Traugott Guitars
Frank Ford, 4/11/98; Photos by FF, 4/9/98
Mike Gold, Tim Chambers and I dropped in to see Jeff Traugott in his natural habitat. His shop is on of a number of small craft shops in a giant old warehouse building on Mission Street in Santa Cruz, California.
Here we are with Jeff:
From the left: Jeff, me, Tim, and Mike.
Jeff wears his helmet and air filter hood most of the time to avoid the nasty tropical hardwood dust:
Here he's cleaning up the glue as he clamps the neck and end blocks to the sides of his next guitar. Jeff believes it's important to do this operation in the mold so that the blocks are held rigidly square to the top.
Jeff jams the flexible rods in place in his "go-bar" deck as he clamps the braces to the top of a cutaway guitar. He's clamping the arched braces to a concave form so that the top will have a slight "dome" shape. This slight arched top shape will help resist deformation from the pull of the strings.
Jeff makes about 15 guitars a year so he always has several at different stages of production. Here's a Brazilian rosewood body fresh from the lacquer spray booth.
Speaking of Brazilian rosewood, this is a picture of Jeff showing off a plank of the holy grail: perfectly quarter sawn Brazilian, just about the darkest and most dense we've ever seen:
Click here to see a fabulous piece of Brazilian rosewood made into a Jeff Traugott baritone guitar.
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