1930s Oahu 71K (Kay) X-Brace/Roundneck Conversion Jumbo Guitar

This is one of those projects that nearly broke me and, I'm sure, destroyed a ton of faith put in me by the owner. Years ago, I converted one of these guitars for the same fella I did this one for. He then sent me three more to start-in on during pandemic times with the request that he have one with Martin-like bracing and one with its original bracing.

My world has completely changed since they were sent in and I kept getting a little work done and then no work done for ages. Since they arrived, I went from a one-person shop to 24/7 training of a pair of excellent apprentices to a shop that now has 7 of us working all together when we're full-up. The business went from quite busy and backlogged to extremely, overbearingly, world-crushingly busy and backlogged. We have hundreds of instruments upstairs to get to and even with a full staff on hand, we're still piling-up but making decent headway. That's also just the business-side of life -- the family/friends side of life has been an even crazier ride -- but I am not complaining. I am proud of what's going-on around these parts and I am thankful every day for where I am and what I'm doing and all of the great people I get to visit wit and talk with every day.

Suffice to say, this got backburnered because it required my personal time and attention, which is every-day vastly shrinking. I felt terrible about it but I have to make triage decisions every day for musicians up here and when push comes to shove, I choose helping the local instrument needed for a gig that night over passion projects every time (even if said local instrument is no fun). It may not be fair, but it's the truth. This guitar and its fellows were completed in the wee-hours of the night, a couple hours at a time, when I had the quiet to do them. The jobs were too involved for me to be doing them during the day with the hustle-bustle of the world.

All that aside, this guitar began as a squareneck Hawaiian deal. I have converted it to x-bracing (single tonebar) with carbon-fiber-reinforced bracing on the top in a Martin-like scalloped pattern (as much as I could scallop CF material). I lightened the back bracing a ton and reglued all of the back braces as well.

The neck got pulled-off and I reshaped it into a retro V-shape, pulled the board and installed twin carbon-fiber reinforcement rods, and then refretted with medium-bigger fretwire. The bridge got a reglue, the saddle slot got converted into a drop-in slot, and I set it up and let it sit forever adjusting to itself as a guitar. Fortunately for me, it stayed true to itself over that time and so I pulled the neck again (it's just bolted-on per the owner's request and the extension is tacked into place with dots of glue), buffed the neck out a bit, sprayed it with nitro, put it back on, and -- hey presto! -- it's finally done.

I would have probably preferred to use "Jake traditional" lower and rectangular bracing stock but this slightly-taller, scalloped format does sound really good and has a different emphasis (it's more-balanced and less bass-heavy). The guitar is loud and punchy and full with painfully-good sustain and leap out of each note.

Before this goes back home, I may fit an ebony, pyramid-style bridge (the owner's request but one I ignored in favor of the matching, original rosewood one it has on right now).

Other notes? These are like a big 000-size instrument, 12-fret, and have a long-ass 25 7/8" or so scale length. The board on this one is very curvy (7 1/4" radius or so?) which is completely bizarre for an instrument intended for raised-string Hawaiian play. I reused the original bone nut but cut it down and the pins are all original, too. This guitar got the conversion as opposed to the next one in the set (a darker sunburst one) because the solid (they're usually ply on these!) maple back on this one was already half-falling-off when it arrived.

One last note -- when reshaping the heel (which is a bother on these because of the original, odd, rectangular shape) I found a sort-of beautiful knot in the wood hidden under the finish. How about that?

This is one of three old Oahu jumbos I worked on for its owner.