Experiments on a Blackbird Rider

[DDW]

This might be more appropriate in the classical forum, but they are a traditional lot. I bought the Rider to be a travel classical guitar. It isn't quite, because of the 50.8mm nut and 16" radius fingerboard. But it does sound pretty good, it is small, and cares less about temperature and humidity swings. I'm told the mythology of the instrument is that classical players will not have it as it isn't made of old dead trees, and steel string players would not have the flat wide fingerboard so to access a market the 'crossover' neck was adopted.

The first one I had was sent to Blackbird to have a new fingerboard put on, flat and with classical dimensions (traditionally 52mm nut). The work was nearly complete when it burned in the fire and I never saw it again.

I found a couple of others, and settled on one that must have been ordered by a classical player, no electronics and the fingerboard/nut is wider than most at 51.4mm.

First thing I did was make a new nut, spacing the strings at 43.5mm (E1-E6 centerline), up from the 41.5 factory nut. That made it more playable in the classical style, but even with some offset the E1 is pretty close to the edge.

After playing it for a couple of months, I sent it to SFGuitar for a refret, Plek, and fingerboard planing. I supplied 0.055 high frets, this is becoming more common amongst classical guitarists. I told them to keep as much fret width as possible, since it is really the fret that the string slides off of. To do this they filed the ends to 20 deg rather than the usual 30 or 35. The fingerboard was planed in the Plek to 34" radius.

The Plek objects to the shape of the Rider, there is a body in the way of where it wants to measure stuff, but with some "creative programming" as they called it, they were able to do the planing but not the fret work on the Plek.

I got it back and was immediately happy with the 34" radius. Better for the classical style than 16", and I can't really tell the difference between it and flat on my wood guitars. Easier to bar, easier to find the strings in fingerwork. Is that due to playing for a long time on a classical? I don't know, but I had been playing this exclusively for a couple of months, you would think you'd get used to it. I immediately adapted back to the flatter fingerboard and preferred it from the first moment.

I then set about making a series of nuts with different string spacing. These are Graphtec nuts, made from their classical standard blank. I had trouble with bubbles and voids in the material as I've mentioned on other threads. I made enough of them I wrote a program for the CNC so the height, arc, taper, and string position can be machined in just a few minutes, completely repeatable (the CNC machine positioning accuracy is better than 1 micron). It just needs to be prettied up a little and the final string slot depth fine tuned on the guitar. Actually as I learn what that depth should be, I think I can program that as well.

With the steep taper of the end of the frets, the useable fret with was the same as or maybe slightly wider than my K. Yari. It has a C-C spacing of 44 mm. I tried 45mm but that left the E1 too close to the edge, too easy to pull it off. I also tried 43.5, 44, and 44.5. In the end 44 - like the Yari - was the best compromise. Less than that it was difficult to prevent string buzz against the next finger and hard to finger cleanly. 44 seemed to be enough for me to control that, anything more started to compromise the E1 to fret end distance. I have about 4.5 mm string - fingerboard edge on the treble, 2.9 mm on the bass side. For classical, you can get by with very little on the bass side.

It was interesting how some very small changes - tenths of a millimeter - very noticeably changed how it played. Going from 43.5 to 44 is only 0.1 between each string, 0.004", but is easy to tell when you play it. The difference is actually double, that is, you have 0.008" more clear space between the two adjacent strings. Graphtec owes me several nut blanks to replace the faulty ones, so I might try 44.1 or 44.2 spacing to see if I like that better. The 45 was very easy to finger cleanly.

I know this is esoterica, but if you are looking for a carbon classical guitar the choices are severely limited, nobody currently makes one and the Rider comes closest. I'll probably try the Klos if they ever actually come out with it, has been vaporware for more than a year now. Even then, the Rider travels better I think. It fits easily in any overhead fully tuned up and ready to go.