Building a Baroque Guitar is a fascinating journey into history and craftsmanship. As a luthier, I’ve always been drawn to the unique sound and delicate beauty of these instruments. This article details the process of constructing a baroque guitar, emphasizing the techniques and materials that contribute to its distinctive character.
The foundation of any fine instrument lies in the selection of wood. I source my wood in rough billets, allowing me to resaw it to ensure perfectly quartersawn grain. Quartersawn wood is crucial for stability, preventing twisting or warping over time. For this baroque guitar, I’m using figured maple, acquired from an Ohio lumberyard three decades ago and meticulously stored in a low-humidity environment. Maintaining controlled humidity in both my workshop and wood storage is paramount, monitored with certified hygrometers.
For luthiers interested in crafting their own baroque guitars, detailed plans are invaluable. Builders can find technical drawings, such as the R.E. Brune measurement and John Morgan drawing of a baroque guitar believed to have belonged to Marie Antoinette, at resources like the Guild of American Luthiers (GAL) plan archive. This particular plan features a 68.8cm scale length, five double courses, nine tied frets, and a highly vaulted back. Further information and a reduced plan can be found in the Guild of American Luthiers’ “Big Red Book #2,” a treasure trove of knowledge for instrument makers. The Guild’s publications are highly recommended for any serious luthier’s library, offering a wealth of articles and insights into instrument building.
Figured maple, also known as fiddle-back, tiger-stripe, or flame maple, is my preferred choice for baroque guitar backs and sides. The selected billet is carefully sliced into thin sections to achieve quartersawn orientation. Using wood from the same billet for all parts, except the soundboard and bridge, ensures consistency in appearance and tonal properties. For soundboards, I exclusively use picea abies, commonly known as German spruce, Norway spruce, or violin spruce. This spruce variety has been the traditional choice for European violin, lute, and guitar makers for centuries. Its specific stiffness is ideal for producing the bright, resonant tone with rich harmonics characteristic of lightly-strung instruments like the baroque guitar. Other spruce types might be suitable for steel-string or classical guitars but lack the nuanced response needed for baroque instruments.
The sliced wood is then processed through a homemade thickness sander to reduce it to approximately 3/32 of an inch (2mm). Final thicknessing and smoothing are achieved through hand-sanding. The drum sander utilizes a rotating sandpaper-covered drum to precisely thin the wood as it passes through. The adjustable white table underneath allows for fine-tuning the final thickness. The dust cover, removed in this image for clarity, normally encloses the sanding drum, and a shop vacuum system captures about 99% of the sawdust, maintaining a cleaner working environment.
Shaping the thin sides involves a homemade bending iron. This tool consists of a section of four-inch iron pipe with an internal heating element and a candy thermometer to monitor the temperature. Applying slight moisture to the wood allows the heat to penetrate the cells, making the wood pliable enough to bend into the desired curves permanently. The wood quickly dries and retains its new shape. While the sides shown in the photograph are for a 13th-century citole, an early form of guitar, the bending technique is the same for baroque guitars. Historically, luthiers often crafted their own tools, and I followed this tradition, building most of my clamps and tools. While lutherie supply houses now offer a comprehensive range of tools, the problem-solving inherent in tool building significantly contributed to developing essential lutherie skills. For aspiring luthiers, consider the invaluable learning opportunity that comes with crafting your own tools; relying solely on purchased tools might mean missing out on this crucial aspect of skill development.
Once bent, the sides are secured within a mold. This mold maintains the precise shape of the guitar body, ensuring accurate alignment when the neck and back are glued in place. The mold is essential for achieving the correct structural integrity and overall shape of the baroque guitar.
The joint connecting the neck and pegbox is a critical element of baroque guitar construction. A modern classical guitar-style joint would be unsuitable as it would be visible on the sides of the pegbox, disrupting the historical aesthetic. Therefore, I employ traditional jointing methods, mirroring the techniques used by historical makers. These methods, refined over centuries of experience, offer sound structural solutions and historical accuracy. The following images showcase the completed joint.
The pegbox is constructed using a layered approach, alternating ebony and figured maple. This layered construction provides both visual appeal and structural strength. The completed pegbox is then carefully fitted to the neck joint, ensuring a seamless and robust connection.
This image reveals the intricately carved pegbox, ready for the peg holes to be drilled. The carving adds an element of artistry and refinement to the instrument’s headstock, reflecting the decorative aesthetics of baroque guitars.
The back is glued to the sides using numerous cam clamps, applying gentle and even pressure. Excessive clamping pressure can lead to a “starved joint,” where too much glue is squeezed out, weakening the bond. Maintaining the correct pressure is crucial for a strong and resonant instrument.
For detailed work like crafting the bridge mustachios, I built a small router base from wood. This custom base clamps onto a Dremel tool and, in turn, is clamped to a table. A router bit extends through the base, creating a miniature router setup ideal for intricate shaping. The next image demonstrates this setup in use.
Creating symmetrical bridge mustachios requires precision. To achieve this, I sandwiched two thin pieces of ebony together, placed atop a thin maple support piece, and routed all three simultaneously using the miniature router setup. This ensures identical shapes for both mustachios. After routing the basic shape, small files are used to refine the edges and achieve a cleaner, more polished finish.
The unfinished mustachio rests beside the bridge in this photograph, illustrating the components before assembly. The bridge is crafted from Swiss pearwood with a thin ebony cap. The pearwood will be dyed black to match the ebony accents. At this stage, nothing is yet glued, allowing for adjustments and final fitting.
After dyeing the pearwood bridge black and gluing it to the soundboard, the mustachio ends are attached. To enhance their visual appeal and create a more organic look, I added subtle relief carving to the mustachios. This carving detail contributes to the overall aesthetic refinement of the baroque guitar.
This close-up showcases the finished mustachio endpiece. All carving was meticulously done using a number 11 Exacto blade. New blades are often not sharp enough for this level of detail, so I honed the blade edges on a leather strop charged with polishing compound, a technique reminiscent of traditional barber’s razor sharpening.
The rosette, a decorative soundhole inlay, is carved in two layers of Swiss pearwood. The first layer is carved with the primary design and then glued to a thin, flat pearwood plate, with the grain oriented perpendicularly for added strength. The second pearwood layer is then carved with the secondary design. I opted for this earlier rosette design rather than the more common inverted “wedding cake” style, with its multiple paper layers extending into the instrument. My choice was driven by both durability concerns, as I’ve seen paper rosettes damaged by players, and a desire for a less ubiquitous design.
Finally, a piece of stiff parchment paper is glued to the underside of the two pearwood layers. The tertiary design is then carved into this paper layer. A combination of a number 11 Exacto blade and specialized tools are used for the intricate carving.
For certain rosette details, thin brass tubing, with its end ground into a half-round shape, is used as a punch. Sharpening the brass tubing on a stone creates a precise cutting tool, enabling cleaner and more accurate half-round cuts in the parchment paper than achievable with a knife alone.
The completed soundboard, with the rosette glued in place and the bridge attached, is shown here. For a more in-depth exploration of rosette carving techniques, refer to dedicated resources on baroque guitar rosette carving.
To create tuning pegs, I built a miniature pattern follower for my small Unimat metal lathe. The pattern follower’s angle is precisely set to match the taper of the violin peg reamer that will be used to prepare the pegholes in the pegbox. This ensures a perfect fit and smooth turning action for the pegs.
The flat side of the tuning pegs is created by holding the rounded peg against a disc sander. The surface is then refined with fine sandpaper and polished using a soft cloth, resulting in a smooth and functional peg surface.
Curved peg sides are shaped by holding the peg against a sanding drum. This technique allows for controlled shaping of the peg’s curved surfaces, contributing to the overall ergonomic design of the tuning pegs.
The completed guitar “in the white,” meaning unfinished and awaiting varnish, is pictured here. Solid ebony bindings are used around both the back and soundboard edges. These bindings serve a protective function, preventing dents and damage to the instrument’s edges. The ledges for the ebony bindings are cut by hand using a violin maker’s purfling knife. Due to the pronounced arch of the back, a small router jig would not provide the necessary precision for cutting the binding channels.
Fitting the tuning pegs is a crucial step. While ebony is often used for pegs, it is not ideal due to its tendency to go out of round and slip in the pegholes. This is caused by ebony’s high ratio of tangential to radial shrinkage – it shrinks significantly more in one direction than the other. Historically, makers favored fruitwoods, which have a lower T/R ratio and are less prone to distortion. I use European plum wood for my pegs. Well-fitted, slender pegs offer a direct one-to-one tuning ratio, making tuning quick and effortless. The smaller diameter also facilitates easier tuning. Wooden pegs are significantly lighter than metal tuning machines, improving the instrument’s balance and ease of handling. Metal tuning gears are, in my opinion, not an improvement on a baroque guitar. Furthermore, wooden pegs are aesthetically more appropriate. The negative reputation sometimes associated with wooden pegs often stems from makers using overly thick ebony pegs.
The back and sides of this baroque guitar are book-matched figured maple. I chose a dark red violin-style varnish to complement the figured maple. For a subsequent baroque guitar, I used black ebony and white holly, opting for a clear finish to showcase these contrasting woods. This guitar is shown here during its construction phase.
A detailed view of the finished rosette. While inspired by historical rosettes, this design is not an exact replica, but rather an interpretation. The strings used on baroque guitars are traditionally made from gut, often referred to as catgut but actually made from lamb intestine. Gut strings produce a brighter, more percussive sound than nylon strings, aligning with the historical sound of these instruments. Using nylon strings would be a compromise in achieving authentic baroque tone. This particular guitar is strung without bourdons, or bass strings, and uses the tuning specified by Gaspar Sanz: e’e’ bb gg d’d’ aa (from highest to lowest). This is a re-entrant tuning, where the d’ string is pitched higher than the a and g strings. Some composers did request a bourdon (bass string) with the d, resulting in a tuning of e’e’ bb gg dd’ aa, with the bass d string positioned inside. High-quality gut strings are available from various reputable sources specializing in historical instrument strings. Resources like online lute string guides can provide further information on sourcing gut strings.