Custom Guitars
Kovacik Guitars builds flat top acoustic guitars on a custom order basis. Guitars can be built to the customer's specs and requirements, and accurate vintage reproductions are a specialty. Brazilian rosewood, indian rosewood, mahogany, koa, sitka spruce, engelmann spruce and Adirondack spruce are but a few of the materials options available for building projects. The shop offers sizes from small parlor up through dreadnought, in both 12 and 14 fret configurations. Appointment options range from the austere style 18 up through the elegant abalone inlaid style 42, with custom inlay services available. Whether you are looking for a delicate and balanced parlor guitar or a bass cannon 12 fret D, Kovacik Guitars can build for a guitar that will suit your musical needs. Contact the shop to discuss your project!
J40CLB
This guitar was built in 2002-03. It features brazilian rosewood back and sides, sitka spruce top, style 40 pearl, 14 frets to the body, ebony board and bridge and a left-hand cutaway.
00-28
This instrument is a 00-28 12 fret style guitar patterned after Martin guitars of the 60s. The wood for this instrument was obtained in 2000 from Mike Longworth. The back and sides are beautifully quarter sawn brazilian rosewood. Top is sitka spruce. This guitar was very lightly braced and set up for fingerstyle play. The genuine vintage (circa 1930s) brass plate Waverly tuners were a very nice touch on this guitar, lending a very 'authentic' vintage appearance. It was sold in 2002 through Lark Street Music of Teaneck, NJ.
Conversion
This guitar began life as a 1963 Martin 000-28C, a 12 fret nylon string. When it arrived in my shop it had been the victim of many poor repair attempts and mistreatment (note the popsicle stick crack cleats glued to the inside of the top in the owner pics). The top was compromised both structurally and cosmetically. The top was removed and replaced with an adirondack spruce top braced for steel strings. The neck was also removed and replaced with a vintage profile neck with an adjustable truss rod. The top was trimmed in herringbone as well. The last two pics in this series shows the current owner of the guitar, Cobleskill NY musician Tom Wadsworth with the converted guitar and the original top that was removed.
000-28S
This guitar is a vintage styled 12 fret 000-28 with herringbone top purfling. The wood for this guitar was obtained from Mike Longworth in 2000. Back and sides are quarter sawn brazilian rosewood (fabulous color) and the top is sitka spruce with an old style rosewood and holly style 28 rosette. For these pics hold your mouse in the lower right hand corner of the expanded thumbnail for a second or two and an icon will appear. Click on this icon and a full size picture with extremely high resolution will be displayed.
00-40K (Koa)
This 00 size 12 fretter is made of Koa top, back and sides. The top shows superb curl and tiger figure as do the sides, with the back showing more quilt type figure. The guitar features style 40 top pearl, style 42 bound fretboard, a figured brazilian rosewood veneer on the bound headstock, Waverly tuners, and an ebony pyramid bridge. This guitar was built in 2003 for BlueG guitars of Tokyo, Japan.
00-28G/00-42 steel string conversion
This guitar began it's life in 1951 as a Martin 00-28 G. The G series guitars (00-18G, 00-28G and a very few 000-28G) were built for nylon strings with 12 frets to the body. However, unlike the C series guitars that followed traditional 12 fret neck AND body design, the G series guitar combined the 12 fret neck with a 14 fret body shape. The 00-28G is the only 14 fret 00 shape that Martin ever made in brazilian rosewood as a regular production guitar. This guitar arrived in the shop with a badly damaged top. A conversion to 14 fret steel string was accomplished by installing an X braced top and making a new neck with 14 frets to the body. The guitar was also upgraded to style 42 (abalone top, style 42 fretboard and high style headstock inlay) as part of the conversion. All inlay work was done in house.
OM-45 Deluxe and 000-45S Deluxe
45 deluxe guitars to be built with old Martin brazilian rosewood (Longworth stock) and adirondack spruce tops to 1930s specs. These two instruments were delivered in early 2004 and were sold through Blue G. The retail price for each instrument was just under $12,000 USD.
