Ellie Erickson's bubinga/bearclaw OO ish guitar [photos] - created 12-13-2004

Erickson, Ellie - 12/13/2004.17:42:08

Going to a folksinger pal in the windy city with big shoulders.

The dope:

Bubinga/Bearclaw w/Mahogany neck

Ebony fingerboard

bloodwood dot inlays on neck

turquoise inlay and side dots

Corian inlay of ellie

Dovetail joint neck

Tortise shell binding

Behelen's nitro over vinyl sealer

It's loud, almost like a D model, and with a lot of sustain. It's also a little deeper than usual, about 3/4 of an inch. My pal is a big feller who's used to a larger body Gibson, so I made the neck a little wider and the body a little deeper to match him.

The Bubinga had some small knotholes in it, I filled them with CA and sawdust, and it seems to have worked fine.

ok, here's photos:

Looks very nice.

Your third picture is over the 50 K size however!

Cool, you are going traditional on us Ellie! No glitter-liquid filled inlays? Wait a second, that G-clef lookin' thingy looks liquid fill-esqu

Back has no binding, right? And what is that peghead veneer? Brazilian, its sweet (read as "Chuck is a sucker for ink lines")

like it

Your third picture is over the 50 K size however!

She baaad!

Yup, turquoise inlace. Gotta do something purists find offensive somewhere along the line. Don't know what the headstock is, I picked it up from LMI at GAL and I have CRSS.

No binding on the back on this one. The bubinga seemed harder than anything of the usual suspects for binding, and I did a smash and bash on a scrap to see if it would be too brittle, and it wasn't.

My acoustic guitars are all pretty tame, almost boring. I prefer to let the freak flag fly on electrics and with bad poetry.

Yes, Steve, the third one is about 5 K over the limit. My copy of photoshop sometimes lies to me, and I don't always catch it.

Otherwise, I really like the guitar.

I picked it up from LMI at GAL

Then it is Madagascar rosewood.

I'm sure the Bubinga edge will hold up, that stuff is like armor.

Looks very good Ellie! So, you got the neck from LMI? I don't recall seeing you make heels like that before. Did you get that bridge there, too?

No, just the headplate, Mark. The neck is a premade one I got at ASIA from Tom, the guy who sold me the Bubinga, a lot like the Martin second neck I got from you a few years ago. A Hotrod trussrod fit right in, so it may have been a Stewmac neck.

I am not too crazy about dovetails, but figured I should at least know how to fit them, if not carve them.

Mmm, shiny and curly. Very decadent.

How do you like the pinless bridges?

Understated to perfection, I wish I had such restraint and taste. As for offending purists, what would life be for purists if not for getting offended.

Looks good Ellie! Is the back completly flat? Or is the picture telling lies? I'm moving to the windy city at the end of the month, maybe, if I'm in the right place at the right time, I'll get to see and hear it played! That's assuming your friend is a perfoming artist. Good work, makes me want to make a flat-top.

It's radiused, 15 foot dish, and I really like the pinless bridge. They're easier to install, and this one is probably my best sounding guitar so far, so I don't think it's a negative tone suck.

Ellie, I like it... except for being 5K over the limit...I especially like the tortise binding.

Except for the bridge, the body looks like an old Kay, and I mean that in a good way. And I like the turquoise Hopi symbol in the headstock (the one that Chuck mistook for a G clef (;-)).

Go on Howard, just call me a an un-cultured rube to my face ... I can take it .. **weeping, head in hands**

What kind of kerfing did you use Ellie?

Nice second line Howard.

Oh, nice guitar. Good thing Ellie put her name on the headstock; you wouldn't know it was her work otherwise. She's becoming very conservative in her old age.

It looks very nice. The quality of the work and craftsmanship looks even better! I usually like my guitars a little more spruced up, like wood bindings all around, nice purflings,soundhole rosettes and such, but it is a very nice guitar.

Nice work Ellie. The bubinga looks great. I keep waiting to see you put the trademarked 'Ellie swoop' at the tail end of your acoustics though.

"Reality can be beaten with enough imagination." --Anonymous

"Reality is simply an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."--Albert Einstein

Ellie

I really like this. It is very pure in form...... I like the tortise adornments and the pinless bridge. Can you please tell me what material you used for the bridge as well as the bridge plate. Also is the sound hole bound and if so with what. Teally Nice. Thanks

Take Care

Ken

I got the bridge for this one at Allparts, and I think it's rosewood, the bridge plate is also rosewood, cut off from a side set that got busted. The soundhole is bound with one strip of thin plastic binding, and over that on the outside edge is the same tortoise binding that's on the edges.

Howard is dead on with his comment about it looking like a Kay.

I love the old Prarie State guitars, and the Larson Brothers instruments, as well as my old all solid wood Harmony, so I stole a lot of the simplicity from those guys when I thought about how to do the appointments on my acoustics.

Wood bindings just don't seem worth the trouble to me, they're usually less dent resistant than plastic, and lots more boring. Maybe I'll regret it when I have some of this plastic binding shrink, but the odds are good I'll be dead before they self destruct. It took about 70 years for the binding to come loose on my ancient Gibson Mandocello. Maybe mine will take that long too?

Thanks for the comments, everybody. I'll go say a dozen Hail Debs and Our Forums as penance for my 5K sin now.

Chuck, it's got reverse

kerfed

linings.

Oh, I also forgot, it has one Hacku and two monkeys drawn on the inside too, in dark places where the throb is generated.

Sweet ... Hacku inside

and G-clef'y thing as well

Hopi it may be but

I think it is swell

I was told it was a Shouku rei or something like that. I just did what my pal asked for. I think it's represents infinity or something like it.

I'd have prefered a cartoonish lizard pimp daddy, but this one works.

I don't feel like the shape of the bridge, or the headstock match the rest very well, and both need refinment, but I was sort of in a hurry with this one. He gave me a year to do it, and of course I put off even starting it until the end of October.

Guess I didn't need to hurry, he's not picking it up till after Christmas.

I expect to be working in Bubinga quite a bit down the road, but have not yet. The waist is pretty tight, did you have any trouble bending the sides to that curve?

Did you use a hot pipe or Fox style bender??

I used a blanket on a Fox style bender, and very little water misted on it, wrapped in foil. I use two slats for the wood, and another one over the top of the blanket. It bent very easily.

Since I got the blanket, nothing has been hard to bend. The last few were so easy and fast it was unnerving, even a fairly tight cutaway although it was on easily bent myrtle sides.

The shape is one of the sides John Hall sent me when I got the bender, so it's no tighter than whatever Martin shape it was. I think it looks tighter because there's no rosette to break the top look up.

Nice work, Ellie. At first glance I thought the back/sides were that tasty Redwood that I've seen on your other instruments. How's it sound?

By hacku, do you mean haiku? If so, may we be honoured with the poetics of your instrument? If not, what's a hacku?

When a poetry hack attempts haiku, the result is often hacku.

Duh! I should have guessed that one.

My one and only claim to fame is coining that term.

You want to read what I wrote, ya gotta buy the guitar!

So what you are saying is that you forgot.

EDIT: I know I was just poking fun. I gotta shut up. **collective yell from behind countless monitors around the world: "Yea, SHUT UP!" **

Nope, I'm just saying I'm not saying! They all get monkeys, some get hacku, and now and then a short Rumi poem. Sometimes I've written them backwards so repair geeks can read them with a mirror. Gotta get that freak on somehow.

Ellie, if I wasn't just a poor student I would try to buy it, but didn't you say it was for someone in particular? I think it's so cool that people write stuff in their instruments, I've got to start doing that.

I usually leave a little blood instead of an impersonal note.

Nice looking instrument, Ellie! I especially like the inlace. I guess its okay if Fabricatore, one of the Ramirez's, or some other dead famous builder uses mastic, but bad, bad, bad if live builders resort to such techniques. I think that means that all of our similar sins are absolved as soon as we die, and since we're dead for quite a while, our purity is actually indistinguishable from the purists. Which of course is a long way to say I am about to use this technique in a rosette, and don't give a whittle sticks worth of concern for the purists vote. Anyhow, its a cool instrument. Hope the owner falls in love with it.

So Tom--What are you "masticating"?

(I couldn't pass up the opportunity!)

OK, everybody probably knows this but me... Ellie, how do you do those inside inlay cuts for the loops in the Ls and Es in your name?

Carefully.

It's done by drilling a hole in the center of the loop, then running the blade through and reattching it to the saw handle, then cutting with the inlay saw around the line, just like the outside line.

Beautiful, Ellie. Love how all the woods work together, especially with the tortoise binding.

Oh cool! I used to have one of those Kays back when I used to collect them. Nice job. Are those Waverly tuners I see on that one?

Waverly tuners I see on that one?

Clint, nothing but the best is good enough for one of

my

guitars. Of course, this one's not for me, so no, it's not a set of high priced and perfect tuners. It's the cheapo Grovers that I got a a few dozen sets of last year.

Ellie, I like it a lot. I especially like the bridge.

Beautiful Ellie! Makes me want to try some Bubinga. The colours are so rich.