The birth of an MG 45 guitar

The MG 45 is Malone Guitars’ dreadnought size, all solid timber acoustic guitar design. Drawing inspiration from Gibson’s legendary J45, we designed the MG:45 to offer warm bass response, excellent note separation and clarity and strong projection, all within a simple and familiar form factor which captures something of the ‘old spirit’ of the best instruments out there.

Each guitar is hand built from scratch, using carefully selected, high quality, materials. The neck is hand carved before the top, back and sides are all brought to thickness using traditional hand tools. The top and back bracing of the guitar are then hand-tuned to ensure each instrument has its own rich, balanced and musical character when fully assembled.

The images below show some of the stages in the build of the latest MG:45 to leave the Malone Guitars workshop. This instrument features a European spruce top, African mahogany neck, back and sides, rosewood fingerboard, headstock veneer and bridge, abalone dots and inlays and a French polished shellac finish.

Beautiful hand tuned bracing

Sapele Mahogany tail wedge

Box closed before bridge fit

Spruce top and binding detail

Beautiful guitar bracing

Mocking up the neck

Mocking up the build

Hand bent sapele guitar sides

Gluing the back in a gobar

Gluing bracing in the gobar

Tuning the bracing

Cutting the soundhole

Installing the frets

Shaping the fingerboard

Rough finish neck

Hand carving a mahogany neck