Nelson Palen, Builder of Palen Guitars

NEW!!  Read the article about luthier Nelson Palen
published in the Chanute Tribune.

Artistic Woodcrafts II - This was Nelson Palen's website before he started building Palen Archtop Guitars. Before Nelson made Palen archtops, he had been making decorative wooden bowls as shown here for approx. 12 years. His woodworking skills and attention to detail began here and from his ancestry. His dad, Benedict Palen, has been doing woodwork since the 1930's starting out with a pedal-powered lathe. His dad's enterprise, Artistic Woodcrafts started with a Shopsmith and then homebuilt a heavy-duty lathe capable of swinging up to 32" diameter blanks.. The blanks for the bowls are made up of segmented rings stacked and glued. Various wood species, domestic and foreign are used. Examples are walnut, white gum, padauk, wenge, mahogany etc. Nelson Palen added a CNC desktop mill in 1998 that can be mounted on the lathe for engraving. The spindle is slowly rotated by computer command with approx. 1000:1 reduction. The basic turning operation is done with conventional hand tools.

Shown below are Nelson Palen's first 3 archtop Palen Guitars. The tone and consistency were amazing right from the beginning.

Nelson Palen started building his acoustic archtop Palen Guitar in November, 1998 and finished it the last week in June, 1999. He read the book and viewed the 6-hour video by Bob Benedetto, who has been building guitars and violins for 30 years and is considered the premier archtop builder in the country. The Palen archtop is unique in that the soundboard and back are carved from wood approx. 1" thick to a domed shape similar to that found on a violin.

This guitar was built from scratch after building his first guitar, a flat top acoustic, from a kit during the summer and fall of 1998. The top is carved from Sitka spruce from the North Eastern United States. The sides and back are western flamed maple. Parts such as the tailpiece, fingerboard and fretboard are African Ebony with rosewood and padauk used as veneers covering the headstock. The 2-piece neck has a center lamination of padauk with the rest of maple. The finish is several coats of clear nitro-cellulose lacquer over a sunburst color pattern sprayed on as a mixture of dyes in clear lacquer reducer. The finish is then machine buffed and hand polished after several weeks of curing.

The "Honey Blonde" shown below was completed in October, 1999 for Danny Fleming of Beloit KS. Fine European flamed maple was used for the sides and back with Engleman spruce for the soundboard. I has a 25.0" scale with 1 3/4" neck width and has since been fitted with a suspended humbucker.

Once Nelson Palen built his first archtop guitar, he knew that he just wanted to keep building more and more. Anyone who saw these first three, knew Palen had a special talent and gift for building beautiful looking and sounding archtops. Rarely do you see this quality of workmanship and tone at the beginning.
Nelson Palen's background is in manufacturing, tool design and tool making. These skills have been very valuable in building special tools and fixtures required for guitarmaking. His consistency of tone can be attributed to this precision that is part of each and every step of his building process.

The workmanship and carving are wonderful, but the tone, balance, and responsiveness of his archtops are absolutely amazing. Each and every archtop is hand carved to exacting specifications.

It must be hand carved to the final specifications. I put my trust in my hands, but I don't leave anything to chance. All the measurements must be exact. Not close, exact!

Here comes the real test. Once the top is finally attached, there is no turning back. It's got my name on it, and it must make me proud.

I've just got to find that perfect sound before I apply the bracing to the top.

Now it's time for me, and the guitar, to get a little rest!

There's always some "body's" to talk to, that never give bad advice.

Everything, I mean everything, gets done with the utmost precision!

Consistency and precision.

Now, That is starting to look like a great guitar! That's gonna sound so sweet and resonant with those great overtones, good enough to put on the Palen Headstock.

Just can't keep those Jazz player's out of the shop. They smell a good archtop from miles away! It's amazing that anyone can find this shop in the middle of Kansas. It's also amazing that I can get anything done!

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