bghk6581

I'd like to enter mine. I just finished adding the hardware today. Here are the specs and a few pictures. Lefty LP Standard based on the 59 LP standard design 24.75 scale length 1 piece african mahogany body 1 piece african mahogany neck(scarf) 2 piece ambrosia maple top, one piece headstock cap and cavity covers 3x3 kidney style tuners black hardware(tom/tail) chechen fretboard with 22 frets ambrosia maple crown inlays black binding graphite nut active pickups Tru-Oil finish(natural)

Thats gonna be a BIG volute, lol. Love the binding/headstock cap combination.

Looking good so far. I have a suggestion and a question. I notice that with most PRS builds, the biggest thing they mess up on is the carve on the bottom cutaway. They don't make it big enough. On the PRS, its more circular than I see people make it on their builds. As for the question, I notice you use wenge. I have a big slab of wenge but I heard about skin irritation problems when cutting wenge. Could you share your experiences with using wenge? Thanks.

As promised, here are pics of the neck heel cleaned up, as well as the finished headstock. I cleaned and trimmed up the headstock cap a little. Now I have a question. The only steps left is before finishing and assembling is drilling the tuner holes, gluing the neck on, gluing the fretboard on, carving the neck profile, and trimming the neck portion of the neck pickup cavity. The only problem with this procedure, is if done in this order, the router might hit and cut the fiber optic strands and may damage them. If I glue the fretboard on after trimming the neck PU cavity, I will have to wait to carve the profile afterwards, which I planned to do on my spindle sander. Any suggestions? BTW, the contrast in color between the neck and body may be because the body is honduran mahogany and the neck is african mahogany.

Today, I worked a little on the neck. I shaped the heel of the neck(not pictured), and I shaped and glued the bubinga/walnut headstock cap to match the body of the guitar. Front: Back: All glued up: I'll take pics of the neck heel tomorrow.

Its been a while since I worked on this build. I had to fix the neck heel and I just got around to fixing that. Today, I only routed the pickups. I bought fiberglass pickup templates, but I transfered the template to 3/4" plywood so I won't run the risk of messing up the original template. I still have some fret dressing to do and route the bridge/tailpiece and drill for the tuners and input jack.

I'm going to add a spst. On one of the body pics, I have a small hole next to the holes for the pots/switch, that is for the mini switch. I didn't know how large to make it so I just used a small bit and will make it bigger once I buy a mini switch. I want to figure out how to have a mini 3way switch that if its in the up position, the pickups/fiber optic circuit is not getting power, the middle position, the pickups is getting power, and the down position, both the pickups and circuit is getting power. This way, I can turn everything off and keep the input cable plugged in and the batteries to the pickups won't lose any juice.

Its been a while since I posted progress to this build. I have been SLOWLY making progress to this build and hopefully have it finished in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I bought a new digital SLR and have been taking pictures with that. I had to make another fretboard because the thickness, along with radiusing would cause damage to the side dots. This board is bolivian rosewood and I think its the best board I have worked with in terms of looks. I also am using a circuit that I designed to change the LED color. This circuit was made for me by a friend who lives in Russia. He has his own amp company and he offered to make me a bunch of circuits for my future builds. I was able to route the neck joint but I'm still having trouble with the neck where it meets the body. Anyone have any ideas on how to cut at an angle on the neck so that it is flush with the body on the side? First the fretboard: With the light off and the LED circuit on. The LED can display red, blue, green, violet, aqua, yellow and white. Here is the neck in the body of the guitar. I haven't glued the neck in. I wanted to finish the fretboard and glue that in first before I glue the neck in. With the fretboard on. Tight neck fit. Now its looking like a guitar! Side view of the thickness of the headstock. The bubinga cap is about 1/16" but the bottom is still rough so I have to still sand that. Closeup

Alright. Its been a while since I posted updates to this guitar. I should be finished with it, but I've been taking my time, and buying more supplies for my guitar building. I made another fretboard; slotting the board and and did the fiber optics on that board. I also drilled the pilot holes for the controls on the body. Enjoy! I made a fret slotting jig to slot the fretboard. The saw blade is a stewmac slotting blade. It took about 3 minutes to slot 2 boards. Not shown is me using the same stewmac slotting saw to cut the ebony into binding but that didn't take long either. I also used a dremel to route out the fiber optic access on the underside of the fretboard. It doesn't look pretty, but it won't be seen anyway. All epoxied and taped up, waiting for it to finish curing. I also did the side dots. I put a tiny bit of epoxy inside the hole where the fiber optic goes in the side dot and sanded it flush. I finally got the 12th fret dots straight!!! Here is the side shot of the fretboard with light going through the side dots.

Today, I decided to practice on making the neck profile. I saw someone from another message board use this machine and I thought I would do the same. I used a Ridgid belt/spindle sander to make the profile. I initally messed up a little on the first neck with the sides(too narrow) and parts of the headstock, so I used this neck to practice on. Also pictured is the new neck with the truss rod routed. After the test neck was done, I used 60 then 120 grit sandpaper to finish it off. I then put a little water on it to show the figure. I wish this one wasn't a test neck. Its got alot of crazy figure going on.

I've been slacking lately with the guitar build. I decided to make a new neck/fretboard since the side dots didn't align and it looks like if I radius the fretboard, it will go into the the side dots. I ordered some thicker wood for the fretboard so when I radius it, it won't go into the side dots. As for the neck, on the current one, I had a couple of snags on the side when cutting the sides. Lessons learned. Anyway, I did get to make the LED circuit. Here is a link to the video I made of the circuit.

I was more worried about not having enough wood after I radius the board, than centering the dots. I was thinking afterwards to have a centerline. Oh well, a great lesson learned.

Yeah, thats one thing I regret not doing better. Plus, I haven't radiused the board yet so I 'm really afraid of how much room I'll have after its radiused.

Last night, I did some work on the fretboard. For my first project, I decided to try my hand at doing fiber optic side dots. In my opinion, I thought I did a pretty ok job. A few things I learned from this part of the project: - Epoxy is tough to deal with, especially when trying to hold the fibers down and not getting any on your fingers - Make the channel a little deeper and a little farther from the side. This will cause a better bend in the fibers from the end to the channel - Sand lightly and wait til the epoxy has fully cured before sanding. This will cause the ebony to not get in the side dot hole. - Use a scraper to finalize the side dot to prevent any ebony dust in the dot and to brighten the dot material Any comments and criticism is strongly welcomed.

Yesterday, and today I began work on the fretboard. The fretboard is morado and the binding is gaboon ebony. I already slotted the fretboard and started to add the binding to it. Once the ebony was glued and dried, I used a router to cut it to size. Tomorrow, I'll radius it and then add the side dots.