Jeff Traugott comes calling with his Amazing Eight-String Guitar
Earlier tonight, March 31, 1998, Jeff Traugott stopped by and brought his most recent and most unusual guitar. Like all luthiers, there's nothing he likes better than showing off his latest creations!
It happens that I live halfway between Jeff's shop in Santa Cruz, and Oakland, the home of Jack West who ordered this special instrument. That made my house the perfect place for Jeff to deliver his guitar to its eager new owner. (You can find Jack's band on the web at jackwestguitar.com)
This is a unique Traugott guitar. It's an eight-string finger style guitar with a range from a high A to a low B. It's a pretty big deal to coax that great a range from a single rosewood guitar body, but Jeff rose to the occasion.
He built the guitar using a variant of the Novax "fan fret" system. He used a scale that ranges from 23-3/4" on the high A (440) to almost 28" on the low B. The first string is 0.010" and the eighth string is 0.085."
Everything except the body outline is asymmetrical! The intersection of the cross-brace is skewed way over to the treble side, and the peghead cants back at an oblique angle to accommodate the slanted nut.
Here's Jeff sitting in my kitchen with his new baby:
Just look at that crazy guitar! M.C.Escher would be proud of you, Jeff.
Notice how he spaced the tuners to harmonize with the asymmetrical peghead:
(There's a really good picture of this guitar on page 3)
Jeff tells me he spent an ungodly amount of time drawing and redrawing every detail, calculating and hand cutting all those crazy frets.
Back in the living room, Jeff looks on while his guitar gets an enthusiastic tryout:
Here's the payoff:
Is he happy, or what?
You can reach Jeff through his web site TraugottGuitars.com
Our field trip to Traugott Guitars
Mike Gold, Tim Chambers and I dropped in to see Jeff Traugott in his natural habitat. His shop is on of a number of small craft shops in a giant old warehouse building on Mission Street in Santa Cruz, California.
Here we are with Jeff:
From the left: Jeff, me, Tim, and Mike.
Jeff wears his helmet and air filter hood most of the time to avoid the nasty tropical hardwood dust:
Here he's cleaning up the glue as he clamps the neck and end blocks to the sides of his next guitar. Jeff believes it's important to do this operation in the mold so that the blocks are held rigidly square to the top.
Jeff jams the flexible rods in place in his "go-bar" deck as he clamps the braces to the top of a cutaway guitar. He's clamping the arched braces to a concave form so that the top will have a slight "dome" shape. This slight arched top shape will help resist deformation from the pull of the strings.
Jeff makes about 15 guitars a year so he always has several at different stages of production. Here's a Brazilian rosewood body fresh from the lacquer spray booth.
Speaking of Brazilian rosewood, this is a picture of Jeff showing off a plank of the holy grail: perfectly quarter sawn Brazilian, just about the darkest and most dense we've ever seen:
Click here to see a fabulous piece of Brazilian rosewood made into a Jeff Traugott baritone guitar.
Stacked up against the window separating the assembly room and his office, we can see the tops and backs for all the guitars Jeff will make by the end of the year:
In these stacks are the materials for 1999's Traugott guitars:
Let's take one more look at that special 8 string guitar:
Nothing like a professional photograph, eh?
Well, time to leave. Jeff's dad just dropped in to pick him up for dinner:
Guess he thinks Jeff is pretty cool, too!
You can reach Jeff through his web site TraugottGuitars.com