Fretsireland - Terry Cromer Guitars

09/08/2022

I’m taking a well earned break until September 12th. Look forward to seeing you when I’m back at it.

27/07/2022

OM Guitar tops with some very special Irish brown oak rosettes.

A guitar has many important bits but the top determines how responsive it is and the tonal quality. The rosette in the top is an expression of the maker’s philosophy and personality. Irish brown oak is one of those woods that isn’t plentiful and when it’s in burl form it is particularly special. These rosettes come from what I call the Liffey Demesne log. In the early 1980s I had a small business cutting and selling woods to crafts people. Local and imported woods of sizes and species that weren’t available from the normal timber providers. Windfall trees were cut with a chainsaw mill and left to dry then dragged out once the pieces were manageable weight wise. Hurricane Charley came along in August 1986 and dumped a record amount of rain with wind speeds that many trees in full leaf couldn’t withstand. Birr castle lost many of their largest specimen trees and as luck would have it, I was able to acquire some enormous cherry logs from them. A few years later I was walking on a neighbour’s land beside the Liffey near Lucan and spotted a partially submerged tree. On closer inspection I could see it was an oak tree with some rather large burls. The tree was one of the originals planted when Lucan House was built in the late 18th century and then landscaped in the Capability Brown style. The neighbour was more than happy to have me pull the log out of the river as it was causing a serious obstruction. Winching and judicious cutting got the tree out but as it was a specimen field tree the timber was full of knots. The burls however were magnificent and I brought them home, covered them in soil to dry slowly, and then forgot about them.

While clearing brambles on my own land in 2018 there was a mound of earth beneath them and lo and behold, after 30 years underground, the burl was revealed. I cut it thinly to have any hope of drying it without cracking or distortion. It may seem like a lot of effort for decorative pieces for a guitar but these are a special run to celebrate 40 years of instrument making.

All the main woods I’ve used for these instruments are local, Irish or European. The back and sides are quartersawn Irish brown oak from Longford cut 75 years ago and leftover from furniture my father made over 70 years ago. The tops are master grade German Spruce cut from high in the Bavarian Alps in 2009. I get all my top wood from the one man who only cuts and supplies wood for classical and steel string tops. The tops are split from quartersawn logs which takes advantage of the great strength to weight ratio of German Spruce and allows me to make a guitar with a very thin top. These guitars will be very responsive OM medium body size, and customisation of scale length, neck shape, and width will be available at no extra cost to those who express interest before they’re finished.

07/12/2020

A broken headstock is a relatively common instrument repair. A clean break on the grain line that will glue back together with the same strength as before. This is the other end of the scale. A banjo neck broken at the heel and at the head for a second time after an ugly repair many years ago. Pieces of inlay and ebony had splintered and the person who knocked the banjo off its stand had neatly brushed everything up and thrown it out never to be found. Those of you with cruel intentions might call this a righteous end to a banjo but I rather like vintage instruments.

Surely this is a write off, after all it’s 90 years old. Well, 90 years ago was the golden era of banjos. In the 1920s banjos were the rhythm and lead instrument of choice. Guitars were yet to become the popular instrument as they weren’t loud enough to be heard in a band context. All sorts of wonderful banjos were made, many with fancy decorations and this Paramount Style A made by W&L Lange was a typical example of good quality tenor banjo. These 19 fret tenor banjos are a strong favourite of Trad players and the tone sits well in any session or solo playing. Modern equivalents are expensive particularly if decorated.
The headstock of banjos were a canvas for extensive mother of pearl and this was no exception. Unfortunately this headstock break had broken a number of pieces of inlay that fell out and were lost. To add to the misery the rosewood fingerboard was split at the end and half the last fret of the fingerboard was broken and lost.

I hope you enjoy these pictures of the restoration. The banjo is now in excellent playing condition, not overly restored but in a condition of a reasonably well looked after 90 year old instrument.

23/04/2020

3 German Spruce OM guitar tops pinned, marked and cut out. These were originally cut from Bavarian forests on north eastern Alpine slopes in 2009.

These 40th anniversary guitars required something special to reflect my luthiery skills. It would be easy to pay large amounts for some rare wood that was poached out of the rainforest, but that’s been done to death. I chose the challenge of making with woods that were as close to home as possible without compromising on tone or beauty. The decorative oak burr for the rosette and headstock comes from a log out of the river Liffey, a few hundred metres from my house. Irish Yew for a rosette came from Birr Castle. The brown oak back and sides are from Longford about 100km away and were cut in the 1940s. The top choice is difficult. Spruce grows far too fast in Ireland. Irish Sitka spruce grows in half the time of European countries and as such is unsuitable as a tonewood. My preference for tops is European Spruce. It’s light, strong and gives complex tones. Antonio Torres, the father of modern classical guitar design chose German European Spruce. Rudi,who runs a one man business in southern Germany, cut, split, and supplied me with these 8 years ago and they’ve continued to airdry and stabilise in my worshop. Rudi is one of those enthusiastic people I’ve met over the last 40 odd years who are passionate about what they do. A woodcutter by profession, he started working with a luthier in 2005 to help recognise the best woods and where they grew. These tops were jointed and glued about 2 years ago, stacked, and left to stabilise. Now that they are shaped the registration holes keep them aligned for all work until the tops get glued on the side’s rim assembly.

Next step is the rosettes!

02/04/2020

What are the best tools? A frequent question amongst Luthiers. “Sharp ones” is my only answer. This is how I keep them sharp. Honing with a bit of polishing compound on a flat piece of leather. This is an A2 blade for a Veritas bevel up plane. A2 is an extremely hard steel alloy that’s a bitch to sharpen and fettle but once done, honing is all that’s required to restore that edge. I’ve 3 different blades each with different angles and select them to match the toughness and difficulty of the wood being worked. This blade here is the steepest angle suitable for flamed Maple, Koa or similarly fancy grain.

09/03/2020

Eulogy to a glue pot
Herdim Glue Pot (small) 1987-Feb 2020

Tools break. It’s just part of life. You reach for it and it does it’s job. And then one day you turn it on and it’s cold. Stone cold. Hot hide glue doesn’t work when it’s cold. In fact it’s so hard it’s like glass. A working glue pot heats the hide glue, keeps it at 60C, and it sits there all day ready to be used.

There are only 2 companies left making glue pots. One in the US and one in Germany, the maker of my deceased version. What is a glue pot?
A relatively simple looking device it consists of a container that sits in an electrically heated water bath that heats and keeps the glue ready for use. It’s up to the user to dilute it to the right consistency for the glue joint in question. I thought my German made one would last a bit longer, maybe like what it had replaced, but there was a design fault, the water bath was too small, it could run dry and it did.

This is not my first glue pot. I inherited one similar to the one above. 2 cast iron pots, one in the others water known as a double boiler, that would sit on the stove all day long in the wood shop of my father’s business. When modern glues became popular it didn’t get used very much. I did ask once the reason and the craftsmen there said it was for fixing old furniture. I had yet to learn the wonders of hot hide glue. Electric guitars could be glued with modern glues but the fretboard would need to be repaired at some stage so hot hide glue was the ideal. After all, if it was good enough for Stradivarius, it must be ok; as his instruments are easily repaired just as the old antique furniture was repaired by the craftsmen in my father’s woodshop.

All the guitar companies used it, until in the 1960s a PVA type glue known as aliphatic resin became the new wonder glue. Skill in using hot hide glue is vanishing. Very few other luthiers use it. Martin guitars switched from it in 1964. That’s why the neck needs a reset now as the modern aliphatic resin glue joint creeps. New does not necessarily mean better. Martin now build a few of their high end models with hot hide glue.

All my instruments are glued together with hot hide glue. Reversible, repairable and no creep. All the characteristics required for the best acoustics. Of course other glues are used for specific jobs like binding but hot hide glue is so versatile.

I will attempt to repair the glue pot but in the meantime a mini deep fat fryer modified to run with water at the lower 60 degree temperature will suffice. Lots more water, cool to touch. 21st century luthiery technology doing centuries old reliability.

01/03/2020

Guitar Tops Top wood selection determines the dominant tonal characteristic of the intended instrument. Unlike the sides and back there’s not as wide a range of woods to choose from. It’s mostly softwoods with the occasional hardwood top. A responsive guitar relies on an extremely light but strong top that softwood can provide. Spruce and cedar are the choices with a number of spruce varieties being the most used.

I use European spruce for all my instruments. It comes from a number of areas in the Alps that are enclosed by Italy, Austria and Germany where my supplier lives. I book my wood in advance from him and when the cutting season comes he sends photos of his selection. This takes about 9 months and the wood will be felled 3 years at that stage. I store it another few years before thinking of working with them. He still splits the logs manually with a froe so each piece has no grain run out. Why not use a saw? Surely it would be cheaper? Well it certainly would be cheaper. After all mass production reduces costs. A natural split done with a froe has been part of wood production. Roofing shingles are made this way. Maximum strength and maximum grain beauty. Many think that a certain amount of magic is required in wood selection. Youngs Modulus of Elasticity puts paid to this. Spruce was the original wood used to make aeroplanes because of it’s great strength to weight ratio. This is the main characteristic for guitars. Antonio Torres the creator of the modern classical guitar determined that German Spruce was the most responsive wood with character for the top of a guitar. Sitka spruce is very popular amongst US makers but I’ve found that it can be too stiff. Manually split European Spruce has a beautiful grain and sheen. It starts off a creamy white but darkens beautifully in time. The picture here shows three glued and matured tops that have been thicknessed to 2.5mm. Later on in the voicing process the rim of the top where it joins the sides will be taken down close to 2mm so top is able to vibrate to the maximum.

19/02/2020

Time to mix up some fresh shellac. This 42 year old Juan Montero flamenco is in excellent condition except for these scratches on the french polished sides. Shellac made of best flakes and 96% ethanol dissolve fast and works well. A small detail pad is made of well washed linen filled with the best handmade felt (made inhouse by better half😀). The scratches will be blended out with a number of applications.

French polish is a technique using shellac dissolved in alcohol and teeny amounts of oil to build a very thin beautiful finish that is surprisingly durable on performance guitars. Acoustically it is the best finish for the top of a guitar. It’s extremely thin and isn’t plastic which normal lacquers are and tend to affect the response of the instrument. Its also a single coat. Each application dissolves into what’s already there making no layers just one coat. This is the joy as any repair as it just melts into the existing finish. Normally reserved for top Classical and Flamenco guitars to match their extremely light construction but I have made a steel string Ziricote and European Spruce OM with this finish.

The polish part of French Polish is a combination of the tiniest amount of olive oil (can be others) and elbow grease. The latter part of applications is with a fair amount of pressure and the super high gloss and transparency is revealed. When you want to show off the best wood there’s nothing like French Polish.

18/02/2020

Any instrument build starts with templates, jigs, moulds and work boards. The perspex template has all the essentials, shape, registration holes and soundhole position. Every other work item is made from this so there’s always consistency. Surely handmade guitars don’t need this level of construction? After all isn’t each one unique? The problem is acoustics as a science doesn’t go nuts about uniqueness, it likes certain parameters, body shape, depth, sound hole size to have a consistent accuracy.

11/02/2020

Here is the finished rim assembly for an Irish Oak OM body. Lining and anchor glued in and the bottom is tapered and radiused ready for the back. I just wanted to try to photograph this on it's own to show how beautiful an example of the fleck in the Oak. It's 3 dimensional so impossible to get an image to give it justice as it keeps changing as you look at it. More pics to follow of construction details.

02/02/2020

Guitar lining is one of the less glamorous parts of the instrument. Something to help stick the top and back to the sides. It could be overlooked in guitar design but as it is the perimeter of the vibrating surfaces it determines in conjunction with the sides how much sustain a steel string instrument will have. I design and cut my own from the offcuts of the neck and size is determined by the width of the lower bout. These OM bodies will have 5.5mm and bonded to the 3.5mm sides will give a substantial 8mm rim.

28/01/2020

Four OM rims trimmed and ready for lining and the Anchor. The neck block extension connects to a fixed upper transverse brace to make an Anchor for the neck. Little flex in the neck joint means better vibration transmission and puts a neck reset into the next century.

16/01/2020

When 2 bent sides get glued together that wonderful OM shape is now a reality. It also is an excuse to show of the figure of the Irish Oak. Part of the selection of the grain of the wood is to work out the best figure from the point of view of the player. All woods show up different but oak with the grain shows the fleck off whereas if viewed against the grain the fleck almost disappears.

14/01/2020

Exceptional quarter sawn Irish Oak sides trimmed and ready for headblock and heel glue up. I saved this plank from my brothers workshop when he closed it down. It had sat there all my life and realised it was left over from furniture my father made for the house I grew up in.

14/01/2020

Production has started again. After a long research break here are 4 sets of sides steam bent for OM shape. 3 sets of sides are 70 year old old growth Irish Oak from Longford and the other set is 35 year old growth flamed Bubinga. The exciting part is I eventually solved the solution of bending sides of over 3mm thick by using a reverse of the standard factory method. Nowadays guitar sides are under 2mm except for the higher end double sided laminated construction. The laminated process is time consuming that adds considerably to the price.

Why are thicker guitar sides more important? The sound box of a guitar is like a drum. The more rigid the sides, the more responsive the top and back can be. The more laminates on a drum shell, the less energy is lost giving volume and more response. The same principle works for acoustic guitars.

These Irish Oak sides will be all for the special XL guitars which will be available in the next few months. XL stands for 40, celebrating the number of years making guitars. Keep an eye out for more information on availability.

09/10/2019

Farewell to Vinnie Bell, guitar designer and session guitarist who died recently. His most famous creation was the electric sitar but also created the first electric 12 string guitar. He made the designs for Coral which was part of Danelectro. Norwegian Wood, Paint it Black were the early songs with the distinctive sound of the electric sitar but it continued to pop up for many decades. Rory Gallagher, The Cure, Pat Metheny, Yes, Paul Young and Guns and Roses were amongst the diverse users of this oddity guitar. Vinnie Bell also invented the Belzouki, which was the first commercially available electric 12 string also from Coral.

He was a session guitarist in New York and was generally known as the Tommy Tedesco of the east coast.

https://youtu.be/cE3C1bX-6yk

Legendary session guitarist Vinnie Bell is seen here, playing his invention the Coral Electric Sitar in the recording studio. Bell personally played this ins...

10/02/2019

This popped up as a memory from 2 years ago. Sometimes the detail in a handmade instrument is taken for granted. Wood binding and purling is strong and beautiful but totally unforgiving when it comes to fitting. Here is a butt joint at the heel. Hard to see, that's the intention!