Simon Nashville

The body is made from 100 year old Pitch Pine – donated by a local carpenter’s shop when they were renovating a large property nearby. It’s really heavy, so I’ve used a ‘Thinline’ design with a thin Red Zebra top. The internal carve to match the belly carve was fun to do and has been finished with oil to highlight the grain – it can be clearly seen through the Fender-style F-hole. The top is finished with a single black binding.

The pickup arrangement is ‘Nashville’, but uses Strat pickups for both middle and neck – Switch Position 2 gives a Telecaster middle position (Bridge and Neck).

The finished weight is 7lb 11oz – I’m very happy with that – the extensive weight relief paid off.

This guitar was built as an entry to the Jurgs Cup competition – run by the Guitar Builders Collective to honour the memory of Jurgen Zoller who died as a result of Leukaemia. As a Leukaemia survivor myself, this subject is close to my heart and the sale of this guitar will fund a donation to a Leukaemia Charity.

To discuss potential purchase of this guitar, please contact me at [email protected]

Design

The design is fairly conventional for a Thinline style Guitar, although I used matching carves for the belly cut and the internal chambering to keep the weight down. A single template was developed to cover most of the routing, including the position of the rear control cavity.

The F-hole design and position were taken from a Fender 72 Thinline.

Build

The build progressed fairly smoothly. The F-hole was drawn from a template and carefully cut close to the line using a scroll saw. After speaking with a couple of friends at the workshop, including a violin maker, I decided to finish the F-hole with a very sharp knife rather than files. This worked well and was very enjoyable.

Installing binding didn’t cause any problems with the completely flat top. Working with the pitch pine was interesting and not always easy. Using chisels and scrapers usually gave better results than files, but everything had to be done in the direction of the grain. There is a tendency for the wood to split along the resin seams, so routing was done in very shallow passes.

Finished Guitar

The finished guitar is everything I hoped for. The F-hole suits the flat red zebra top and I’m very happy with the black binding. The vintage voiced pickups give a good range of Tele/Strat sounds.