My friend Dan Margolies has had an interest in Mexican music which has gotten more and more intense over the years. He started playing the bajo sexto a few years back and recently asked me to build him one. The process has been quite an adventure and I thought I'd share some of the photos of the process.
The bajo sexto is a unique instrument, it's main use is to accompany
accordion or fiddle players in Northern Mexican, Norteno, and Tex-Mex music known
as Conjunto. The bajo player provides the boom chang rhythm behind the
floating melodies, and fills in the space with bass runs. The
instrument has 12 strings, tuned down to the E of a bass guitar, across
the board in straight fourths, E-A-D-G-C-F. The string gauges start at
.026" and end at .092". And you thought the .066" for the 12 strings
were fat! This is not to be confused with the guitarra doble, which is a
different Mexican 12 string, the type which Lydia Mendoza played,
similar to the 12 strings I normally build. Here's a nice clip of Lorenzo Martinez on accordion & Rodolpho Lopez on the bajo quinto (the ten string version, which omits the low E string).
The man who defined the modern bajo sexto was the great Mexican American luthier Martin Macias from San Antonio, Texas. Macias bajo sextos and bajo quintos are much sought after by bajo players. The Macias family is still going strong with George Macias now following in the footsteps of his grandfather Martin and his father Albert. George builds beautiful instruments and makes fine strings.
At the start of this project, I didn't know much about the bajo sexto and I wanted to get my hands on an old Macias to see how they were made. My friend Steve James, one of the finest proponents and practitioners of American fingerstyle guitar, knew Don Martin Macias in San Antonio, used to hang out at the shop and has acquired a couple Macias instruments over the years. Steve graciously loaned me a late 1950's bajo quinto to use as a reference.
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| 1959 Macias bajo quinto |
One of the things that really appealed to me about Steve's Macias was
the use of all domestic woods. The back and the sides were walnut, as were the fingerboard and bridge, the top was white pine, the neck was
magnolia and walnut. The rope binding was made up of walnut and
magnolia. The guitar was built very sturdily, one of the reasons it was
preferred by working musicians, it can take a lickin and keep on
tickin. The neck joint was a Spanish heel, or slipper block
construction, where the neck and block are one and the sides fit into
slots in the neck. The bracing was a ladder/X hybrid. One feature
which seemed odd at the time was the lack of a saddle on the bridge.
The strings came out of the front of the bridge without going across any
sort of hard material like bone or metal.
The challenge for me was to build something that was respectful to the Macias instrument, and to make a
few changes that might improve the playability and put my own touch on
the guitar. For starters, I decided not to do a slipper block neck
joint. I have never done this before and I didn't want to start on an
instrument that was fairly new to me and one which was going to be
putting some fairly hefty demands on the neck joint. I went with a
dovetail, a joint that I'm intimately familiar with, and one which can
be reset at a later date if need be. Second, I decided I would fit the
bridge with a saddle, which I thought would improve tone and would give a
little control over the action of the strings. Third, I decided to do a
standard 12 string headstock, rather than one in which the fingerboard
ran beyond the nut as it did on the Macias. My friend Dan wanted an
instrument that was like an old Macias, built with domestic woods, hide
glue, varnish finish, etc, but was a little easier to play.
I started by making a plan of the Macias, mapping out the unique bracing style. Second, I had to make up the rope binding and the purfling to be used on the rosette. I used walnut and maple for this step. Making the binding was fairly straightforward, more so than installing it, which proved to be quite challenging. Steve James told me that Don Martin Macias would do the binding one piece at a time, and I was tempted to go that route after some of the frustration involved in the method that I used.
MAKING THE BINDING
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| Strips are stacked &glued |
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| Maple and walnut strips for binding |
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| Stack is cut into angled pieces |
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| Angled pieces are glued together |
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| Angled stack is cut |
I used red spruce for the top and black walnut for the back and sides.
The walnut that I used came from a tree that I cut down back when I was a
carpenter. The tree was on the site of a house I was building and I
had it milled up by a local farmer. I've used it for various projects
over the years and had reserved a couple pieces for a guitar. I was
glad to finally put them to use on this project.
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| Gluing linings |
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| Bracing the top |
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| Unique bracing pattern |
Dan wanted a full bodied bajo, as opposed to one with a cutaway. He also wanted a single pickguard, rather than the three that are on the Macias. I was able to get some great mother of toilet seat material for the pickguard (old stock) which gave it a nice vintage look. As I stated earlier, I fit a saddle to the Macias bridge, which presented some design challenges, but worked out great. I finished the guitar with a spirit varnish applied by French polishing. I'm very happy with the way it turned out. A fun project with many unique challenges. I'm tempted to build one for myself.
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| Handmade strings by Guadalupe |
I recently finished a fun project, a fancy black Fenezia, aka. "The Black Madonna", with multi layered purfling, inlaid pickguard, faux tortoise headstock veneer, whale tail bridge and an ebony finish. This guitar is similar to the Ernest Stoneman models that I've made in the past, and it's fitting that it has a black finish as Stoneman painted his Galiano black at some point in the 1950's. I like to think that I did a cleaner job than Ernest. The black finish makes all the details on the guitar pop, the purfling and the pickguard really come to life. 
The first guitar like this that I built was a 14 fret Anunziata. I had a request from Hubby Jenkins of the Carolina Chocolate Drops for something that was comparable to an old Kay that he had been playing. The Kay was similar in size to the Annunziata, and it was ladder braced. Hubbie wanted 14 frets to the body so I started drawing up some plans until I came up with something that I was happy with. I gave it an inlaid pickguard and a whale tail bridge to make it look distinctive. I used some nice flamed birch for the back and sides hoping that it would give it a dry sound with lots of bite. It came together wonderfully.
