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Guitar Of The Month - December 2018


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Welcome to the Guitar Of The Month entry for December 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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Here's my entry for what it's worth. This was my second build that I finished in the summer, called The mk2: 

  • 2 piece khaya body
  • Book-matched flamed spalted maple top
  • 1 piece kyaha neck
  • Gabon ebony fretboard
  • 9.5" - 12.5" fretboard radius
  • Flamed maple binding and block inlays
  • Flamed maple headstock cap
  • Gabon ebony headstock inlay
  • Gabon ebony truss access cover
  • 25" scale
  • 30 jumbo frets
  • Gotoh locking tuners
  • Gotoh wraparound bridge
  • PRS HFS treble pickup
  • PRS treble-bleed volume pot
  • Coil splitting mini-toggle
  • Graphtech tusq nut
  • Finished with artist oil paints and crimson finishing oil

The maple top was only 11mm thick, so I carved a shallow arch shape into the top and also carved the same shape into the back of the body, using an offcut of the top to make a carved control cavity cover. The khaya body was sold as reclaimed "reclaimed" with several deep cracks, so I tried to make a feature of them by filling with a black resin, I then used a black grain filler on the rest of the body to match.

uc?id=1RKWcgyh1TVmD7XEqUchJRkaxjIYNlrgb

uc?id=16tmoN_T1QvT9IvwHBG4fsOmf0MoqImfGuc?id=1_C8GY45F6m8hPsV62ToFsXNE2RWjCalJuc?id=1k73-G_A08qFOAOvja2VXpOskVI93xGhCuc?id=1sq5tVnlfmJ0ivF4-pYDSC4MEmSI1QDyOuc?id=1E90HZnlthGAFOVPgrYaj9WcKusy6C2SP

A video of me playing her (pre finish) 😁

https://www.facebook.com/ashfinlayson/videos/10157359805007316

Cheers
Ash

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Name: Delta Cloud - becaus it's a slide guitar and it has cloud inlays.

build thread here: http://www.projectguitar.com/forums/topic/49382-delta-cloud-getting-close-anyway/?page=1

"The woods and materials used, especially if there is something unusual in there!"
Nothing unusual.  
One piece "A.... frican mahogany" body, and flame maple neck were sourced locally.  
fretboard, headstock overlay, pickguard, and tailpiece (all gaboon) were from allenguitar.com
1/8" flamed maple top from evilbay.
mop "pendant" headstock inlay
pearloid fretboard markers and binding
dual action truss rod
tusq nut

"Scale length(s) and other specific configuration details"
25" scale length, no radius, 23 frets.
1.75" wide at the nut, approx .80 thick at the 1st and .90 at the 12.  
Low medium fret-wire, counter-sunk bridge.  
set neck construction, body is fully hollow with a block under the bridge.  
Just over 5lbs fully assembled.

"Electronics, pickups, etc."
4 x 90mm lipsticks - 4.1 Ohms.  A 3 way toggle, a 6-pole-4-throw rotary, two volumes(bourns) and a grease bucket tone control with bypass via push/pull.  
lp/master-tone wireup with a twist - 6 different modes for the 3 way;
1) outside coils single, 2) inside coils single, 3) outside vs inside parallel, 4) bridge vs neck parallel, 5) outside vs inside series and 6) bridge vs neck series

"Is this your first build, fifth or five-hundredth?"  
This is my first 6 string, and 2nd scratch build ever.  

"A bit of information on your own background as a builder helps give context to your build."
I worked at a cabinet shop in high school and solid surface/laminate cabs 20 years ago.  I have assembled/finished quite a few guitars before.  I do a lot of diy electronics.  

"Was it built in the garage, at school, work or in your own shop?"
I have a humble garage... thank you to my wife for parking in the driveway and my neighbors for not complaining!

"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?"
I owned a 90's u2 reissue and always regretted selling it.  I built this for me, to scratch my 'slide itch'.  AFA design, I built a simple photoshop doc where I used fret2find (projectguitar!) and my humble photoshop skills to make my own plan.

"What were the inspirations behind the instrument and why were various build aspects chosen?  Any background on what makes it special?"
My requirements were: 'something that would feel a lot like my old dano', but better materials, and to leave my mark on it.  I also had a goal to challenge my self with more complicated inlays, set neck, angled headstock, and binding.  

Additionally, just wanted to say that I'm very greatful to be a part of this community!  Your input directly contributed to details like how to join my 'super-thin' top, getting my finish right(somewhat), and more.  Thank you so much to Andyjr1515, ScottR, Curtisa, Skyjerk, Mr Natural, Norris, Komodo, Lwguitar, Guitar Goomba, ShatnersBassoon, 2.5itim for guidance, encouragement, comiseration and/or just responding to my build posts!

Video demo here:


    

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The “Savart-Nought” Trapezoid Guitar

It takes a special kind of idiot to become intensely interested in the size and shape of violins crafted by a long-dead physicist like Felix Savart (1791-1841). Luckily, I am just that type of grinning moron.

Felix was known for a bunch of stuff.  He invented the “Savart” which is a unit of measurement for musical intervals. He built a device to measure the range of human hearing (Savart’s Wheel). The man seemed to be very into several things, not the least of which were acoustics, vibrating bodies, and naming stuff after himself.

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Which is how he came up with the trapezoidal, flat-top, Savart violin. This creation was highly regarded by all the governing violin organizations of his era (aka: snobs and purists) and the tone and timbre was pretty much indistinguishable from the classically shaped violins of the time.  That was no small feat.  Seriously . . . convincing a bunch of elitist fancy boys to endorse your weird instrument - no matter how well it sounds/plays - must have entailed one hell of a lot of schmoozing, stroking, and quite likely . . . bribes.

Anyway . . . so I was studying Savart violins, and was about half done with making one, when my mind was struck with the sort of fuzzy inspiration most commonly brought on by excessive consumption of high-test, homemade hooch and uncooked pork.

Why not a Savart resonator guitar, I thought?  Why not make it big and loud, I hypothesized? Why shouldn’t I immediately create a “Savart-Nought.”

The rest, as they say, is either fake news or history. I always get those two confused.

The “Savart-Nought” probably sounds as good as anything I’ve ever built (or bought). The wide bottom allows for an extra soundhole at the lower left corner, which really punches up the bass response. The 9.5 inch resonator cone - inset into the 3.75-deep body - growls like either (take your pick here)

A: The 1,000 horsepower Corvette Z06

B: Hillary Clinton on the night of November 8th, 2016

C: A hungry Rottweiller with an ingrown toenail and a hangover

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In other words, it’s sorta’ loud and a little angry.

It gets lounder if you plug it in, and crank up the volume and tone controls. The internal piezo is encased in about 1,000 layers of rubber cement (much like the legendary Hattori Hanzo katana sword) which means you get very little handling noise and tons of reso goodness.

Being a perpetually broke sort of backwoods luthier, I can’t afford fancy wood. Thus, the body of the Savart-Nought is constructed from red oak, Baltic Birch plywood, Luan plywood, some poplar (my homemade kerfing and the centerline neck stick), and regular old chunks of 2x4 (those form the trapezoid corner posts to which the sides are attached).

I’ve included a National, 25” scale (actually I set it at 25 1/8th . . . it sounds better) and the action is lightning fast. That’s likely because, again since I’m impoverished, the fingerboard is made from poplar and sprayed with Walmart’s finest black lacquer. The body itself is stained in black cherry, and topped off with Walmart’s second finest clear lacquer.

Oh . . . the neck is maple. I don’t know how the hell that happened.

And . . . lest I forget . . . the cone coverplate is from a 1961 Falcon, mutilated quite artistically with my $9 Harbor Freight angle grinder, and coated on the bottom with a bit of JB Weld so it doesn’t go all floppy.

I think Felix Savart would be both disgusted and impressed.

I could ask for nothing more.

DSCN0928

Scale:  25" scale • 15 frets to the body

Strings:  6 of ‘em

Body Size:  18” at base. 8” wide at heel. 3.75” deep

Total Instrument Length: Around 41"

Acoustic Gizmo: 9.5" resonator biscuit cone 

Cone Cover: 1961 Falcon hubcap coated with silver metallic Rustoleum

Tail Piece: 24-gauge steel lopped into shape with my HF angle grinder and coated with the aforementioned Rustoleum.

Amplification: Internal Piezo Pickup with volume and tone controls. Inset into neck stick and encased with enough rubber cement to dampen any handling noise.

Neck: Maple . . . and steel reinforced

String Height at Zero Fret: 1mm

String Height at 12: 4mm 

Neck width at zero fret: 1 3/4"

Neck Width at body: 2 1/4"

Weight: The Savart-Nought, being of French descent, is very vain. It thus declines to step on a scale and weigh itself.

 

 

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Hello Everyone,

It's been a while since I posted on here. It is hard to find the time to finish some of these projects, Last year I moved into a new house and had to re setup my entire shop before finishing some of the guitars I had been working on. This one is particularly special to me as it has an inlay inspired by one of my old band logo's designs. 

This was my first guitar that I had done a drop top on, and it was quite a learning experience. There are some things I would do differently next time regarding that. It was also the first time I tried to do exact grain matching cover plates. Mostly techniques I learned from guys here! This is my 5th serious build, however I do not have any background in woodworking other than trying to figure out guitars. I am actually a welder/electrician by trade. 

Name: Titan 7

Neck:

  • 7 strings
  • 27" scale
  • 12"fretboard radius
  • Ziricote fretboard
  • Wenge/maple/paduak neck
  • Maple binding
  • Luminlay side dots
  • Graphtech nut
  • Hipshot open back locking tuners
  • 24 frets
  • Paduak logo inlay

Body

  • Sapele body
  • Quilted maple top
  • Wenge inlaid pickup ring accents
  • "Drop top"
  • Grain matched cavity covers

Hardware/Electronics

  • Evertune bridge
  • 3 way selector 
  • Coil tapping "push push" volume
  • Bareknuckle Juggernauts 

I came up with a quick video just so you can see the guitar in action as well.

 

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