Ziricote / Sitka Phi Guitar
Tonewoods
The Ziricote Phi has a Sitka spruce soundboard with curly koa binding, curly koa rosette with double abalone, curly koa headstock, Brazilian rosewood bridge, and french polish finish. I found the ziricote to be very brittle and used Super-soft spray to assist with bending the sides and even with thinning the back, which wanted to form small cracks when thinned below 2.5mm.
Completed in 2012.
Voicing and Construction
Bracing is traditional X-bracing, except the lower tonebars were fanned from the bridge plate at a 30 degree angle. This bracing pattern opened up the long dipole, especially as compared to my previous double X pattern. The voicing fullness and projection are similar to the benchmark Malaysian blackwood guitar.
Soundboard thickness is 2.3 mm with perimeter thinned to 2.1 mm. Back thickness is 2.1 mm.
Resonances:
Top monopole 178 Hz
Cross dipole 318 Hz
Long dipole 357 Hz
Back 218 Hz
Air 94 Hz.