Harvester 'Goldthwait' baritone and bass.

[Harvester]

beautiful, fat planks of queensland hoop pine - used as roof beams in a sugar warehouse in 1934, recently remilled by a friend of mine.
this stuff behaves like kauri or huon or one of those other more famous, clear, buttery antipodean timbers.

the shapes are drawn freehand, but obviously derived and up-sized from old harmony bobkats that i have hanging from the rafters here.
the padauk necks are set at full width into long mortises for a rigid les paul junior kind of feel.









i can never settle on a headstock shape for a run of guitars - i try and make the rest of the guitar do the 'branding'.



sunbursts.
* with a bit of rustic charm around the edges.











for the bass i made up a brass bridge - with an ebony saddle and a little tailpiece.



both of these guitars were experiments in scales that i haven't used before.

so there's a baritone at 28.5 " scale tuned B to B.
with 2 x P90 ( 'howling goats' from manlius in NY ) and a gotoh 510 bridge.
i wanted to make a bari that has a little more guts - they often seem to be either twangy sort of retromobiles or metal monsters.

the bass has a 32" scale - splitting the difference between my little wooden-bridged Kay basses and the full Fender scale.
i've borrowed it from myself for a few noisy gigs and had a lot of fun with it.

the bass pickup is a P90 sized steel rail from jerry sentell ( with that gorgeous gibson green wire which set the colour scheme for the bass ).





i used little sperzel trimlok tuners for the bass.
these are NOS, ex- Ken Parker factory with unique small buttons on them.
the veneer on the bass headstock is koa ( an old offcut from a hawaii ukulele maker )













the crazy headstock on the baritone is traced from an old Welson bass ( italian sparkle/fetish-guitar brand form the 60s ) ...



thanks guys, AP

[egosheep]

That green magnet wire is

I'm going to do a transparent set like that for my mustang.

[Con-Tiki!]

You seem to have an endless supply of interesting design ideas.
This time, I smacked myself in the forehead over the straight upper pickguard edge.
Beautiful, simple diagonal line.
Love it, perfect choice for an otherwise organic-looking guitar.

Kay vanguard-ish, but more severe.
Yay.

[countertext]

yer killin' me

[Harvester]

thanks fellas.

This time, I smacked myself in the forehead over the straight upper pickguard edge.
Beautiful, simple diagonal line.
Love it, perfect choice for an otherwise organic-looking guitar.

hey thanks, i'm glad you see it that way.
it's a little bit of 'deconstruction' in an otherwise retro, classical, curvaceous design.

i like to think of it as a guy designing guitars at 1:30 am and trying to draw a new pickguard, getting bored and reaching for the one-metre metal rule and drawing straight through the design. ( * ask me how i know ). the fun part is the odd little 'negative space' shapes that are made, like that pointy bit on the upper horn.

and yes, i do overthink lots of these things !

these two were made relatively quickly when i found these planks of hoop pine to give me a few extra instruments to sell before the year's out and to let me try some different tangents, instead of letting the customer orders dictate the look of my work for the whole year. i'll show some of the very specific customer co-designed stuff i've been doing here soon.


AP

[HorseyBoy]

Two more beautiful guitars.
Love the Welson style. There are some cool Welsons on show in an old French gangster comedy called "Ne nous fâchons pas" (from 1966).
This scene should do the trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14UJYk2y6ys" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Actually saw a lot of Welsons in a couple of Paris guitar shops a few months back. Some quirky hardware (bridges, tuners, etc) but the ones I played had nice necks and played pretty well. They must have done well in the French market.

[PoppaPopp]

Harvester fanboy here!

[pacemaker]

Oh. My. Gah. So great!

[Toots]

Fantastic!
As always.

[StevenO]

Oh man, your guitars! I'm always speechless when I see this stuff. Just incredible. Amazing work!

[whatisdust]

Great work! I love the blue backed pickguard! Are they plexi painted on the back?

[LouReedFan]

There isn't a thing about these I don't love.

Your creativity is amazing

[fortytwo]

I'm not diggin' the sperzel's on the bass, but the rest of the bass is gorgeous, I'd really like to play something like that, it's awesome.

And those pickguards.. Damn.. They have that cool vintage vibe going on.

[s_mcsleazy]

reminds me of the harmony bobkat.

[joeld]

Genius. There's always something about your builds that are truly inspiring and I always enjoy seeing what you come up with next!