Trevor Gore

Having found the saddle position that allowed the guitar to play in tune on the open strings and the 12th fret, I wondered how in-tune it played on all the other frets. I modified the program and discovered essentially what I already knew: most guitars play out of tune on most frets most of the time.  I modified the program again to figure out how to correct that and discovered the concept of compensating both the nut and the saddle.  Probably not a new idea, but I hadn't come across it before.  How to find out if this would work ?  Some significant carpentry was required on the nut end of the fretboard as well as the bridge.  Easier to build a new guitar.  So I did, and the rest, as they say, is history.

My dissatisfaction with with store bought guitars (even "good" ones) made me think that there had to be a better way of designing and building them.  The popular literature on guitar acoustics (read guitar company marketing propaganda) was pure voodoo physics, so a good deal of digging about in research papers was required as well as conducting my own research and development program.  The copious notes I made have turned into a book, which was published in 2011.  I hope the brief explanations on this website of how I work will excite your interest in seeking a better guitar and hopefully lead you to trying one of mine.  After all is said and done, its what they play like and what they sound like that really matters. 

(Oh, and all my guitars, both classical and steel string, have compensated nuts and saddles).

  

Thanks for your interest,     

  

Trevor  Gore

  

Member: Acoustical Society of America

Member: Guild of American Luthiers
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Biography

  

My interest in guitars started around aged seven, when, exploring in the attic as small boys do, I came across my father's arch-top guitar, a 1929 copy of a Gibson L5.  Shame it wasn't a real one!  It had a beautiful sunburst finish which positively glowed and even though there was no way I could extract anything musical from it then, the addiction was immediate.

I learned to play using that guitar, and in my hands it suffered many ignominies, including nylon strings, and homemade pick-ups (made from a set of WW II ex-army headphones). It was many years later that I rebuilt it and re-set it's sagging neck and passed it on in near perfect condition (despite all my efforts as a teenager) to one of my nephews who had inherited the musical gene.

My interest in guitars was interleaved with interests in sports (particularly sailing) and woodwork, with educational and professional commitments mainly in engineering fields distracting me occasionally.  I graduated from Durham University in the UK with a Bachelor's degree in engineering followed by a PhD.  I worked post-doc for a while at Cambridge University Engineering Department teaching  students the complexities of applied mathematics and electromagnetism (or were they teaching me?).  Over that period I built numerous wooden boats and raced them with considerable success.  The boat building certainly honed my woodworking skills and the engineering disciplines were ever useful.

Fast forward a few years, with an MBA behind me and a good many years of consulting engineering, I was still playing guitars and sailing boats, but now living in Australia; the result of too many consulting assignments to this part of the world.  I bought a cheap secondhand guitar to play on my cheap second hand boat and found it somewhat lacking. The saddle was in the wrong place.  Not being sure that there would be enough room in the bridge to re-position the saddle, I wrote a small computer program to figure out where the saddle had to go so that the guitar would play in tune (spot the engineer). 

Trevor Gore

... all I need is a didgeridoo...