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Guitar Of The Month - July 2018


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Welcome to the Guitar Of The Month entry for July 2018!

ProjectGuitar.com's Guitar Of The Month contest is a showcase for members to exhibit their creations and to vote on their favourites. The contest is open entry for any and all members, new or old. Winner(s) receive a featured article at the head of the ProjectGuitar.com homepage and elevated member status. ProjectGuitar.com receives tens of thousands of unique visitors monthly; Guitar Of The Month is a great way to showcase your creations to the world!

Submissions are open throughout the month with public voting open in the last week. Polls close on the first weekend of each month.

Lastly, if you didn't win a previous month's Guitar Of The Month contest, you are encouraged to enter your build again the next month for a maximum of three consecutive months. Sometimes one entry just hits it out of the park and eclipses everything!

Tips and Guidelines

  • Upload a maximum of eight photos for the instrument in your post
  • Ensure that your guitar has a name otherwise we'll make one up 😉
  • List additional descriptive information specific to the build; for example....
    • The woods and materials used, especially if there is something unusual in there!
    • Scale length(s) and other specific configuration details
    • Electronics, pickups, etc.
    • Is this your first build, fifth or five-hundredth?
    • A bit of information on your own background as a builder helps give context to your build.
    • Was it built in the garage, at school, work or in your own shop?
    • A summary of the build's history. Was it built for yourself, friend/family or a client? Did you design the instrument and its specifications or was it built to spec?
    • What were the inspirations behind the instrument and why were various build aspects chosen?
    • Any background on what makes it special?
  • Posting a link to your guitar-building website, Photobucket, Facebook, etc. is fine, even if it is your business. In the spirit of fairness towards less experienced builders, we encourage professional builders to consider whether their entries constitute being "fair".
    • Commercial "standard" models are not a valid entry, guys....Guitar Of The Month is about unique and characterful builds, not rubber-stamped production units!
  • We reserve the right to pull entries that are thinly-guised adverts; ProjectGuitar.com is about community, sharing build processes and the exchange of ideas - not a vehicle for adverts by members that don't engage with the community.
  • If you documented your build in the forums, post a link to the thread; instruments with a build thread shared tend to attract more votes from the general community. In our experience this is the biggest attractor of votes.
  • ProTip: Voters vote with their ears as well as their eyes....if you have any soundclips of the instrument or even a YouTube video, do post it! Everybody loves to look at beautiful instruments, but hearing them demo'ed is 10x as important.

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Unsure what to write? Have a look around the entry archives for suggestions!

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If you have any questions about the contest, either PM me or ask forum members; we're a helpful bunch!

This thread is exclusively for entry posts only - any post that is not an entry will be deleted. We love to hear your discussions and opinions on the month's entries whilst the polls are open. Alternatively, head over to that instrument's build thread if one has been made in the entry post.

Good luck to all entrants!

:crowdwaits:

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Name: "The Pic-a-low"

Materials:

  1 piece black walnut body

  1/2" 5A maple burl top and 1/8" headstock overlay

  black walnut neck

  gaboon ebony fretboard with maple burl markers

Config: 32" scale length with "fat c" profile

Hardware: very modest... wilkinson tuners, song il (korean) bridge, no-name pickups w replaced alnico II magnets (didn't have a lot of faith in myself to make this worthy of more expensive gear as this was my first build but will likely replace some things given how moderately well it turned out)

Electronics: again very modest... 3 way rotary switch  + 3 way toggle wiring for parallel inside vs parallel outside, series inside vs series outside, series vs parallel, master volume, hand built 2 band active preamp with push/pull on/off and bright switch. EDIT - forgot to mention... kinda cool... if you look at the right side f hole... my preamp trimmer is accessible through the f hole.  Kinda gimmicky but cute none-the-less!

Experience/Background: did some woodworking (lot of sanding!) and solid surface fab as a young man, have built a few things like a desk and a futon... have assembled quite a few guitars from parts, always wanted to build one from scratch and got the (false) confidence from seeing so many skilled builders here making it look sooo easy (it wasn't).

Where: built in my garage w jigsaw + drill press + router + palm sander

History: I pawned off my first bass guitar - a yamaha motion b - for $75 in 1995 while broke in L.A.  Always regretted that.  It was a 32" scale bass and as primarily a guitar player, it was perfect for me.  32" scale is very rare to find and generally quite expensive so... in the diy spirit I set out to replace that bass on my own.  Picking it up the first time, this neck felt like coming home! 

Design: used fret-2-find to layout the fretboard, took some p style bass diagrams from the net and scaled it down a few percent, then smoothed it out in photoshop -pretty standard but a bit smaller.  Wanted the body to be as light as possible but also wanted to avoid neck dive given the plan of heavier/cheaper tuners so I did some forstner weight relief but kept the f-hole cavities about 3/16 wider than the f-holes themselves.

Journey: my build thread here

Standing on the shoulders of giants: special thanks to protheta, curtasia, scottr, norris, andyjr1515, mr natural - if it hadn't been for your advice and encouragement, I'm sure this could have looked like some sort of picaso/dali impression of a bass!

 

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Edited by mistermikev
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So this guitar is my first build and something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a teenager. Hopefully one or both of my children will learn the guitar because when I pass it will be theirs. I’ve been dabbling in woodworking for the last 10 years or so with some segmented woodturning and bowl turning projects. A coworker gave me some beautiful walnut and ambrosia maple and it inspired me to finally build a guitar. It was done in my garage workshop during which time I mostly parked outside...lol.  I’ll call this one Jackie, named after my wife. Let’s face it, all guitars should be named after women. I’ve been a guitarist for 34 years. This was loosely inspired by my main guitar which is a Tom Anderson drop top. I decided however, it would be more fun to do a PRS/Les Paul style carve instead. The headstock as you see is a standard strat shape, since I’ve always loved that shape. I figured Fender won’t sue me since I’m not selling it...lol.

Woods and materials:

The neck is a 5 piece laminate of ambrosia maple and walnut, with a walnut headstock veneer from the same board. It has a macassar ebony fingerboard with medium frets and an unbleached bone nut. All fret and headstock inlays are done with paua abalone. That was fun for me. It was the first time I ever tried inlay. The body is African mahogany with a 3/4” thick flamed maple top. I used a spokeshave, rasps, files, and scrapers for the carve. This was also new to me as I’ve never carved anything in my woodworking past. I also used another piece of walnut to make a cover for the electronics cavity. The neck is finished with tru oil and the body is a dyed blue burst and finished with nitrocellulose lacquer. Hard to see in the pics but the back and edges are actually a very dark blue, not black. 

Hardware:

For hardware I used a Schaller Hannes bridge, Schaller M6 locking tuners, and Schaller speed knobs and strap locks, all in their ruthenium finish. The pickups are a Kinman Blues set. They really sound great. They’re wired with a CRL five way switch and a blender pot for blending the bridge with the neck and vice versa. All pots are 250k CTS pots. The output jack is a Switchcraft and mounted in an Electrosonic jack cup that I flush mounted.

Specs:

Scale length - 25”

Fretboard radius - 12

Strings - Ernie Ball 10s

Truss rod - double action, low profile, adjusted at the body end

I documented my build process on a woodworking forum I belong to called Old Woodworking Machines (owwm.org). The guys there helped with a lot of great advice during the build. Here’s a link.

http://owwm.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=184255

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

SUSHKOV GUITARS

Hi. I'm Dmitry Sushkov, a luthier from Prague, the Heart of Europe. I have started my own guitar shop July 2015, but with a long guitar making background as employee. I have already posted my guitars here, you can check them in 2016` GOTM archive (both are winners).

The Wahlgaard project.

This build took me almost whole 2017. Starting from sketches to shipping. The customer is Ragne Wahlquist, a guitarist of  Heavy Load, well known Swedish oldschool metal band. The story of this guitar started 3 years ago when I bought a very nice curly walnut slab (just couple pieces remained for now 😀 ) and made my first demo guitar, - the Saracen with beautiful flamed walnut top. Wahlquist means a walnut leave in Sweden and Ragne searched for some special guitar made from walnut for upcoming (top secret at the time) reunion his old Heavy Load band. He felt very limited with just 6 strings and wanted NINE of them. After couple months of discussions I started from a very raw sketch made in FreeCAD.

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After almost a year Ragne received a very nice Christmas gift 😀Here you can check his own impressions.

The specs are:

Guitar construction: 9 strings set-neck headless baritone.

Hardware color: gold

Body wood: sapele mahogany

Top wood: american black walnut

Body inlays: custom MOP customer's signature

Neck construction: 3 piece with carbon laminates

Scale length: 28"

Neck wood: sapele mahogany

Fretboard wood: ebony

Frets: 29 x stainless steel SINTOMS (20 x 2.5mm and 9 x 2mm)

Fretboard inlays: custom MOP "leaves" and customer's personal monogram

Finish: clear coat high-gloss polyesther

Pickups: 2 x custom made PAF inspired, wide AlNiCo5 bar magnets and gold plated poles, brass base plate.

Bridge: Gold plated MERA Submarine III rev.2

Nut: Black TUSQ.

Toplock tailpiece: custom made MERA.

Truss rod: 1 x double action.

Electronics: active onboard very bright sounding JFET preamp.

Controls: 2 volume pots, 1 tone pot, pickup selector switch, preamp switch.

Case: SKB waterproof Injection-Molded flight case.

 

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And some videos from 2018 festivals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNi6edcf3wM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3PNvcROTUM

 

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