Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Peter Crossley

New member
Hi all,
just finished binding this one, its an OM sized Florentine cutaway, Purple heart back and sides, Alaskan Bear Claw sitka top..

binding is in ebony, I reckon it sets the purple heart off a treat, 2 types of purfling on the sides its maple/ebony/maple and on the front and back its the reverse E/M/E

Lots of mitres...

sorry about all the pix, but i reckon it turned out alright

Now off to make a neck for it...

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Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Purple heart is so swoony. I wish it always stayed that color.
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Nice. How went the bending of the sides?

really easy, I built a fox bender and used 2 blankets one above one below with the sides srapped in brown paper and then alfoil...

worked a treat,,
I must be getting slightly different Purple heart?? because when I cut the purple heart to split it open, or give a good sanding it turns brown and fairly non-descript, then over a couple of days the purple really starts to come out in the timber.
and I have been using it in builds for at least 10 years in necks, and the purple stays put.. I have heard that some timbers brown off after a while, but I have yet to see it in the stuff I am using, in fact it seems to get more purple..
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Nice - are you leaving it satin or adding a finish?


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Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

that is a beautiful instrument! interesting sound hole rosette
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

I am happy it stays that purple. Most turns a purple-ish brown after awhile, so that makes your builds super awesome.
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Extremely beautiful. Digging the cutaway! What are the tonal properties of purpleheart?
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Extremely beautiful. Digging the cutaway! What are the tonal properties of purpleheart?

Great question!!!

its very glassy when tapped, extremely similar in tap and tone to the best rosewood, I dont know why its not used more.
sits nicely in the upper mids, so seeing as how sitka tend to lean a little to the lower mids, the balance should be really nice, I am hoping for 4 semitones higher than the top.
may still have to do some internal brace tuning to get that, but I wont know until the neck and finish is on..
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Why is there no flipping Crossley electric FR? You need to let go of the hate and do one Peter :banana: just do it.
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Why is there no flipping Crossley electric FR? You need to let go of the hate and do one Peter :banana: just do it.

But it makes no sense....

if a floyd rose advanced musicality I may think about it...

here is an essay I did around 10 years ago.... read it and weep...

The Floyd Rose Story

our story begins in the backwoods of Montana, where a famous groupie of the Wild Mountain Bigfoot Impersonators by the name of Elly Mae Rose had 2 young boys to variuos (or all) members of the aforementioned famous hillbillly band.
These guys were legendary in their exclusive use of the Gretch White Falcon, bought through a Sears a & roebuck catalogue.

Elly Mae's boys were named Floyd and Axel.

Floyd was a shy boy who loved to tinker with the remains of one of the Wild Mountain Bigfoot Impersonators busted White Falcons, after the four inch nail had given way during a particularly wild rendition of "Coming Round The Mountain", and given to the young lad as a plaything.
He was particularly intersested in the strange bulky metal contraption embossed with the name of his favorite guitar player
Bigsby Bigfoot, guitarist and founder of the Wild Mountain Bigfoot Impersonators

Axel on the other hand was a wild young thing who had been born with his forhead completly missing. As a result of this the crows used to alight on the poor chaps nose and pick away at his exposed frontal lobe. To solve this problem, Elly Mae used to wrap a bandana tightly around Axels head to prevent the crows from completely eating what was left of young Axels brain.
Axel ended up joining his cousins travelling circus, the Jim Rose Circus and Freak show and running away to California, where he met up with the child of a union between a San Franciscan Whore and a Gibbon, known as Slash, mainly for his propensity to relieve himself continuously. Slash had very long arms and used to wear his Les paul so low that it actually dragged along the ground, wearing a big part of the bottom edge of the guitar away. Later Gibson produced a signature model based on Slash's original (and useless) Les Paul
However I digress, and this is all about Floyd.

Floyd also worked in the local car wreckers yard, where in his spare time he would attach the Bigsby to various car components.
He had moderate sucess with using the tremolo as a car door handle, a windscreen wiper, and a valve lifter on an old Indian Scout.

One day in the middle of a bad snow storm, the distinctive sound of a light plane in distress came up the valley. The plane crashed with a resounding thud into the snow covered hills, and young Floyd along with a motley crew of yokels went to investigate.
The plane contained the dead bodies of the pilot, a large fat man, a youth of Hispanic appearance, and a clean cut young Ivy Leque type with thick black framed glasses. As Floyd and the yokels were stripping the bodies for valuables, Floyd noticed a rectangular black case next to the Ivy Leque type. Hurridly claiming it as his own, he rushed back to his humble shack and opened the case.
There was an immaculate sunburst Fender Stratocaster.

Floyd had never seen anything quite like this, It was a lot smaller than the Gretch White Falcons, and had not been dribbled or vomited, or had bourbon/tobacco stains all over it like all the other guitars he had seen.

It also had a weird looking tremolo on it, that when played sounded just like that crazy dolphin in the Flipper TV show that Floyd and Axel loved to watch.

Floyd began to tinker with this strange guitar, he pulled it to bits, and re-assembled it, noticing as he did that it must have been designed by a drug addled 1st year mechanical engineer in the midst of an opium induced haze.

Floyd then began adding bits to it, specifically small parts from a Toyota Corolla that had taken a wrong turn into his backwood valley, whereupon the inhabitants were eaten for Thanksgiving and the car was stripped for any useful parts.

Floyd managed to add such a quantity of parts to the tremolo unit that it tripled in weight, required him to carve the body of the Strat with a pocket knife, and had more moving parts than an internal combustion engine.

He sat back and looked at the device, which instantly sprung into a thousand pieces all of which hid behind the couch and under the TV.

After re-assembling the device Floyd lost interest and put the guitar in the corner of his humble shack and went back to playing with his Bigsby.
After another year or so Axel breezed back into town with Slash in tow, and proceeded to drink the town dry of moonshine and terrorise the local goat population.

Slash and Axel went up to Floyds shack, and the Strat attracted the attention of Slash, who promptly stole it.
When Slash and Axel returned to California after exhasting the town of moonshine and availale goats, Slash took the guitar into a recording studio, where it came to the attention of the recording engineer. He had never quite seen anything like this composite tremolo of Toyota parts and asked Slash where he got it. Slash grunted and drew stick figures, which was translated into English by Axel and a Creole half breed drummer, who relayed this to the engineer.

The engineer took the hazardous trip up into the wilds of Montana and convinced Floyd that he could make real Confedarate Dollars out of his invention if he came back to California with him.

Floyd kissed his goat goodbye, packed a bag containing his beloved Bigsby and assorted Toyota parts and went to the big smoke with the recording engineer

The rest is History
 
Re: Building: OM Florentine Cutaway

Man, that purpleheart is such a great color...is it more expensive than other exotics? Is it too heavy, or hard to work with? You usually only see it in solid bodies a neck stripe or occasional fingerboard.
 
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