marek Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 (edited) My first one, finished... it's left handed with the strings the wrong way round. once i had finished it i ran it down to a shop in london to have it properly set up and stuff. it made a world of difference having an expert fine-tune my frankenstein. learnt a lot doing this one, like, how to cut a trussrod channel too deep or sanding the skin off my hands. thanks everyone for the advice on this forum btw. it sounds just like a strat when using the neck position, and then death metal in the bridge position. http://www.wikid.co.uk/guitar/ Edited December 5, 2004 by marek Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jammy Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 Lookin pretty good for a first attempt well done! How come you went for the "wrong way up left hander" style? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marek Posted December 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 i started playing really young with a guitar i found in the attic, and no-one told me you're supposed to swap the strings round if you're a leftie. by the time i found out i thought it was too late. one advantage of the way i play is that i can play a right handed guitar with no probs (except for the fact that the knobs are always under my arm and they all get turned unless i'm careful or tape them down) the guitar i had before this was a right handed strat with a duncan '59, with the knobs ripped out. so i didn't put any knobs on this one. the switching works so it's either one pickup or the other or off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeB Posted December 5, 2004 Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 very well done, a nice guitar there what do you play and what can you play lead wise with the strings like that! it looks unnatural!! props for tryin!! nice guitar, really, im a big fan of oil finished, and thats just lovely, good job Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marek Posted December 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 5, 2004 i mostly play for a ska/reggae/metal band, so sometimes i'm shredding powerchords, and sometimes i'm playing the skank, or some sort of palm-muted melody on the lower strings. soloing, i end up using the full range of the guitar. this guitar has the fattest highest bass frets i could find so pulloffs are really easy. as soon as i started playing it i realised that soloing on it was much easier for me because of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galaga_Mike Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 Hey Marek, That looks great. Quick question: did you remedy the too-deep truss rod channel and if so, how? I'm also curious how well it adjusts the neck if you didn't fix it. Great job! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marek Posted December 6, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 the trussrod channel ended up being about 4mm too deep. the reason i decided to do something about it was because i was worried the neck would be really thin behind the trussrod. what i did was route the trussrod channel right through, and put a fresh piece of wenge down there and glued it. but, i screwed up carving the back so i chucked it and used the leftovers to make another neck. the wood for the neck minus the ebony was £15 (~$30US) and there's easily enough wood there for two necks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skibum5545 Posted December 6, 2004 Report Share Posted December 6, 2004 This is some nice work for a first try; congrats! A couple suggestions: Regarding the headstock, the top plate looks a little haphazard, especially around the trussrod access. You could take a thin piece of something, maybe even ash, and make a new top or a truss rod cover, or something. It would look a lot better. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the finish on the body. IMO it looks too flat; what grit did you sand to, or is it just the nature of the finish? I would do a different finish, possibly Waterlox or some other oil-based wipe on clear that dries hard. A little more sheen would really bring out the beauty of the wood. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marek Posted December 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 cheers, buddy. the headstock, its a bit of a mess, i ended cutting out by balancing my little router on top of it for which the bit was too short, so i had to do one shallower pass and then a deeper one. i am intending on making a trussrod cover, but i'll do it when i find the wood. i'm going to do it in a little white flame. the reason i decided to do a top plate was because i was worried about the extra wings of wood i had to glue to the sides coming off. glue paranoia you're right the finish is incredibly dull. i went for the cheapest option i could find - teak oil, and got really lazy when it came to sanding it afterwards. I think I just found a peice of well worn 600 grit on the floor which was almost completely ruined with half-dried teak oil anyway. i just wanted to stick it all together to see if it worked. I think i'll do it again at some later point, but i can't take off the bridge, because i knackered the screws that screw it in to the body. the back of the neck is really nice and shiny though, because when i took it in for a set up (which was really quite expensive) they did lots of nice stuff like buffing the back of the neck with one of those wheels. can you buy buffing-wheel drill attachments? maybe i'll do that when i've finished. p.s. very impressed by your use of semicolons. maybe when i grow up i'll learn where to put them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StratDudeDan Posted December 7, 2004 Report Share Posted December 7, 2004 p.s. very impressed by your use of semicolons. maybe when i grow up i'll learn where to put them. i don't know why, but that just really made me laugh. anywho, do you have any pictures from while you were working on it? specifically from while you were doing your truss rod routing? i've been kinda looking for some pictures of how different people do that kind of work. p.s., looks great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marek Posted December 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 11, 2004 no photos, but i can tell you i just marked out where i was going to cut, then used my router that has a guide attachment thing that i just line up with the side of the neck wood. A few passes later, a flat bottomed trussrod channel that's everso slightly too deep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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