A Few Questions Before I Start

[fakingtheday]

first of all i'd like to say hi to everyone here, i'm a long time reader and a big fan of the work done here.

So here is my project outline:

I'm building my first real guitar from scratch. I've been diddling and daddling for the last 2 years pretty much non stop and have had mostly disasters but i have learnt a lot. I have a teacher at school who knows his stuff but anyway this is for my 12th grade major work. I'm building your basic 6 string electric guitar to my own specs more or less. Here is a break down of what i'm using wood wise.

Body: 2 Piece Bass Wood

Neck: 1 Piece american curly maple

Fret Board: African Rosewood

I plan to set the neck in and have a H H pickup wiring with a 3 way selector and 1 vol and 1 tone. I have a plan to digitally design the top of the guitar and naturally finish the back, the bridge will be a tuno-o-matic with the strings through the body, similar to the ESP guitars. I have rose wood with maple edge binding for the top of the body. The body will be similar in shape to a Joe Satriani JS1000.

SO if you guys would take some time and analyse my plans and give me some feedback it would be great.

Regards,

Jimmy

[goth_fiend]

sounds like it could be a killer guitar, if your going to build a JS1000 replica though i would advise against binding the body, unless your not going to contour it, it would be too difficult to do a binding on that body otherwise. keep us posted man

[skibum5545]

Goth fiend asked the one question that I was about to: How's it gonna be contoured like a JS and still have the binding?

Also, make sure the neck is hard (rock) curly maple, not soft (bigleaf) curly maple. If it is the latter, you'll DEFINITELY want to laminate it with some other hard wood for extra strength, and perhaps even carbon rods too.

If you want to do heavy radiusing and still have a "binding" look, check this out:

http://www.schecterguitars.com/Dproducts/2...ass_nat_pop.jpg

It's a mahogany body topped with a dark laminate and then a curly maple laminate. They carved through the veneers to get the cool effect, and the nice curviness. That might be a good option if you want to do a JS style guitar.

Edited November 6, 2004 by skibum5545

[goth_fiend]

I forgot about those shecters man i think when i finally get around to building a radius mine will have a nice quilt like that, you may want to try what skibum suggested, i think it would look awesome! or you could do an inlay in the body like a binding, but that would be a nightmare!

[fakingtheday]

thanks heaps guys, i talked to my teacher again and he said its every bit possible, we just do all the contours and the run the router around after and then sand off the binding, its only a really thin rosewood with maple tip binding to make the top seem a little isolated.

Here is a pic of the woods im using also the truss rod is in there:

This is all of the woods:

http://forums.breakthetrend.com/attachment...tachmentid=5989 (click link to view)

This is a close up of the Neck Blank:

http://http://forums.breakthetrend.com/att...tachmentid=5990 (click link to view)

The Bass is not the greatest condition but that's how they sell it, i'm really happy with the neck blank and you can't see the board that well but it has a really nice straight grain and isn't too dark. I'm thinking of inlaying my name in the fret board with gold leaf, it was half my idea but my teacher daid use gold leaf, now, Amiet is a fiddly word so how would i go about it do you guys think?

Edited November 6, 2004 by fakingtheday