the neck and helps it combat the effects of humidity changes and also gives lots more strength where the wood fibers are at their shortest in the 15 degree transition to the peg head. Eve's neck was done differently. I routed in two 1/4" wide by 3/16" deep troughs that followed the taper of the neck. I filled these areas with carbon fiber and Spruce struts. The struts run right into the peghead to add strength in the short grain area and keep the neck nice and true with little fear of twisting. A two way adjustable truss rod is also employed.

The scale length is 25" with a 12" radius. The action is text book with 5/64" clearance at the 12th fret. The nut is 1 13/16th. The extra width is great for players who switch from classical to archtop. Keeping with that idea I used 10 to 50 bronze strings - nice and light - so easy to play. Note bending is made easier too without feeling crowded.

Eve is a Jazz machine.

Eve