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Norway Maple build.


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Been building a guitar for my nephew, he’s 10 so have been making it lightweight, that’s the aim anyway. I was tempted at first to make a 3/4 size guitar, however was having great difficulty finding templates etc. Besides, it’s more likely to last him in to adulthood! It’s also a lefty, almost made a few stupid mistakes when I have forgotten this 😂. I got a lovely piece of Norway Maple (grown in London). It was 7.2 lbs after I cut out the basic shape, so I planed it down from 45 mm to 32 mm (no toggle switch on this build so should be ok with regards to depth). This brought the weight down to 5.2 lbs. cut out the control cavity on the back and this brought it down to 4.6 lbs. I’m going to be putting contours in this guitar, same type that you get on a Strat, shoulder and belly cut. This should take off another 1/2 lb, maybe more. Neck is flamed maple. I’ve put some Evo gold frets in. It’s going to be a single pickup (Hot Rails), so kind of like a modern take on the Esquire. Haven’t glued the neck in yet, the photo is just for show at the moment 😁.

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Edited by ShatnersBassoon
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Such a pretty piece of wood there... And during the next couple of years or so your nephew will slap some stickers on it, then he'll find some rebellious youth music and spray the guitar black or pink or whatever  the most adult irritating colour is "in" at that time. Then he'll scrape his initials and a rowing boat or bug on the paint... Then, finally and hopefully, he'll grow up and learn the beauty of the oiled wood, sand all his artwork away and redo the oil finish.

Or then again, hopefully not. Some kids don't need to fight against beauty.

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53 minutes ago, Bizman62 said:

Such a pretty piece of wood there... And during the next couple of years or so your nephew will slap some stickers on it, then he'll find some rebellious youth music and spray the guitar black or pink or whatever  the most adult irritating colour is "in" at that time. Then he'll scrape his initials and a rowing boat or bug on the paint... Then, finally and hopefully, he'll grow up and learn the beauty of the oiled wood, sand all his artwork away and redo the oil finish.

Or then again, hopefully not. Some kids don't need to fight against beauty.

Haha I like it! 😂 Im going to be putting his name on the headstock, so hopefully no scraping needed ;) Talking of which, I bought some glow in the dark powder. I didn't realise that the powder is actually white though (Glows purple). This is something of an issue because I obviously don't want it to get 'lost' in to the wood. I will figure something out I'm sure, maybe the outline of the letters can be a dark material and I could use the powder for the inner portion of the letters.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I’ve never quite 100 percent figured out why I have so many problems on the wiring front, I’m following all the instructions as far as I can see. I’m getting hum but no sound from the guitar. Any ideas? I’m not running a wire under the bridge because it’s a telecaster setup, I’m taking it that’s not why? 

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I have very much liked the Blackstar Fly. 3 Watts, clean and overdrive, delay, line in and out. Batteries or transformer and an extra speaker for stereo output. I have all the add-ons but I mostly use it as a one-piece.

My playing is more on the rockabilly/50's side so the clean channel with some gain is my preferred setting. However, a friend who plays metal switches it to OD for totally different sounds.

There's others in the same size/power range, this one I know to be of decent quality and also pretty inexpensive. A fellow told that through the line out it sounds amazing through the PA, too.

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I know it's not a gigging amp but for practicing it's perfect. Using backing tracks is a no-brainer and if you choose the Bluetooth version you can connect to YouTube without having to fiddle with earphone connectors which have become somewhat of a rarity in smart phones.

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