Kistler Carved Spruce Maple Archtop

Product Description

Georgeos looks and velvety Pat Martino tone. Every guitarist is perpetually looking for the “Holy Grail” chasing great fat tone, articulation, chordal note separation, and feedback resistance. This guitar is a combination of a “hollowed out” solid body with rounded sides and a carved arched top, going beyond traditional archtops, beyond chambered bodies, while still maintaining the beauty of most of the functionality of an F hole archtop. This is the best sounding non- traditional archtop that has ever been in our shop, with the warm tone, clarity and chordal note separation only found in a carved traditional archtop.
Specs:
upper bout: 11-1/2”
lower bout: 15-5/8”
thickness: 1-3/4” at the rim
scale: 24-3/4” (Gibson scale)
bone nut: 1-3/4”
carved spruce top with parallel bracing
carved back and sides: figured sapele
body frame is curved on the inside—sort of like a bicycle tire.
pick up: Kent Armstrong, custom wound humbucker
truss rod : double action rod
ebony fret board, bridge, tailpiece, control knobs, truss rod cover and peg (that holds the tail piece)
strings are grounded
tuners: Gotoh 510 gold with black knobs

Specifications

About Palen

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.

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.

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