Comfort Zone
This issue Alex Bishop considers the advantages – and challenges – of adding comfort bevels to the body of an acoustic guitar
Recently, I saw the conclusion of a special guitar that I was commissioned to build almost a year ago. I was challenged to build what was essentially a traditional fingerstyle guitar using an elegantly figured set of English walnut coupled with a dramatic ‘bearclaw’ Sitka spruce soundboard. This was to be combined with a fingerboard decorated with hand-cut geometric inlays and an asymmetric soundhole rosette. As if that wasn’t enough, I was also encouraged to find some creative ways to make the guitar more ergonomic.
Readers of this column will likely know by now that I have fairly strong feelings towards innovation in hand-built guitar making. Once you have acquired the multitude of technical skills necessary to build a musical instrument – especially something as complex as an acoustic guitar – one is obliged to probe the boundaries of the craft. At the same time, however, it is extremely difficult to play with any classic guitar design without destroying some of the mysterious mojo that made it so iconic in the first place.
With this in mind, one subtle feature relatively unique to the modern hand-built acoustic guitar is the humble comfort bevel. This concept adds a chamfer to one or more corners of the instrument, usually where the picking arm rests on the bass side of the lower bout, eliminating the discomfort caused by the corner of the guitar jabbing into the forearm. This is nothing new to players of many solidbody electric guitars, but for an acoustic guitar the idea provides some serious construction challenges, and as such production guitar companies have only recently started incorporating them into their higher end models.
Up until now I have always used a ‘transitional’ arm bevel, whereby the binding on the corner of the body gradually tapers into and out of a 45-degree bevel, creating a smooth seamless look. The unseen challenge here for the maker is to ensure that the decorative purfling lines either side of the binding separate and merge again without any discernible break or join. A matching veneer is overlaid to the outside to create the effect of the binding flowing into and out of the bevel.
In addition to the arm bevel, I decided on this guitar to include a second bevel, this time at the waist on the bass side of the back. This is essentially an acoustic guitar ‘belly cut’, removing the discomfort of the corners of the guitar poking you in the ribs. Every bevel requires a perfectly fitted internal block, which is very challenging to accurately cut and fit given the undulating curves of the shape of the guitar. I also opted for what I’ve called ‘parallel’ bevels, which require mitring multiple pieces of purfling and binding together, significantly increasing the difficulty of the joinery. The result, however, is a bevel that works equally well for players who place their arms in different areas of the guitar, and something that looks that little bit extra special.
On this particular guitar it wasn’t just bevels that added to the ergonomics of the guitar. As a regular player of guitars with tailpieces and floating bridges, I’ve always been a fan of any system that dispenses with the need for bridge pins, in my opinion the nemeses of anyone who has suffered the ignominy of a string change mid-gig. I opted instead for my own take on a fixed pinless bridge, happily finding that there were no apparent sonic implications, either.
The result is a guitar that looks fairly conventional in the hands of the player, displaying all the familiar features and components you might expect. And yet from the point of view of the player, a whole new level of comfort is attained, with the combination of both arm and body bevels providing new levels of comfort that are easily missed when compared with a regular guitar. It’s a lot of work for a small gain, I admit, but if it contributes towards pushing guitar design into the 21st century, I’m all for it.
“Once you have acquired the technical skills necessary to build a musical instrument, one is obliged to probe the boundaries of the craft”