ProjectGuitar.com Posted July 11, 2019 Report Share Posted July 11, 2019 Welcome to the Guitar Of The Month entry for July 2019! 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. ----==---- Unsure what to write? Have a look around the entry archives for suggestions! ----==---- 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! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Bizman62 Posted July 12, 2019 Popular Post Report Share Posted July 12, 2019 (edited) This is #3½ of my builds and thus the latest completed one. Let's call her OR-Git since most of the wood has come from the outlet of the OR parquet factory in Mikkeli, Finland. As said, the woods aren't actual guitar woods. The top is of nogal which is some sort of South American walnut. In one of the blanks the last half a meter had some figuration which I bookmatched. The body is of roasted Estonian alder, bought from the sauna building department at the local hardware store. The neck is the same nogal as the top, with a cherry-merbau-cherry stripe from OR, outlined with 0,55 mm flamed birch veneers sourced from another factory by a fellow builder. The fretboard is of merbau, again from OR. Acrylic dots. Black plastic side dots. The electrickery cover is also of merbau The hardware and pickups are from various Chinese sources Two P90's, notice the matte sanded covers Wraparound bridge which I changed to a smaller one during the build Closed tuners with somewhat matching knobs Dark brown translucent speed knobs with copper digits shining from the underside. Finished with OsmoColor 3001 "clear" oil wax and carnauba car wax paste. Weigh: 2.9 kg/6.4 lbs The top was radiused by drawing the radius free handed to the ends of the wing blanks and planed accordingly. The silhouette was drawn using a template for a LP Jr. double cut. The scale length is 24.75" and the fretboard has 24 frets just because. The last ones are of no use since my sausage fingers won't fit... Designing the headstock is always a PITA... Again, I used the PRS template I copied from a fellow builder and tried to shape the rest to something original. Well... After having roughly shaped it against the end roll of the giant belt sander, our Master told that it looks somewhat like a Taylor, only narrower at the end. Quite some time later I noticed that my acoustic Tenson has just the same shape. Well what do you know... As for my woodworking background... I've participated a Saturday course at the Community College for four years now. Other than that, I've chopped quite a lot of firewood during the last 25 years. The few years at school don't count, that was too long ago and the results looked just like you might imagine, fine sanded with a rasp and flooded in thick paint... I'd rather do things my way than just follow a template. Up: cutting the shape for the wings Below: There's masking tape to protect the join. Edited July 21, 2019 by Bizman62 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Mike T Posted July 18, 2019 Popular Post Report Share Posted July 18, 2019 It is easy to see my inspiration is the Paul Bigsby guitars of the 1940's. His eclectic, hands-on and one-off approach was super cool. My background was opposite as a production kitchen cabinet maker. I basically established a formula and repeated it. This build, my first as a retired dude, was a chance to take some time, be creative and riff on what has inspired me. I'm an artist, amateur musician and guitar maker and do this for my own enjoyment in my garage/workshop. The guitar body is 1 1/2" poplar with 1/4" maple, oak and mahogany pieces laminated to the back. The neck is maple with a rosewood fingerboard and pearloid inlays. It is a 25 1/2" scale. I fashioned an aluminum neck plate. I applied a walnut veneer to the headstock and finished it off with a handmade aluminum truss rod cover. Sperzel style staggered tuners were used which I dulled down with steel wool to match a satin aluminum finish. I sprayed the front of the body with a custom lacquer mix of a midnight blue color and clear top coat. I made oval pickup rings from aluminum with walnut spacers. The other chrome hardware was fumed in a muratic acid bath to dull down the finish. I hand cut and applied aluminum pieces to the end of the guitar to mimic the effect of a crescent moon. My idea from the start was to have the guitar express the winter and summer seasons. That is why the guitar is dubbed the "Solstice" model. I misted on a light blue lacquer to the sides of the body to imitate approaching dawn. I routed out the back of the guitar and layed in different veneers of warm tones in a geometric mountain/forest motif. I finished off the back with a lacewood crescent at the end. I wanted the vibrant lacewood as a counterpoint to the aluminum crescent on the front. The back was finished in clear lacquer with a bit of amber added. I chose the Seymour Duncan P-rails pickups because of the tonal possibilities: P90, single coil and humbucker in 12 switching combinations. I can only handle basic wiring at best so I lucked out in finding a schematic for this complex wiring setup on the SD website. I used push-push pots and one selector switch to keep the front of the guitar uncluttered so the pickguard shape stands out. I posted two videos: The first shows the different P-rail switching options in neck-middle-bridge starting with HB parallel, HB series, single coil and P90. The second is a short video of me playing utilizing a looper. 6 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted July 21, 2019 Report Share Posted July 21, 2019 NAME: SWEET SPOT BLONDE a.k.a. "Texas Sweetspot" - scratch build #4 for me! SPECS: overall weight: 6lbs 8oz - hair lighter than the blue and 'feels' very light NECK: nut: Graph Tech nu bone string trees: Graph Tech scale length: 25.5" fretboard radius: 12" frets: 22 med jumbo Jescar fret markers: ceramic cream .25" dots neck profile: vintage 'C' profile - classic strat feel neck format: 2 piece, heal adjust via fretboard, 6 inline reverse headstock CBS style, no headstock angle neck joint: sculpted access bolt-on via steel ferrules truss rod: Allied Lutherie flex strong - access via 19th fret spoke wheel neck wood: birdseye maple, rosewood fretboard, rosewood headstock veneer neck finish: tru oil flat w nitro clear on headstock HARDWARE: Tuners: Kluson Tone Pros vintage style reverse Tremolo: Gotoh 510T FE1 pickup format: 4 single coils - body mounted Pickups: Bootstrap custom set - oatmeal stout (8.6k A5 43AWG), golden ale (7.4k A5 42AWG), golden ale(5.6k A2 42AWG), 54 Vintage Pro (5.6k A5 42AWG) pickup covers: black w rosewood veneer Controls: master volume, 6-way 'mode' rotary, 3-way lever, push-pull (true bypass) active mid booster w volume/boost control modes: 1) outside singles (tele), 2) inside singles (strat), 3) outside vs inside parallel (prs), 4) 2xbridge vs 2xneck parallel, 5) outside vs inside series 6) 2xbridge vs 2xneck series(Les Paul) pots: bournes lever switch: CRL knobs: rosewood BODY: body design: based on a 62 strat template available online... but then reduced by 5% for approx 1/2" less length/width in dimensions body top radius: 30" body edge: 1/2" roundover with inset rosewood binding body format: solid tremolo block encoumpases two bridge pickups, birdseye neck pickup block - neck pickups sit in semi-hollow chamber, deep sculpted belly cut body thickness: 2.125" at center body wood: 1pc african mahogany w bookmatched 4A flamed maple top, rosewood binding body finish: champagne frost (mohawk) nitro with watco nitro clear, back is finished in tru oil flat "A bit of information on your own background as a builder helps give context to your build." have some woodworking and solid surface fabrication in my background. Have assembled many partscasters. "Was it built in the garage, at school, work or in your own shop?" built in my humble garage (thanks to my wife Lori for allowing me to take it over!) "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?" it all started when I was going to build a strat. I got some design feedback from a few guitar forums and it was pretty brutal. Most of the comments centered around the idea that my 'blue' design was quite a departure from the std strat style. With that in mind I did a second design of something I thought would have more of a 'traditional' feel... but I couldn't see scrapping the blue so I decided to do both. "What were the inspirations behind the instrument and why were various build aspects chosen?" I have been dreaming about a 4 pickup strat for a long time... my goal was to make something that wouldn't compromise the 'stratty' sound, but would have more hum canceling options, tele options (bridge + neck), and would do series humbucker (ie les paul) sounds fairly well. "Any background on what makes it special?" this is my strat. there are many like it but this one is mine. without me my strat is worthless... without my strat I am worthless! Lot of lessons learned, lots of hair pulled out, lots of hours of doubt... it's the struggles and overcoming them that seem the most special to me. As always: couldn't have done it without the advice/input/shoulders of many here who are quick with advice and help. "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". I have a facebook 'business' page... but only because I just wanted a page where I could build a shrine to my scratch builds. www.facebook.com/mvmeguitars build thread here (note first post has all build updates uninterrupted): and below is my humble video demo from youtube: 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Wiggins Posted July 23, 2019 Report Share Posted July 23, 2019 I've always wanted to build a RESO-ELECTRIC, and this is it. Pine body used neck off of a accoustic guitar I had laying around.y 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProjectGuitar.com Posted July 26, 2019 Author Report Share Posted July 26, 2019 Time to vote! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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