No. 030

Welcome back to Pappenfüs Guitars. My name is Jeremy and today I have a guitar you're going to want to check out. Guitar No. 030 was a prototype that was meant to be simple. However, we all know that's a lot harder to do than it sounds. So let's begin with the basics, and after the sound demo, I'll get into the details of what makes this a prototype. This guitar falls into my model 3 category with a lower bout width of 14 and 5/8 of an inch or 372 mm. This guitar is slightly larger than a double O; the scale length of this guitar is 25.4 in; it aligns with the body at the 12th fret. The neck is a Honduran mahogany that was hand-carved to a very comfortable C profile, and a 1 and 3/4 in nut width. There is a dual action truss rod accessible from the sound hole. I chose to use East Indian Rosewood for the back and sides. The back inlay is where I began to go off script. Koa, Maple, and Padauk, it's probably my most favorite color combination at the moment. On the side we have a perfectly sized sound port to act as a personal monitor for the player. Moving on to the front we have a salvage Western red cedar that's been in my wood stash since 2010. The active nature of this top while I was working with it is one of the factors that drove me to do a little extra to make this guitar even more special. The rosette features a piece of hand relief carved Maple wrapped around an East Indian Rosewood inner ring. On the cutaway, a small carpenter knot inlay helps this guitar try to be a Florentine living in a Venetian world. Let's not forget the hand-carved ebony bridge matched to an ebony fingerboard with that striking Padauk on the 12th fret, all leading up to a headstock that brings all these elements together. These subtle carvings and wood combinations are meant to be a celebration of how light can interact with this instrument. Currently this guitar has no pickup, but one can easily be added if the next owner so chooses. And with that let's sit back and enjoy a couple sound samples by the talented Tim Torgerson.

So what makes this guitar a prototype? I wanted to play with ergonomics, so I chose to explore variations of the Manzer wedge. Simply put, the Manzer wedge narrows the upper portion of the guitar while keeping the lower at full depth. This creates a wedge which allows the guitar to sit more comfortably against the player's body and helps reduce shoulder fatigue. On that premises, I played with the back profile to move the deepest part of the guitar back closer to the center of the instrument. Utilizing a cylindrical back, I transition the radius from a 9 ft in the middle to a 7ft towards the outer edge. By shifting where the back is placed within this profile you can see how it can create a stable platform to rest against the player's body. It also moves the deepest part of the instrument back towards the center of the guitar. To be clear, this is still a Manzer wedge, I just tweaked it a bit to aid in the playability of this guitar. If it creates a tonal difference, only time and numbers will be able to tell.

So that was Guitar No. 030 from Pappenfüs Guitars. Share your thoughts in the comments below - will this change actually make a difference, or is it just another way to complicate an already complex system that is the acoustic guitar? I hope you enjoyed this video; hit like and subscribe below for future releases. And from Northwest Montana this is Pappenfüs Guitars, thank you for watching and I'll catch you next time.