Photos Sounds Specifications Dan Roberts on the DKK
Genesis of an Instrument: the Santa Cruz DKK Extended
Baritone
by Kevin Kastning
Extending the known range of instruments is a fascinating subject in which I've long been
interested. In 2002, I began to conceive of compositions for solo guitar which involved a range
below that of standard concert pitch tuning. I raised this topic with my friend Dan Roberts; he and Richard Hoover are the two principal designers at the
Santa
Cruz Guitar Company (SCGC). Dan is also an extraordinarily gifted luthier in his own
right. As an artist endorser for SCGC, I have always felt very blessed to be
able to work with Dan and to be associated with SCGC. Each of my SCGC guitars
have been unusual, and no matter what my concepts or requirements, Dan and the
talented SCGC luthiers have always come through with flying colors, providing
instruments of unparalleled tone; but more importantly, exactly what I had
wanted with the tonal properties I'd described to Dan. Additionally, Dan and I
have a very unusual relationship regarding instrument design and building. Dan
has always proven to know exactly what I am seeking in instrument tone
and how to achieve it; a most difficult task, as describing
both broad ranges and detailed minutiae of tone and instrument timbre usually
translates very differently from person to person. We both speak the same
language regarding luthiery, and we are both very demanding of instruments.
The Background
In 2002, Dan and SCGC were working on a
very special OM guitar for me.
Coincidentally, my OM has a slightly extended upper register, due to an
experimental
fingerboard extension. During a
phone call in the fall 2002 of to discuss the progress of the OM, I
raised the topic of a guitar with an extended lower range.
Dan mentioned their baritone guitar to me as a
possibility. The
SCGC baritone has a longer scale length (27") than guitars with standard tuning,
and is tuned a major third lower than
standard tuning (C below E). I had never played a
baritone guitar, so Dan graciously sent one out to me,
in order that I might begin acclimating myself with
one. Upon its arrival, I began experimenting with
altered tunings. While the compositions I had in mind
would involve an even lower register than that of the
baritone, Dan wisely suggested that I spend some
time with the C-tuned baritone. After about a month with the SCGC baritone, I
realized that what I
was hearing and the compositions I had in mind were in
fact lower in register than the C tuning of the
baritone. I began experimenting with various string
gauges for
different tunings, as lower tunings require heavier
gauged strings. Eventually, I settled on an A tuning,
which is a perfect fifth below standard tuning (A
below E). I had tried a G tuning, but the SCGC
baritone wouldn't handle it; in fact, the A tuning was
pushing beyond what it was designed to do. The lowest
part of the A tuning's register was almost unusable,
as was the upper register. But I fell
in love with the sound and compositional
possibilities, and ended up using
this baritone on
nine of the eighteen compositions on the KastningSiegfried album Bichromial. Throughout the process of
experimenting with tunings in various registers and
the string gauges required by them, I maintained an
ongoing dialogue regarding design possibilities with Dan. After spending some time
with the baritone, I knew this was very close to the
sound for which I'd been searching. I began to
conceive of a baritone without the current tuning and
register limitations. Concurrent
with this process, I was writing new compositions for
baritone guitar.
During a 2003 visit to the Santa Cruz shop in Santa
Cruz, California, Richard Hoover (SCGC's founder) asked
me to spend some time with a
one-of-a-kind 7-string
baritone which SCGC had built as an experiment. Dan was also very
interested in my exposure to, and opinion of, the 7-string baritone. The
register-lowering extension provided by the 7th string further added to my
conviction that an instrument with a range lower than that of the C-tuned
baritone was what I sought. I knew I wanted my baritone to be designed for G
tuning (G, C, F, A#, D, G) This is a Major 6th below standard tuning (G
below E). This register is also twice as low as that of the SCGC baritone.
This kind of vast difference in register would require many design changes and
luthiery challenges. SCGC had never designed or built a baritone with an
extended range, so this would prove to be an exploration of uncharted
territories for them. In the fall of 2002, neither Dan nor I could have
foreseen the unusual challenges which lay ahead
of us.
The Design
The baritone which Dan sent to me was based on a
12-fret dreadnaught design; with Honduran mahogany
back and sides, and a bearclaw German spruce top. While the
combination of mahogany and German spruce provided a
crisp tone with much presence and sparkle, I felt the
tone was lacking in the lower registers. In the SCGC baritone's defense, this
came as no surprise,
since I had the baritone tuned in ways for which it
was never designed, using strings for which it had
never been voiced. Still, I could hear the potential,
and I felt certain that Dan could design an
extended-range baritone which would provide the
resonance and depth that a G tuning demanded. One of
the first design changes we discussed, and which
required many lengthy ongoing discussions, was the question
of tonewood selection. Some of the back and side
possibilities we discussed were Brazilian rosewood,
East Indian rosewood, and South American cocobolo rosewood.
Tonewoods for the top which we considered were Sitka
spruce, German spruce, Adirondack red spruce, and
Carpathian red spruce. As a back/side choice, I rejected mahogany, as I felt
that it would not provide the depth and extended bass response which would be
required. As we were beginning to consider East Indian rosewood, Dan had a
prototype baritone which had the same specs as the one I'd been using sent to
me which had East Indian rosewood back/sides, and a German spruce top. For my
lowered tunings, this was a vast improvement over the mahogany version. The
tone in the low A register was reminiscent of the bass register on a concert
grand piano; very strong and resonant. Even the upper register was present,
and it sounded full and rich. Knowing that the upper register would sound so
beautiful, a cutaway would be mandatory. All my SCGC guitars have cutaways, of
which I make extensive use, but due to the lack of the upper register on the
mahogany baritone, I had previously thought that a cutaway would be of little
use. After hearing what a difference was made by the East Indian rosewood, I also
began to think about using cocobolo rosewood.
My Santa Cruz D,
which is my main instrument, has
cocobolo
back and sides, and for the tone I prefer, cocobolo rosewood has been perfect. To my way of
hearing, it has all the projection, depth, and smoky resonance of Brazilian rosewood, but
with far more complexity throughout all the registers. I also hear cocobolo
rosewood as having more balance, in that the upper registers are very present
and alive, with a mahogany-like sparkle and more detail in the upper partials;
yet with no loss in the upper-register fundamentals. One drawback is
that master-grade cocobolo can be difficult to locate. In fact, when SCGC
built my D cutaway back in 2000, it took eight months to locate the ideal
cocobolo set; Dan rejected many otherwise fine AAA-graded sets. He recommended
that we wait for the ideal set which he felt would deliver the tonal
properties I sought, and I agreed. It was worth the wait, by the way. Dan set about the arduous search of
trying to find a set of East Indian rosewood which would be perfect for the extended
baritone. This is not a short process, and can take months. I was prepared to
wait patiently, as I wanted to ensure we had the sets which would deliver the
most optimum tonal properties. Rather late one night
in the fall of 2004, I
received a call from an excited Dan. He had been meticulously examining
the
tonewood stash at the SCGC shop, and had discovered a back/sides set of
perfectly quartered, even, and unusually straight-grained cocobolo which he called "the absolute best set of cocobolo I've ever seen."
This particular set had a tap tone with a lower than normal fundamental.
Dan stated that he thought this would be the ideal set for the baritone, and
because of my preference for cocobolo rosewood and the fact that I had been considering
it all along, I readily agreed. During the search for the back/sides set, Dan had also
been seeking the top set, for which we had settled on Carpathian red
spruce. Dan's experience with Carpathian led him to believe that it would be
the right choice for the extended baritone's top moreso than the other
tonewoods we'd considered. I've always preferred the sound of wider-grained spruce over
fine-grained, and so Dan had been tone-tapping untold numbers of wide-grained
top sets, looking for an extraordinarily resonant top set. It wasn't long after
the cocobolo phone call that I received another call from Dan; again I could
hear the excitement in his voice. He had located a very dry and stiff; yet an unusually wide-grained
Carpathian set which also had a very high stiffness-to-weight ratio. Dan
described the tap tone as being "like a gong;" a very, very low
fundamental which just kept going when tapped. Dan felt that the top set and
the back and sides sets were not only perfect for an extended-range baritone,
but that the combination of the Carpathian red spruce with its low
fundamental, and the denseness of this particular cocobolo set would work
together in an ideal complementary way. We had our tonewood sets, which
was very exciting.
String Gauges and Scale Length
Ever since the first baritone arrived, Dan and I had been having
many conversations about string gauges and scale length. I had been through
many different sets of strings, all custom gauged which I'd put together from single
strings, as no one makes a set of baritone strings which would work in this
scenario. I was having some success in matching gauge to pitch for the lower
strings, but having much difficulty in getting the right gauges for the first
and second strings. I eventually abandoned the idea of an unwound (plain) 2nd
string, and found that a wound .020 worked pretty well. However, using the
traditional unwound 1st string was still causing some difficulties. I was
using an .018, but that still was too light. Since the new baritone was going
to be pitched so much lower than a standard baritone, the string gauges had to
be heavier, and the scale length had to be longer. Dan, knowing
my penchant for heavier rather than lighter gauged strings in any situation,
suggested we go with an all-wound set. Usually, the first and second strings
are unwound, and while I had never heard of an all-wound set, I knew
immediately that I wanted to try it for this instrument, and felt, as did Dan,
that it would be exactly right for the lower pitch and longer scale. I also
knew that an all-wound set would solve the problems of the 1st string being
too light physically, and not having enough tonal heft to sound like a part of
the instrument. Dan set
about doing various designs for the new bracing the top would require. Not
only would
the longer scale length and the lower pitch need to be taken into
consideration; now the all-wound
string set had to be taken into account as well for the bracing design and voicing of the
top. Eventually, we settled on 28.5 inches as the scale length, and initially
planned on an all-wound set of strings gauged as .020, .028, .038, .048, .060, .076,
in phosphor bronze.
The longer scale raised concerns regarding the location of the bridge;
Dan was sure that it should not be placed any lower on the top than the current
bridge location on the SCGC baritone. And, for an instrument with a very extended
scale length, which would involve the use of very heavy-gauged strings, a
different bracing for the top would have to be designed. This is just
one more area in which Dan is gifted. The new bracing would be based on
Dan's concept of "double-tapered" bracing, which involves the cross-section of
the braces to be carved in an almost knife-edge shape. As the tone bars
approach the sides, they taper to a point, instead of being squared off. The
tone bars and finger bracing were also redesigned to work with the
double-tapered bracing. After doing some designs for the new bracing, Dan
called and said that using the 12-fret D design (the one on which the current
baritone was based) was definitely going to place the bridge too low on the top.
As a solution, he
suggested we try a 13-fret design, which as far as the D-type goes, had never
been done. The physical drawback is that this would shift the neck farther to
the left when the instrument was being played. However, I was far more concerned
about the tone, and knew that adapting to the minor shift of the neck's
location would be a small task. I agreed, and yet another design first took
its place on the extended baritone. In the past, Dan and I have had many discussions about
intonation compensation and break
angles; both over the bridge saddle and behind the nut. I carve my own
saddles, and details like break angle and intonation compensation are always
major concerns for me. One day while discussing the bridge saddle thickness
measurement for the baritone, Dan told me about an experiment he'd been trying, which
involved tilting the bridge saddle backwards (toward the bridge pins) at a 10-degree angle. This
provided for an increased break angle, and allowed more string-to-saddle
contact; thus allowing for more control over intonation compensation. He asked
if I wanted to try this design on the baritone, and I said I did. Another
first. There were many other design deviations from the standard baritone;
some of the changes were nut width, an all maple rosette and purfling,
bridge saddle width, neck profile, SCGC 18:1 ratio tuners instead of Waverly, lack of an
endpin, no position markers or inlay on the fingerboard, lack of backstrip
inlay, cocobolo neck heel cap, overlay, and end graft, no pickguard,
1/8"-width bridge saddle; among others.
Even the tuners would require modification: the string holes in the tuner
barrels on some of the strings proved to be too small, and had to be drilled
out. Another design
element I wanted was a dark violin-like stain for the finish of the top. SCGC
had never done anything like this before, and I felt as if I had to talk Dan
into it! Eventually he agreed, and when it was all done, he admitted that he
liked the look of it much more than he had anticipated. SCGC dubbed this stain
color "Cremona brown." Since we were trying to
achieve a violin-like stain, naming the stain color "Cremona brown" was a reference to the historical master
luthiers of instruments of the violin family such as
Stradivari,
Guarneri,
Amati,
et. al.,
whom had been based in Cremona, Italy.
The DKK Baritone
So, from our first discussions in fall 2002, finally in October 2004, Dan and
I had settled on full design specifications for the new experimental baritone.
In fact, this baritone was so different and virtually unrelated to the
existing SCGC baritone, that it was assigned a new model designation: the
DKK (D for dreadnaught body type; KK for Kevin Kastning). Work at the SCGC shop began in November 2004. I
was very excited that our two years of discussions and planning were finally
being realized. There was a small part of me which was wondering if the
instrument would really live up to what I'd hoped it would be; after all,
there had never been anything like this one, so it was a bit of an exploration
into the unknown. After the specification that the baritone be pitched in a G
tuning, my next largest concern was that the instrument should be equally
responsive in all registers, which is a high demand for any stringed
instrument. It was even more of a tall order for this one, as most of its
design was aimed at being in a lower register; therefore, how would the upper
registers work to achieve an overall balance? While I had full confidence in
Dan's design and luthiery gifts and expertise, there was really no way to know
how all the disparate design requirements would meld until we had the final
instrument. Work on the DKK was completed in March 2005. Dan did the
final setup and
voicing, and shipped it off to me. During the setup process, I
had asked Dan many questions: how was the tone? Was the lower register as full
as we had hoped? What about the upper register? Dan was positive in his
assessments, but noticeably reserved. In early April 2005, the baritone
arrived at its new home. Upon opening the case,
I was taken aback at the instrument's visuals. Dan can
confirm that I've never been very interested in
how an instrument looks; only in how it sounds. However, I must say that
visually, this was perhaps the most striking instrument I'd ever seen. All of
my fears about whether or not we could achieve a fully balanced instrument in
such a low tuning with so many unknown elements were laid to rest on the first
day of playing it. Not only had Dan and the luthiers at SCGC achieved all I'd
hoped for, they once again went above and beyond. The lower registers on this
baritone are very full, rich, and just huge. The upper register has a
wonderful singing quality which sounds like the upper registers of a cello. I
called Dan, and told him how happy I was with the instrument. He told me that
he had in fact been very thrilled with the sound and how it had turned out,
but didn't want to say anything until I'd had a chance to play and hear it.
After 2 1/2 years of design work on Dan's
part, and all the discussions and string gauge and tuning experimentation had
all paid off far better than I could have hoped.
Epilogue
I have already been in the recording studio with the new DKK baritone on compositions which will appear on the forthcoming Greydisc Records release of the new KastningSiegfried album, "Scalar Fields," scheduled for release on November 15, 2005. Getting used to the long scale length did take some intensive practicing and acclimation at first. After a few weeks, it came to feel very natural; although not without some fingering challenges along the way. Ironically, though I had envisioned this baritone as a much lower-range instrument (and it certainly is), I am constantly amazed and in awe of the upper registers. I find the upper register of the DKK to be so euphonic and so rich, that I have used this guitar (mostly in the upper registers only) in place of my SCGC D on some compositions which were written for concert-pitch standard tuning. There is at least one track on "Scalar Fields" wherein the entire piece was performed using only the upper registers of the DKK.
To Dan, Richard, and everyone at Santa Cruz, for making this cello of the guitar family, my sincerest gratitude.
-Kevin Kastning,
October 2005
Postscript: After further string gauge experimentation on the DKK, and based on all the string gauge experiments from the first two SCGC baritones, it became apparent that a slightly heavier string would be a better choice for the low G. I'm an artist endorser for John Pearse strings, and as such, I approached them about producing an .080 phosphor bronze double-wound string. I am very happy to report that John Pearse not only agreed to make this, but will be adding it to their catalog. I received my first batch of the .080s in September 2005, and I am very pleased, both with the strings themselves, and how beautifully they work as the low G string on the DKK.
Tentatively scheduled: The DKK baritone will be featured at the Santa Cruz booth at the 2008 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California. I will also be on hand at the Santa Cruz booth as their guest at the 2008 NAMM show.
Update 1: Since the recording sessions for Scalar Fields have concluded, I have been experimenting with the tuning and string gauges of the DKK. Currently, I have it tuned to F# (F#, B, E, A, C#, F#). String gauges for this tuning are: .022, .030, .040, .050, .064, .080. All phosphor-bronze wound. My string gauges and tunings for all instruments can now be found here.
Update 2: I am pleased to announce that John Pearse Strings have added my .080 double-wound phosphor bronze string to their catalog, and it is now available.
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From the KastningSiegfried album Scalar Fields: Macrolibrium 7 (intro)
Additional DKK audio examples may be found here.
