Moonstone Mahogany

Product Description

Built in the 1980’s this hollowbody archtop had a $5500 msrp. Believe it or not, if you shine a light in one f hole, you will see the light in the other f hole. This is actually a hollowbody that tries to emulate the tone and anti feedback characteristics of a semi hollow, but with more chordal note separation than most 335 guitars. The top and backs are totally carved solid woods. The spruce top and top bracing is actually part of the carved top that was left after carving the top. The beautiful solid mahogany  back is carved with a thick center in a designs of a mirror image of the top but is completely separated from the top, joined only at the rims and the neck and tail block. Sperzel tuners, original pickups, hardly any fret wear, and a great player. Great fat warm tone with great accessibility to the entire fretboard with a 24.75″ scale and a full 24 frets. Sophisticated Alembic type fusion and jazz sounds. I liken it to a Stanley Clarke sound in a guitar.

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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