Ramblings and news from the luthier, Ken Hodges

One of the moderators of the Acoustic Guitar Forum (www.acousticguitarforum.com) had the opportunity to play one of my guitars recently. I was thrilled with his appraisal and thought you might like to read a completely unbiased opinion and comparison of my guitars:

 http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122855

By the way, I am a sponsor of the forum, which has over 22,000 registered players. Even though I am a sponsor, these guys can be brutally honest when it comes to evaluating guitars. I appreciate that honesty!

I just returned fromt he 2008 Newport-Miami guitar festival where I had a booth to show off a couple of guitars.

It was an incredible show and thousands of people visited over the 3 day event. I sold the flamed oregon myrtle guitar at the show.

Here are a couple of video clips I took with my kodak easy share camera. One is of Don Alder, the 2007 International fingerpicking champion, taking the guitar for a test drive. He is known for his percussive fingerpicking style and this video shows how he does it. The second video is of Kinloch Nelson, the PBS recording artist taking the guitar for a spin and giving an evaluation of the instrument. The evaluation was priceless!

Hope you enjoy the videos!

Here is an update on the guitars that I will be showing in Miami. First off is a new guitar for me, which is a "performance" guitar. It is a hollow body guitar that is only 2" thick. It will have a BBand acoustic pickup installed in it. I am expecting this guitar to play like an electric, but sound like an acoustic.

 The back and sides are made out of Box Elder and the top is Englemann Spruce.  The neck is figured maple and the fingerboard, bridge and binding is bloodwood. This guitar is ready to have a finish put on it and this time I am using a 2 part polyurethane finish. This finish should be strong enough to stand up to use "on the road" for those in the performing arts business. Although this guitar hasnt been strung up yet, the box is extremely resonant and I am getting anxious to hear it sing. Here are a couple of pictures of the guitar "in the white" (unfinished).

In the same picture you can see another one of the guitars, a Pao Ferro Dreadnaught cutaway, that is nearing completion also. Along with these two guitars will be an Oregon Myrtle (highly figured) Dreadnaught and also a Koa "DM" model cutaway. All of these guitars should be finished and ready for the April 10th show in Miami.

If you are interested in seeing and hearing some of the other guitars that I have made, here are a coupld of links to a luthier website where I posted some short movies of me playing the guitars. Keep in mind that I am not the best of players, but you will be able to get an idea of the sound qualities of my guitars.

First up is a "DM" model Osage Orange guitar. I think you will be surprised at the volume and trone of this guitar. Osage is said to be the North American equivilent of Brazillian Rosewood. You be your own judge.

http://www.luthiertube.com/mediadetails.php?key=9e1c54fd8775b7236996

Next up is an Ash Dreadnaught that is listed as being for sale in the gallery.

http://www.luthiertube.com/mediadetails.php?key=9930b5f9b344e2942805

Stay tuned for more progress pictures!

Christmas has come and gone, and all of the guitars I had been working on have been delivered and are being enjoyed by their new owners. One of the new owners who had recieved his guitar as a gift called me a few days after he got it and said he was in awe at the sound, beauty, and playability. Getting this phone call meant alot to me because I know that guitar will be played and enjoyed for decades to come.

I didnt get to send out the guitars to my photographer to get pictures taken before they went out, but I did take a couple of snap shots of them.

From left to right this was an Osage Orange OD model guitar with a maple neck, then a malaysian ebony, next to that was a flamed Oregon myrtle and hanging on the wall is a curly cherry guitar.  These guitars all left in their new custom humidity controlled cases made by Ameritage (www.ameritage.com) which look like this:

Now that Christmas is over and the new guitars are gone, I am busy building a set of guitars to take with me to the Miami Guitar festival which I have been invited to attend in April. I am going to build at least one unusual guitar for the show and the back and sides are going to be box elder. The other guitars that I am building will be some of the prettiest wood I have been able to source from world wide tonewood dealers.

One guitar that I am currently working on is going to a life long friend who now lives in Alaska. This will be a cutaway dreadnaught East Indian Rosewood guitar with an Englemann spruce top.

Stay tuned for the updates!

Just an update to let you know that I have been invited to show my guitars at the Miami International guitar show in April of 2008. I will be there with a few guitars to show and sell and will look forward to meeting some of you face to face. If you are interested in having me build a guitar for you, this will be a good time to discuss your desires and needs and to get on the schedule for later in 2008.

As of right now, I have 5 guitars that are almost complete. They have all been sprayed with lacquer and I am waiting on it to cure so that I can give the guitars a final sanding and buffing. 3 of the guitars are comissions and the other 2 are experimental guitars. Of these 2 guitars, one is a maple guitar with some experimental bracing and the other is an osage orange guitar that also has some experimental bracing. The Osage guitar also will have a maple neck, which will be the first of it's kind.

I will post some pictures of all of the completed guitars soon.

Merry Christmas!

It has been a while since I updated this blog and I thought I would let you in on the current builds. First of all, there is a malaysan ebony dreadnaught that is going to have a Lutz spruce top. Second, a curly cherry dreadnaught with an Englemann spruce top. Third is a flamed oregon myrtle dreadnaught with a Lutz spruce top. Fourth is a Maply prima cutaway with a sitka spruce top. This guitar has some experimental ideas I am trying out and will most likely be the guitar that I will use in church services unless someone wants to buy it. Fifth and lastly is a Osage Orange prima guitar with an englemann spruce top.  These guitars are in various stages of completion and I am working feverishly to get three of them done before Christmas as they are comissioned guitars intended to be Christmas presents.

I will try to update the blog soon and include some pictures of the builds as well.

Happy Thanksgiving!  My wife and I were married on Thanksgiving day, 32 years ago. I am looking forward to celebrating this anniversary with her.

Ok folks, here is the latest guitar from my shop. It is an African Mahogany dreadnaught with an englemann spruce top. Bindings are curly maple with Mother of Pearl rosette and purflings.

This is a comissioned guitar, so it will be going out to my customer in the near future.

She has a VERY VERY loud voice with strong midrange and trebles. The bass on a dread is usually boomy, but this one is somewhat tamed and the tone is equal from the low E tot he 12th fret E. Very well balanced!

It has traditional ladder bracing for the back and the top is braced with parabolic bracing. (the pre-war type).

There is still one more coming in this current building session. I'll update the blog with pictures as soon as it is complete.

Thanks for looking!

I finally got to spray the nitrocellulose lacquer on the Ash guitar that has had me so excited. Once that happened, I couldnt stand it any longer so I did a quick hand polishing of the finish and bolted the neck on and strung it up. I will dismantle the guitar later and give it a proper buffing to a mirror shine.

This guitar has surpassed all expectations ! It has a very well balanced tone, not too much on the treble and not too much on the bass... very well balanced and it has sustain that is just incredible. It has plenty of punch without being brash in it's tone.  I have to keep reminding myself that the finish really isnt fully cured on this guitar yet and that it will only get better souding as time goes on. I am just amazed at the tonal quality of this guitar and now it has me wondering why more luthiers arent using this wood???

enough about the talk, here are a few pictures of it !!!

I had a custoemr over this afternoon to try to talk me out of my 30 year old Martin D-35. I am not interested in selling it, but I let him play this guitar while I went and dug out the old Martin. When I returned to the room, he was all smiles and said "I had no idea that your guitars sounded THIS good!!" I let him play the Martin for a few minutes, and he wanted My guitar back. He played it for quite some time commenting on how good the neck feels and the overall good quality tone.  It would not surprise me for him to return in the next couple of days with cash in hand for this guitar.

Until then, this guitar is for sale for $3,000.00 which includes a custom Ameritage case with built in humidity control system. If you are interested in this guitar, please contact me at ken@hodgesguitars.com

Thanks for looking!

It has been a while since I updated this blog, so I thought I would include some pictures of the current builds. I also wanted to include some demo sound files of one of my guitars. This is one of the "Prima" (OM) guitars that I built previously. The guitar is being played by my Son In Law, Kris Moody and both demo files are some of his original classical style music.

http://www.hodgesguitars.com/demo/demo2.mp3 finger style playing

http://www.hodgesguitars.com/demo/demo3.mp3 flat pick playing.

These links should open with your windows media player program automatically when you click on the link. If not, you can save them to your hard drive and play them from there with your MP3 player. They are each 1 minute long.

Here are the pictures of some of the guitars I have been working on:

The guitar on the left is a figured Sapele (African Mahogany) and has an englemann spruce top with Mother of Pearl purfling on the top. The bindings on this guitar are figured curly maple from Germany. It has traditional ladder style back bracing. The Englemann spruce came from British Columbia in Canada and is some of the prettiest tops I have ever seen. All of the bracing (front and back) is made out of Englemann spruce.

The guitar on the left is a Sycamore guitar with a Western Red Cedar top. It has full Paua Abalone purflings front and back and a decorative wood inlay up the center of the back. This is the "Garden of Eden" themed guitar and is slow going because of the intricate details that are going into the fingerboard and neck. It took me one complete day to inlay the top of the guitar with Paua Abalone (including the rosette around the sound hole) and the purflings. It has Leopardwood bindings which took me a complete day to bend to shape. The Leopardwood has spots on it like a leopard and comes from Africa. It is unlike any other wood I have ever bent to shape and took me several tries to get ti to bend without breaking. I finally figured out the trick to bending it and all is well now.

Here is a picture of the front of the guitars:

These guitars have a temporary pore filling sealer on them right now and the tops have been temporarily sealed with shellac. They will get a final finish put on them sometime later in the month. The Sycamore guitar has a unique X-brace back designed by me and is proving to be a really good design. The X-braced back seems to improve the midrange  and upper tonal qualities of the dreadnaughts which are typically heavy bass strong. All of my bracing patterns are unique to me, and the tops are braced with a parabolic style of shaping.

One of my most exciting guitars has been one made out of Ash. When I started working with the Ash I really didnt expect it to be very special and a "ho-humm" kind of guitar. BOY was I surprised!! This guitar rings like a bell and is light as a feather. the ash is surprisingly strong and stiff, which is a good property for back and sides for a guitar. Most people that have been in my shop and looked at what I am doing seem to be drawn to this  guitar. Here is a picture of the guitar in the mold and before I put the top on it. You can plainly see the X brace in the lower bout of the guitar. This guitar now has an Adirondack red spruce top and sports all wooden harringbone purfling and rosette adorned with red dyed maple pin stripes. I am binding the guitar with Honduran Mahogany and the end wedge and neck will also be Mahogany.

 Here is a couple of pictures of this guitar with the Adirondack Red Spruce top on it. The top purflings and binding has been added but work still continues for the back purfling and binding. You will see a bit of glue where the binding meets, but that will be sanded off before it gets a finish put on the guitar. (still lots of sanding to do!) I cant wait to play this guitar!

Notice the dyed red wood pinstripe 

I also have my "Hodges" inlays of Mother of Pearl inlaid into the headstocks for these guitars and for future builds. I thought they turned out quite nice! These are East Indian Rosewood and Ebony woods. I should have enough to last a while

I already have the necks ready for finishing for the Sapele guitar and this Ash guitar, so as soon as I can get some good weather and a mild temperature day I will spray the nitrocellulose lacquer on these guitars and will then begin the hand rubbed polishing process.

The slot you see cut into the top of the guitar is for the neck truss rod access. This will get covered up when the neck and fingerboard are glued onto the guitar and the truss rod adjustment will be accessable from the sound hole.

I have been finding some good deals on tonewoods and have spent a lot of time lately resawing and thickness sanding these woods. Some of the woods I will be placing up for sale soon so that people that want to try building a guitar for themself can buy good quality tonewoods at bargain prices.

I have also been spending quite a bit of time building jigs and fixtures to aid in future builds. Some of these jigs are commercially available, but I like the idea of modifying designs that are available in order to do more than one function or to help make my guitars unique, so I would rather just build my own rather than buy them. One jig that is taking some time to build is a jig to radius the fingerboards to a 16" radius profile. I purchased quite a large lot of  East Indian rosewood fingerboard material and I need to radius these boards to be able to use them for fingerboards. I purchased a thin kerf circular blade to cut the slots for the frets and also a template for cutting the fret slots precisely (within .0002" precision). I buy my fret wire in 50' rolls and it takes about 4 feet of this fret wire to put frets on one guitar. It is some of the highest quality wire available anywhere.

While I am thinking about it, I might add that all of my guitars (even the base-line economy models) have hardware and materials that is second to none. I buy the best materials I can buy to build these guitars. While I could buy inexpensive tuner machines, I dont. I buy the best that can be bought (Grover, Gotah, ect) and all of my saddles and nuts are high quality bone. You wont find any plastic nuts and saddles on any of my guitars! I use only fresh high quality glues and lacquers and the woods I build with are the best I can buy. My guitars contain purfling and rosettes made out of real shells I purchase from all over the world and then saw and file into shape. You wont find plastic on my guitars either! (most factories use fake Mother of pearl and Paua). The herringbone purfling and rosette materials are made from tiny bits of wood (usually ebony and maple) and glued into these popular herringbone designs. The trim lines are dyed wood (not paper or plastic) and the black/white/black edging lines are made out of wood, not plastic like you find on factory built guitars. You wont run into problems with binding coming loose 10, 50 or 100 years down the road due to UV exposure or oxidising plastic shrinking on my guitars. They dont have any plastic on them!

I have been negotiating with a computer controlled carving machine owner to custom carve my necks for me. Some of these custom necks will also be for sale later to other luthiers.

I am still buying hardwoods. If you own a sawmill (a lot of people reading this blog are friends who own portable sawmills), I am interested in purchasing quarter sawn domestic hardwoods. I am seeking woods in 2 feet, 3 foot and 5 foot lengths. All of it needs to be quarter sawn and the 2 foot long boards (or multiples of 2 feet) need to be 8+ inches wide. The 3 foot boards (or multiples of 3 feet) need to be 5 inches wide. The wood cannot contain any knots, worm holes or defects. If you have wood for sale that will fit these requirements, please e-mail me with a description and asking price. I am particularly interested in purchasing Birch, Beech, and walnut. For top woods, I am interested in purchasing Western Red cedar, Adirondack Red Spruce, and Sitka Spruce.

All of this is blogging fairly new to me, but I have now created this to keep you current with the new guitars as they are built.

I have now moved into my new shop and have plenty of room for multiple builds at one time. I am still building jigs to help speed up production so that I can have one or two "extra" guitars on hand at all times that will be for sale. I have also invested heavily in purchasing tonewoods from all over the world, including snakewood, leopardwood, mahogany and rosewood. I have also purchased domestic hardwoods and red spruce and Englemann spruce for tops. My inventory of excellent quality tonewoods is increasing on a daily basis.

I am currently building a series of 5 dreadnaught style guitars.

Starting with build #11 (the Dragonfly):

This guitar is an East Indian Rosewood Back and sides with an Englemann Spruce top. It has oak bindings, including the fingerboard bound in oak with a mahogany neck. Appointments include herringbone purflings and rosette and a fingerboard with a dragonfly inlaid in abalone at the 12th fret. The tuners are gold Grover tuners. This guitar has traditional scalloped bracing and the back is cross braced for extra midrange and treble tones.  In combination of the dreadnaught's typical bass boominess, this should prove to be an exceptional guitar for any style of player! This guitar is a commissioned guitar and is not for sale at this time. I should be completed with this guitar by the end of the month.

Build #12:

This guitar is also a dreadnaught guitar and the back and sides are  a stunning figured African Mahogany and is topped with Englemann Spruce and has a mahogany neck. Appointments include Mother of Pearl rosette and purflings with bindings of curly Maple. Truely a beautiful guitar!  It has parabolic bracing and he back is traditionally braced with Sitka spruce. This guitar should be completed by the end of the month also and will be for sale.

Build #13 (the Garden of Eden) A VERY SPECIAL BUILD!

This guitar is a Dreadnaught guitar that has Sycamore back and sides, a western red cedar top and special bracing. The bracing is parabolic and is as light as possible while still maintaining the structural integrity. The back is also cross braced on this guitar to give the overall sound a rich, full tone with plenty of mid range. The box has already been closed on this build and the resonance is remarkable. Appointments include full Abalone purfling (front and back), an inlaid intricate stripe down the middle of the back, and a tree of life inlay in Mother of Pearl and abalone down the entire fingerboard and headstock. Binding is in leopard wood and the fingerboard and bridge are snakewood (The most expensive tonewood there is). This guitar will have gold Grover tuners. This guitar will be for sale when completed.

Build #14:

This is another dreadnaught guitar that has back and sides out of Ash with a Mahogany neck. It will be cross braced in the back and the top bracing will be parabolic. The top on this one is Englemann spruce and will have herringbone rosette and purflings. Binding will be in Mahogany. This is a base line guitar but still an exceptional looking and sounding guitar.  It will be for sale when completed.

Stay tuned for the next installment as I will include pictures of the new builds!

I love life! God has been good to me through my life. He has given me a wonderful wife of 32 years to share it with, and a beautiful daughter that is the apple of my eye. I spent over 25 years working for a chemical company and retired early due to medical problems. I then started a small business in the North Georgia Mountains that grew so fast that I could barely take care of it. I sold that business and retured again. After some engineering work for the goverment, I moved back to Florida to take care of my elderly parents. My Dad died in June of '06 and my mother is in a nursing home now. I started building guitars as a way to be able to take care of my parents and still be at home. God has blessed me and my luthier business is flourishing. I am a member of Crossroads Family Worship Center in Callahan, Florida. You can drop by any sunday and hear me praising God through music as I am a guitarist in the praise and worship team. If you are in the market for a custom built guitar, I would be happy to give you a quote. just send me an e-mail at ken@hodgesguitars.com and let me know what you are interested in. Thanks for looking! Ken

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