John Whiteside

Flamed Cherry Guitar

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Pictured is my most recently completed guitar, number 3. It is a steel-string, 12-fret 000 guitar, meaning it is designed to sound loud, clear, and fast — in other words, a finger picker’s guitar. I am happy to report, both from my own experience and that of my test players, that it is. The top is Sitka spruce, which is stiffer than the soft Englemann spruce I used on numbers 1 and 2, and gives, as expected, a punchier sound.

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The sides and back are flamed (figured) cherry. I found some quartersawn, flamed cherry boards at Highland Hardwoods and resawed them, saving a small fortune as compared to ordering through the lutherie supply houses. Cherry is an unusual, but not unheard of, choice for a guitar. I wanted to try cherry because it is not a rare, endangered, or exotic species and also because it is my favorite wood for furniture making. The flame figure made it impossible to plane without tearout, so I resorted to buying a thicknessing sander, which has become one of the favorite tools in my shop. The neck is cherry. The black fingerboard, binding, and headplate are all ebony.

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The pattern on the headplate is the constellation Scorpio, the idea being to personalize all my guitars with the Zodiac constellation of whomever the guitar is made for. The different sized mother-of-pearl dots reflect the magnitudes of the stars in the constellation.

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Guitars now take me about 200 hours to build. In hopes of speeding things up, I have started to make several simultaneously, which saves on setup time. I am currently working on two more cherry guitars, one like this with a stiff Sitka spruce top, the other with a soft Alpine spruce top. In theory the first will sound best playing Bluegrass, the other more mellow for soft, mournful love ballads.