Stijn Kenens Luthier

It's not everytime you can take a perfect picture of the back, when the instrument is finished.
This removable banjo back is not a resonator. When installed on the openback banjo, it seals of the rim. The sound comes from two side ports, which I stole from the gourd banjo. (If somebody's interested: I love to build one !!!)
I didn't notice till I checked the big shop book, this one's n°050.

14" steel tension hoop by here at the .
Brass layer is added by heating and a brass brush on a cordless drill ... tadaaa ... ***magic***
Stay tuned for the 29" bariton scale, nylon, fretless, 14" hoop banjo. With double side port ☝️
( because bigger and double is better )





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3 of my favorite builds.
3 experiments.
Some old and some new.
Left the tele with open body and hollow neck.
In the middle an acoustic small body guitar completely built with reclaimed wood.
And on the right a multiscale jumbo built with only European woods.

I had the opportunity to do some work on a modified vintage F12 mandolin.
Somebody reshaped and bound the headstock (probably with new overlay) and it received the famous F5 fretboard (with the wrong kind of fretwire)
I've seen this one being played in my shop: it's an extremely responsive instrument.
I hope to see it back for a refret, so I can measure the top and back plate .

😱
What about a "Kenens Luthier's Choice" 17 inch wide, 25,5" scale archtop ???
Thank you Walter Broes for this 'little' present !

Rough carving done, time to sharpen the scrapers and clean the whole thing up !
The whole body is now 1,9 kg or 4,2 pounds.

Hogging out the all Korina "Less" Paul top.
First time working with Korina, but I already like it.
When I used the safe-T planer on the outside arch, it smelled like a red wine barrel.

Following up on the new patch-a-ma-thingies.
First 2 pics you see them in action. Nice things make nice pictures.
3th picture shows a 1mm hole on the left, and a 0,4mm hole on the right, next to the bubbles.
Picture 4 are the tools in the container, which was an extremely happy accident. The bass string ball ends are used to tie the knot, the other (straplock) parts are used to clamp the round patch against the side.
Last pic is the most important part, taped against the lid. It's a modified 0,4mm needle. Which has a facet where the point was.

Made myself a set of patch glue-a-ma-thingies.
The old ones worked fine, but I did some mods during the time I used them.
So now I have some fancy jigies, they will look stellar on the repair pictures in the near future !

Time to put this bad boy back together.
This piece of Belgian music history needed to be restored.
All the pieces of 's famous 70's thinline tele were meticulously raked together by at a stage where the guitar encountered an amp head that tumbled of a cabinet (allas, that's what people told me ...)

Even in 100 pieces, people recognized this guitar from far away 👌

Almost there.

Quick repair and quite funny (I never saw a 'reliced' guitar with mismatched tuners 🤔)

Swapping out a broken, "cheap" toggle switch for a switchcraft. And stupid me forgot to order the switch tip.
Drills, dummy and proxxon micro flamethrower to make it fit the imperial thread.

Hollow body, all Korina, less Paul in the making.
This one's a 'plain' build with some colourful details.
Stay tuned !

Doing small tasks is the only thing that doesn't break out a sweat.
After seeing trotec meter, I knew we could do better 😬

Very colorful, all Korina, hollowbody LP inspired build coming up.

Stay tuned !!!

I just ordered myself some paulownia body blanks, to make a body for this over the top extremely cool pickguard.
It needs a little modification to add 2 p90 pickups, but i'm still in doubt about the colour. But maybe I need to choose the body colour first.

Fight me in the comments 😏

It's festival season again. Doing quick fixes for a lot of touring bands.
Don't be afraid to contact me for a very necessary setup, elektro fix or even tighten your strapknobs.
Turn around for touring bands is as fast as possible.
Just give me a call and we work something out.

Cleaned out the birds nest (in Dutch we call this 'nen hannekensnest') in this '89 "Epiphone by Gibson" superstrat.

Reason n°259 why I don't like guitars equipped with a floyd: 14" fretboard radius but a 12" Floyd...
Wtf PRS ?

(**rant over**)

A banjo rim with two sound ports 😯 Why not ?
I finally made a soundport jig, and to top it off, I've used some leftover rosewood to hide the 3 Antwerp-Plane layers.

This was the final detail, now of to the spray boot (aka the outside world)

This bariton scale, 14" rim, nylon, fretless banjo finally has strings, thanks to ' "Nylon Banjo String Set".
I've tuned it to d-ADF . The non resonator closed bolt-on back adds a hint of a gourd to the instrument, for all I know.
Still needs a lot of sanding, and some custom parts (the tailpiece needs a better bolt) before I can pit some lacquer on it.

But for now: only love !

Little sequence of pictures showing how I make a dent disappear.
This P-bass neck is ready for frets !

New outer binding for this Martin MC-28.
And a neck reset, and a fretlevel, and a k&k install, and a setup (of course !)
But for now, the fun part, leveling the ABS binding, which becomes static when you plane it down ... hooray !

This J-bass came in for a deep cleaning session...
And a setup with normal bass strings. I managed to get all the little screws out of the saddles, but had to replace a few. Cleaned the body under the pickguard and did a setup, after scraping all the dead human cells of the fretboard.
Enjoy this pictures ! 🤢😏🤐

This beauty came in for a refret and some TLC.
😍 1950 Gibson es175 with some very disturbing inlay on 10 and 13 🤔 but we decided to keep it anyway, as part of the history.
Off you go for another 74 years !

Customer states it buzzes ...
😬😅

This 455 from (probably) 1958 is up and running again.
Victim of an Airline company, it resided in the case for a couple of years till it was brought to the shop.
I glued the laminated sides and back back together.
Took the loose neck out, and glued it back in after doing a fretboard plane and refret, now it plays like butter (even without a trussrod) with new EVO gold frets (harder than the original brass frets) and new inlays and I even managed to get that weird DeArmond harness working again.
This one flies back to Toronto, apparently (fingers crossed) !

The pickguard for the other 'Luthier's Choice' just entered the building (shop)
Together with some other parts I now have everything .
Stay tuned for the reveal!

Trying to match the binding and purfling with a rosette I made almost 10 years ago.
I think I did a good job. Still need to scrape everything clean.

This European spruce over walnut M-oM is still available for the price of "make-me-an-offer-I-can't-refuse" 🤔😉

I've put those little Herdim clamps to good use right away.
Reinforcing a crack in this LG3 top caused by a shrinking pickguard.
Two cleats to go !