Zeke Whitfeld, Acoustic Guitar (Student)

For my HSC Major Project, I produced an acoustic guitar. This acoustic guitar has a King-Billy pine soundboard with a Tasmanian blackwood back and sides. The Tas blackwood hand shaped neck accompanied by a mulga fretboard, is connected to the body with a tapered dovetail joint. I was inspired by modern artists John Mayor and Ed Sheeran. Its purpose is to be a concert performance guitar with deep bass and treble enhancement. This sound will cater for music genres ranging from jazz to modern pop music. The guitar consists of features such as a Tusq saddle and a hot pipe shaped cutaway. Various processes involved traditional techniques such as hand shaping the neck radius and hot pipe bending the body's sides. With a hand carved live top soundboard, and Tas sassafras binding for aesthetic and protection purposes, this guitar has an increased sound performance that is designed to play louder than average when unplugged. This sound board, along with the back, was deliberately booked matched in the centre, with the grain direction running from bottom to top to increase sound quality. My Design process consisted of producing multiple CAD models virtually, and producing a full scale mockup of each individual process. Each process was performed from scratch, mostly by hand and manual labour. The final product was covered with several coats of wipe on polyurethane to enhance the materials fiddleback properties. Photos: Alvin Theseira Teacher: Ben Percy School: NBSC Freshwater Senior Campus

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