The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #154330   Message #3620218
Posted By: Will Fly
19-Apr-14 - 04:24 AM
Thread Name: Just one more guitar - Chisholm 'No. 46'
Subject: Just one more guitar - Chisholm 'No. 46'
About a year ago, I decided - as you do - to get another guitar. I found an old DeArmond electric guitar pickup - built to go on the soundhole of an acoustic instrument and bought by me in 1968 - in a drawer. As I remembered, it was a great pickup in its day - I had it on a '64 Epiphone Texcan for years - and decided I'd have a guitar built around it.

So, instead of frittering my gig money away on fast women and slow horses as per usual, I set to work on the specification and took my pennies into the local bank. Here's what I wanted:

1. Hollow body, electric - 70cm deep - almost a "Verithin"
2. Mid-jumbo shape with single cutaway, like my Martin
3. Flat, acoustic-style fretboard - 21 frets
4. Lowden-style, pegless bridge
5. Hard gold frets
6. Gotoh tuners
7. Mother-of-pearl fret markers
8. Bone nut and saddle
9. DeArmond pickup

I took this spec to my old mate and luthier, Ian Chisholm, in Ditchling, and left the choice of woods to him.

Anyway, after some delays in getting started, for various reasons, Ian set to work. He chose maple for the back and sides, cedar for the top, mahogany for the neck, walnut for the headstock fascia and soundhole reinforcement, rosewood for the bridge, and lining and decoration in ebony. I took charge of it about 3 weeks ago and played it in at a band gig last week. It sounds great for jazz, blues, folky fingerpicking, ragtime, etc. - pick of fingers.

If you want to hear it in action - just a demo when I first got it - you can see and hear it at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9A32smZduw

And if you want to know some more about Ian Chisholm's guitar making (shameless promotion for a good friend), you can read all about him here:

http://www.ianchisholm.co.uk/