I like mahogany

Image from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MahoganyThe two most common traditional tonewoods for the back/sides of guitars are mahogany and rosewood (with nods to maple, koa, walnut, etc). Typically, rosewood was the more premium and prized of the two; for example, Martin's flagship models like the D-28 and D-45 are rosewood, compared to the "entry-level" D-18. I've gone through my share of guitars, and I expect to go through many more, and I'm coming to realize that I'm a mahogany guy.

Two koa guitars have come and gone (Taylor 414K and Larrivée parlour in koa), three rosewood guitars are in new homes (1978 Larrivée L-11, Taylor 420R, Collings OM2HA), and a maple guitar (1977 Taylor 915) has moved on. Of course, a fair share of mahogany guitars have been traded/sold away (1995 Larrivée LS-05, 1990 Lowden S7c, 1976 Guild D-40SB, a Collings D1VSB, a 12-string Takamine N-10, Guild 12-string....I think it was an F-212 or similar) as well, but all of the guitars that are still around, except for one, are mahogany.

(read more about these guitars, and others, in my in-progress personal guitar history: Part 1 | Part 2)

I'm no good at describing tone, but there's something about the warmth and clarity of mahogany suit me. That doesn't mean I've totally sworn off other tonewoods, but if I had to wager on it, the next one will be mahogany!

Maybe next time we'll talk about sitka vs. adirondack spruce tops...Hint: I like both.

Photo of the week - July 5, 2011

Longwood Gardens. Nikon 105mm VR micro @ f/5.6, 1/2000, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

My bucket list

This has been a good year for new experiences. I learned how to develop and print film/photos in a darkroom, went ziplining in Maui and drove a rental car up the dirt road to the top of Mauna Kea, developed a new website on with some colleagues, and hand-built an acoustic guitar. So, what's left on my bucket list?

• Do RAGBRAI.
• Follow the Tour de France (live, in person, in a camper parked by the side of the road); the Tour of California (or the Giro d'Italia or Vuelta a España) would be fun, too.
• Visit all of the National Parks; here's a list of the ones I've hit so far.
• Go to a bluegrass festival (update: Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival 2013)
• Spend some quality time with a pre-war Martin D-28 (or D-18).
• Build another guitar.

The Weight - Gillian Welch and friends

Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, and Old Crow Medicine Show play "The Weight".

Photo of the week - June 28, 2011

At the 2011 Philadelphia International Championship. Nikon 70-300mm VR @ f/5.6, 1/4000, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Digital film...I'd pay good money for this

Image from wired.comThis is an interesting idea (just to be clear, this isn't a real product; it's a concept that a designer has come up with): an insert that is shaped like a canister and film that would contain a digital sensor and memory. See the description of this concept on wired.com.

I'd totally buy something with similar functionality. What I don't like about digital SLRs is that they have a limited lifecycle as technology evolves (or at least they are marketed that way), they are overly complex, and they don't facilitate the connection with the user in the same way as older film/mechanical cameras do. As someone who fetishizes objects, I love the idea of a single camera body that the photographer can use for years/decades. It would be fantastic to be able to shoot with my FM3a, and have the ability to update the digital innards periodically rather than move from generation to generation of Nikon digital camera bodies. Just let me set the exposure manually with knobs/dials and capture high quality RAW files, and I'll be happy.

Fitting necks at Martin

What a cool job: being a neck-fitter at Martin!
(this is an older article from the New York Times, but I just ran across it today)

Photo credit: Jane Therese/The New York Times

Great photos of the Santa Cruz Guitar Company

I just ran across this article and photo spread in Wired Magazine featuring Santa Cruz guitars. The photos are beautiful and it's a great write up of how Richard Hoover and the crew at SCGC approach their craft. If they called and offered me a job (doing anything associated with their company) I'd take it in a heartbeat. To live on the California coast and build guitars...how perfect would that be?

Photo credit: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

A trip to heaven

I've been in Philadelphia for ten years now, and I'm embarrassed to admit that today was my first visit to Vintage Instruments, which is a few blocks south of City Hall on Broad Street. When Acoustic Roots was in Bryn Mawr I didn't have much of a reason to go into the city to play guitars, but it's been gone for two and a half years now and I haven't found a new place to get my fix.

I was mainly interested in trying a set of Gibsons: a mahogany-topped "banner" 1944 J-45, a 1949 J-45, and a 1953 SJ. Unfortunately (for me, not for its new owner), the SJ had recently sold, so I went back and forth between the two J-45s for an hour or so. I had a clear perference for the '44; it was warm, with a good rumble in the bass, and had even tone across all the strings. It sported a huge neck; I guess this is the (in)famous wartime "baseball bat" neck that guitars of this era are known for. I tend to like big necks on my guitars, but this was a handful.

Even though I didn't go down there to play Martins, I couldn't help but give a trio of dreadnoughts a go: a 1948 D-18, a '49 D-18, and a '64 D-28. I love my D-18GE, with is loosely modeled after a 1934 D-18. The big winner of the day was the '49 D-18. It had a shadow of a second pickguard and a replaced bridge made from ebony (rather than rosewood); based on the playwear and new bridge, I suspected it was played by a lefty for many years. But it's back as a right-handed guitar and was warm and punchy like a good D-18 should be. Anyone have a spare $7.5k so I can bring the '49 D-18 home with me?

1949 D-18...Photo credit: www.vintage-instruments.com (click to enlarge the image)

Photo of the week - June 21, 2011

The 2011 Philadelphia International Championship. Nikon 135mm  DC @ f/2, 1/8000, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro. See more images from the race here.

Lyle Lovett on Collings

I know, I've been sharing lots of Collings videos recently. But I couldn't help myself with one more....Lyle Lovett talks about Collings and plays a tune.

Photo of the week - June 14, 2011

A cityscape in Manayunk. Nikon 70-300mm @ f/4.5, 1/2500, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

The Collings sunburst...drool

It's no secret that I love Collings guitars...especially the sunburst variety. I've loved sunbursts ever since my first "good" guitar, a 1976 Guild D-40SB that I bought at the little music store in Grinnell, Iowa, my senior year in college. That Guild has since moved on, but I still dig a good sunburst. And no one does 'em like Collings.

Top Jobs in an Alternate Universe

It's starting to sink in that I'm going to be a social psychology professor at a liberal arts college for the next 30 years (pending the performance of my retirement fund). Being on sabbatical this last year, after getting tenure, has allowed me to fantasize about what I'd be doing in an alternate universe. Of course, this list does not account for low pay, job (in)security, or physical danger...It's what I would want to do, not what would be practical/safe:

• Documentary photographer or photojournalist. How amazing would it have been to be in Egypt this spring?
• Photographer for professional cycling...You know, those guys that hang off the back of motorcycles zooming up and down the Alps with four cameras around their necks.
• Graphic designer or web development, although then I'd be sitting in front of a computer even more than I do now, if that's even possible.
• Luthier...I'm surprised how much I enjoyed the course I took at the Vermont School of Lutherie. I knew I'd like the class overall but didn't anticipate how much the actual work would suit me. Spending time carving braces and tap-tuning tops would be fantastic.
• I admittedly have no experience in business, but running a shop specializing in vintage and boutique acoustic guitars would be a lot of fun. At least the part about hanging out with cool guitars would be fun; the running a business doesn't sound particularly appealing.
• Design and constuction at Legoland. Enough said.
• Be the guy to invent the next Facebook-like megahit, although I'd sell the startup once it was worth only 10 million and retire to travel, do photography, and build guitars.

The takehome message here is that I'm going to make a great retiree.

Photo of the week - June 7, 2011

The 2011 Philadelphia International Championship. Nikon 70-300mm @ f/4.5, 1/160, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro. See more images from the race here.

Back!

In my last post I apologized for not being around much, so I won't go into that again. I will say that ScienceOfRelationships has been seeing some really good growth; it's fun to see a site take off. We've got some really interesting articles posted there, so check it out.

I haven't shot much since I got back from Vermont, but for those of you interested in cycling, yesterday was the Philadelphia International Championship, and Jen and I spend the day in Manayunk watching the race. I have some good pictures I'll be posting soon, with the hopes of reviving the Photo of the Week. If you want a sneak peak, see the album here.

Nikon D90 + 70-300mm VR lensI took two telephoto lenses to the race along with my beloved Tokina 11-16mm, a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR and a 135mm f/2 DC (both Nikon), not knowing which would work the best. Last year I used the 85mm f/1.4, which didn't give quite the reach I wanted. I started with the 70-300mm and found that I couldn't get my shutter speed fast enough to really freeze the action (i.e., too much blur), at least at a low ISO. So I switched over to 135mm, which is really more of a portrait lens. Although I got a few good shots with the 135mm, it doesn't focus fast enough for action sports, so I went back to the 70-300mm but kicked the ISO up. This worked pretty well, and I got some good images this way. But now I see why the 70-200mm f/2.8 is so valuable; it would have been perfect for yesterday. I've got a year to save up for one before the 2012 race!

In addition to going to the bike race in Philadelphia yesterday, we also spent some time in the city looking at condos. Living in the city would be an interesting change of pace, but I don't know whether there's enough to do in Philadelphia to make it worth it. Philly seems to have all of the hassles of a city (traffic, parking, noise, grime) without any of the charms or things to do compared to cities I've spent time in (Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, the Twin Cities). I'd still like to move to Madison, but of course I've only spent time there in the summer.

Other stuff going on: I'm looking forward to today's WWDC announcements to see what new tricks Apple as up it's sleeve. I'm especially interesting in hearing about iTunes/iCloud, but I'm not confident it will be a solution for someone like me with a massive music library (~60k songs) that were not purchased from iTunes. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've been playing with the Google Music beta over the last few days, but it seems like it has limited utility for me because (a) it doesn't support lossless file formats, which make up 2/3rds of my library, and (b) there's no iOS playback; just Android.

I'm also very curious to see if rumors about a robust network file sharing/sync solution pan out. I love dropbox.com, and I'm interested to see if Apple could best this great service.

We just got tickets to see the Jayhawks at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside this fall. It's great that one of my favorite bands is back together and touring, and they are supposed to have a new studio album coming as well. That, in addition to a new album from Gillian Welch, will make for a good summer of music.

Slacker

Yes, I know I haven't posted anything is a while....I've been socked by the flu and whatever energy I've had has gone into getting geared up for summer research, which started this week.

I do have five rolls of film I need to develop; hopefully I'll be able to go down to Project Basho to do that in the next week or two. There are a couple of rolls from a John Mellencamp concert, and three rolls from the Alejandro Escovedo/Jesse Malin show at World Cafe.

I'm glad my birthday is coming up...

It will take some willpower not to want one of these for my birthday:

The Fuji X100

Photo of the week - May 3, 2011

Longwood Gardens in the melting snow. Nikon 10.5mm fisheye DX @ f/8, 1/8000, on a Nikon D90. Converted with Nik Silver Efex Pro.

The public debut of the "chubby little bear"

I've been living with my new guitar for about three weeks (the same amount of time it took it took to build it), and I've nicknamed it the "chubby little bear." Last night was my first opportunity to play it with other folks (thanks JD!), and it kept up just fine. Even though it's a "small" guitar, I think it was probably louder than the Sigma and Taylor dreadnoughts in the circle. It definitely had plenty of bass "whomp," but it's not muddy and each string has nice definition. The shorter scale makes it easy to play, although I'm still getting used to the 12-fret body.

A few people have asked me if it's my "favorite" guitar now. It certainly compares well to my others (a Martin and Collings), but has it's own unique voice. It sounds different, but just as good, as expensive small-shop (and factory) instruments. Guitars are like children (so I've heard)-- they each are different and you love them all equally. I don't have favorites, but I do feel really connected to this instrument.

The bottom line is that if you use quality materials, plan the design with care, and are attentive to the construction details, it doesn't take a pro to build a really fantastic sounding guitar. I'm looking forward getting to know #1 more in the months and years to come and to building #2 eventually!