The Smith Family Melobar Guitar - the real story of Melobar from Ted Smith - melobarted@gmail.com

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Melobro Model 17 SOLD

Wish I could keep this one - huge sound and cool gloss black


Melobro Model XVII
Fiber matt laid with resin pounded into the fiber for elongation so the sound travels similar to wood grain but huge bite in sound tone. Note that most Dobros are plywood tops so the top isn't really where the sound is generated.
The Fiber and Resin give huge strength so there is not a sound well but an open sound chamber - the Raybay fan holes are open in the entire upper bout allowing a lot of acoustic sound from the open chamber out. The back is arched like a 335 Gibson to allow a neck through design going from the Neck block through to the tail block for added sustain. On that neck through design suspended in the sound chamber are Rosewood sound baffles thinned and sound tapped for the best added wood tone along with the bite of the fiber and resin tone.
 you can see the wood baffles inside reflecting upward driving the sound out of the chamber over the tone woods. There is another one internally under the cone designed for more of an acoustic flavor on the treble side of the cone.
 
The Neck is solid Mahogany with one lamination at the very bottom of the heel block to avoid wasting half the wood blank. The one problem with this guitar is after I got it built I spotted a lamination scar on the other side of the neck away from the player shown here.
 I'm not going to tear the guitar down and repaint that little area but discount it and sell it as used.
The Head is the NS design with Chrome 102C Grover keys.
Fingerboard is Indian Rosewood from Beard
Quarterman cone from Beard with a #14 Spider
Bone nut / Maple with Ebony capped Saddles
Beard Special 28's for strings
25" scale
New Hardshell Case included
 
Normally I used to ask $1,685 for this set up but with the lamination scar I'm knocking it down $300 to $1,385
There are less than 25 of these guitars in the world - I have over a hundred hours into this one so it's about $6 an hour pay is why I probably will only build one more after this one - and that's a maybe. They are really hard to build but I Love the Tone.
SOLD