Giulio Negrini Guitars - Fine handmade Guitars

With the high demand of guitars, most of the manufacturers had to decrease the time of production.
For doing that, they should do this things:

- Purchase expensive CNC Machine that makes lot of guitars at day, reducing the perfection of the joints for a easier assemblage.

- Buy big stock of woods to supply the high demand; so the wood is no more handpicked and it is kiln dried; this can cause low stability and less acoustic properties.

- Often they devolve to Asiatic factory the making of hardware (bridge, tuners, pickups) with low quality productions and materials = sometimes you can expect unwanted noises, low tuning stability, tendency to rust and low life parts: if this happens, the sound is attenuate and with low sustain.

- Design and building to accommodate the quickest assemblage, simplify the project to the possibility of the machine = some edge maybe incommode for the playability of the guitar (big neck heel, big neck, low access to the higher frets...) loose joints = this can cause a decrement of sustain and tone; in this cases the guitar is not designed for the player but for the machine, there is not an ergonomic project and an easily playing.

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For making a GNG, I handpick personally the wood at specialized tonewoods stores, checking the grain, the humidity, the year of cut and sawn quality, selecting the best figure available (curly, flamed, quilted or birdseye).
For each instrument I've to make, I pair the lumber for a specific tone results (Tap-Tone) so the entire guitar is in harmony to a precision sound result.

All the parts that you can find in a GNG are made by specialized small and medium artisan manufactures from all the world (USA, Germany, England, Canada, Italy, France); they works on the quality of the materials, the reliability, the time resistance and on the sounding features of each products; to insure the safety and maintenance of Tone.
You can find here a list of manufacturers I've choose.

The making of a GNG is in total absence of computer controlled machines: each passage, carving, sanding and finishing is done with utensils driven by my hands and my eyes; carefully indulging the wood to my wants as no machine can never match.

The neck joint is tight, no air can pass, no finish inside, and the neck is screwed by five screws with threaded brass inserts to increase tone, sustain and tuning. No more wood screws are used in this fix.
Pickups are direct coupled to increase the sustain response and better overtones.
The fingerboard is bent on a radiused neck, to obtain more stiffness in the neck and less string to string tonal differences (the fingerboard height is the same under each string).
The frets are glued and pressed overnight with an aluminium radius jig for a perfect installation, just a little sand and recrown with diamond tools is needed.

The tremolo bridge is free to move without resistance for a smooth and accurate return to pitch.
The truss-rod is double action, with an immediate access without removing anything.
To increase the stiffness in the neck, I use to mount two carbon fiber reinforce in the slimmer necks.
The frets are perfectly smoothed and finished up for a comfortable playing, accurate bending and clean notes.
The top is totally handcarved with an ancient violin maker technique: gouges, scrapers, planes and sandpaper are used, no electric tools are employed in this important step.
The access to the higher frets is studied for being much free as possible, the heel is smoothed without sharp edges.
The right arm rest is improved and the lower curve is meliorated for a more stable control when the guitar is resting on the leg.
The little horn is flared for a better access to the higher frets with the back-thumb playing techniques.
The back is concave-carved to increase the control and comfort of the guitar.

Each feature is fully customizable for the customer: control positions (potentiometer, switch), neck profile (D,V,C, Asymmetric, Custom) fret dimensions and material (hard nickel, steel, gold evo), finish and hardware colour, wood choose, custom inlays and dots, bridge, tuners, pickups and everything else.


A GNG is made for the final player, not for the machine that make it.

Giulio Negrini

GNG - Fine Handmade Guitars