The Loar Cittern strung for first time

[Bernie Daniel]

The conversion of the 2014 The Loar LH-300 arch top guitar to a cittern is done except for some final set up work on the nut and bridge and an adjustment on the conversion of the trapeze tail piece from taking 6 strings to 10 strings.

Here are a few rough pics. There is an earlier thread with the build pics in it.

The strings shown in these pics are just some old mandocello & guitar strings that I had laying around but they are close to my final string sizes. The strings in these pics are 0.070"; 0.048"; 0.034"; 0.022"; and 0.013") and are tuned CGDAE. I will use these strings to take all the punishment of tuning and de-tuning that will happen making the final set up adjustments on the nut, bridge and tailpiece.

I am pleased to report that the instrument sounds totally awesome but needs a lot of set up yet. The bottoms of the strings are too far off the fret board at the nut -- e.g., the E strings need to lower from about 0.075" to something more like 0.050" - similar with other strings.

It is a little tricky to play this instrument at first because the inter-course spacings are slightly different from a mandocello (the intra-course spacings are the same as a mandocello and there is no noticeable buzzing so far). Overall for this citten the string arrangements came out almost exactly as I had hoped for.

I can play tunes on the cittern using the same fingerings and chord formations as on a mandolin!

As mentioned some tune up work like the compensation on at the bridge is required. Likewise, I need to re-engineer the way I converted the arch top guitar trapeze to a cittern trapeze. Nothing major just some shorter brass screws.

Sorry lots of sun today and I had some glare in the pics.

[Jacob]

It looks great. Thanks for sharing.