Custom College Class Ring, My "one Of" Custom Ron Clarke 12-string Arrived! ?
Q: The custom 12-string I mentioned a week or so ago here arrived last Friday. It
is a totally unique instrument made by luthier Ron Clarke of San Diego. Ron
also teaches a guitar construction class at a college and this particular
instrument was made as a demo for the class.
The guitar is a concert sized instrument. The lower bout measures 16 3/8" and
the upper bout is 12 3/8". The deepest part of the body measures 4 3/4". The
scale length is 24 3/4" and the fingerboard width at the nut is a rather narrow
1 3/4".
A:This is one of the most attractive guitars that I have ever seen. It has
several different woods that all seem to somehow come together cohesively. The
top is a master grade Engleman spruce and the body is a beautiful very figured
mahogany. There is a wedge of purple heart wood in the middle of the back that
is 3" wide at the end of the lower bout and narrows down to about 1/2" wide at
the heel. Ron added the purple heart to brighten up the sound, but it is also
a very beautiful piece of wood. The body binding is curly maple that really
looks nice against the figured mahogany. The mahogany figure is unlike any
that I have seen before with large dark and light streaks running along the
body lengthwise. There is a 7 ply black and white inlaid stripe running around
the top on the inside of the maple binding and a similar 3 ply stripe on the
bottom. The fingerboard and bridge are ebony and the neck is laminated with
two pieces of mahogany and a 1/2" strip of curly koa in the middle. The
headstock is mahogany with a highly figured curly koa overlay on the front and
a beautiful burled walnut overlay on the back. The heel cap is also of this
nice burled walnut. The headstock is curved on each side (not a simple
rectangular one) and has a nice "S" shaped curve on the end. The luthier's
name "Clarke" is nicely inlaid with beautiful abalone in the middle of the
headstock between the strings. The soundhole has two rings of 7 ply
black/white inlay with a narrow ring of abalone between them. The fingerboard
inlay consists of small abalone moons depicting the phases from full moon to a
tiny sliver of moon. There is a mother-of-pearl wedge on the fingerboard
running diagonally through the topmost 4 frets (the frets are split) with a
small opal at the end of the wedge. This represents a shooting star. The
guitar has gold Schaller tuners. The top braces and the neck are graphite
reinforced and there is an adjustable truss rod. The guitar came in a new TKL
arched top case that is the vintage look yellow/brown vinyl that looks like the
old tweed cases.
The guitar does have a few minor, but noticeable, cosmetic flaws on it. This
is something that I have come to expect on a guitar that is totally hand made
by one person that makes very few instruments. If you insist on cosmetic
perfection, then you need to purchase one of the manufactured "cookie-cutter"
guitars made by the companies that produce hundreds or thousands of instruments
every year. If you do that, you will end up spending more money for that
privilege than I did for this wonderful, unique instrument, and you will end up
with a decent instrument that hundreds of other guitarists also own. Either
that, or you need to purchase a guitar from one of the several wonderful
individual luthiers that have been honing their craft for many years, and again
spend much more money and often have to wait for many months or even years.
Anyway, this guitar has a few very small places where there is some light
colored material in the joint between the surfaces where two different woods
join together. Perhaps a filler of some kind. Some of that I can probably
remove, if there is no finish over the area.
Ron has been building guitars for about 8 years professionally and has
completed somewhere around 40 instruments, both flat tops and archtops.
This was not an instrument that was made to my specs, but one that was already
made that I discovered for sale. The slightly narrower than typical
fingerboard is a little difficult to get used to, but I am rapidly figuring out
how to deal with it. More of a problem for me is the fact that I haven't owned
or played a 12-string at length for almost 30 years and my 12-string technique
is sorely lacking. Much of my 6-string repertoire does not adapt well to a
12-string. I will need to re-discover the tricks necessary to bring out the
differences that a 12 has that make it a totally different instrument from a 6.
I do not want to simply play the same stuff on this guitar that I do on a 6
string.
The sound is wonderful. I have briefly played many 12-strings over the years
and the only ones that I can recall having a better sound than this one have
been Breedloves. I have lusted after a Breedlove 12-string for years, but they
simply are too expensive for me to justify for what is likely to be a
speciality instrument and not one played on a daily basis. The sound is *very*
well balanced from string to string and all of the notes ring out clearly and
distinctly, much like what I hear in the Breedloves I played. The bottom end
of the sound spectrum is quite full and loud, but not boomy, which suprised me
somewhat since this is a fairly small guitar with light strings. The sustain
is quite long, but probably not as long as the Breedloves. The sound is very
complex, with lots of