My Neck Thru Guitar Project, Unique Design!

[Ben]

I made that explorer pic by taking the strat one and reshaping the body on paint. The strat headstock just looked wrong so I quickly reshaped it. I'd give it a lot more attention before I built anything.

As a little side project I might try to build a flying V, with a budget of about £10.

I have lots of spare bits lying around that I could use, like the crappy tuners from my saga tele kit, Pot, knob and jack from a broken effects pedal, aluminium box section to act as neck reinforcement, scrap oak and plywood for the body and neck... Depending on what sort of pickups I make for this main project, I may have a spare magnet that I could use to make a pickup for the V too.

I have some thin steel rod that could be glued on as 'frets'.

Could probably try to make my own bridge too...

In fact I might not even need the £10!

Edited April 23, 2006 by Ben

[Ben]

Heres a photo:

I'm thinking I may have changed my mind pickguard wise... I'm really liking the contrasting laminates, and the dyed body wings, so I'll try to do my best to preserve the contrast in colour and I'll go with pickguard design 5. Still not set in stone though.

Fretboard dots are dowell rod the paw thing was a sort of 'spur of the moment' thing. Its just lots of dots drilled close together. not quite finished yet though. I'm thinking of doing a smaller paw on the 5th fret.

As you may deduce from all the smiley faces in this post I'm pretty pleased with it so far!

Definitely not perfect, but about as good as I could hope for with my very small, cramped 'shop' (garage floor ), and all my crappy, annoying, blunt handtools!

[whitey]

a pickguard would waste that thing man

if you left the design like that would there be any difference to your other guitar?

have one in standarsd ad the other in a low tuning if your into metal,would be handy?

any way...a pickgaurd would waste that thing

[thegarehanman]

I'm thinking I may have changed my mind pickguard wise... I'm really liking the contrasting laminates, and the dyed body wings, so I'll try to do my best to preserve the contrast in colour and I'll go with pickguard design 5. Still not set in stone though.

Finally, you see things my way

[scottyd]

I think number 5 is the best choice, cause its not too much and not too little. Sweet project too by the way!

[skibum5545]

I think a small pickguard like #5 looks good on a carved top guitar like a Les Paul because of the way it separates itself as a separate plane from the surface; I'm not so sure how good it would look on a flat top like this. I'm afraid it might look a little too much like a patch-up-- like you're trying to hide a single mistake at the cost of the total design.

A design like #2 or #3, while it does cover more wood, nonetheless creates a more cohesive overall design. Besides, the entire top half of the guitar is still exposed, so it's not like you're painting the whole thing black or anything.

It is, however, your guitar, so you can pick whatever design suits your needs. It's your dream guitar, not the forum's!

[Ben]

Once its all glued up and sanded, (in the photo its just been placed together), I'll see how easy it is to selectively dye the wings without it bleeding into the other pieces. If I can preserve the difference in colour of the laminates I dont think I'll go with the big pickguards, if not, I'll reconsider them.

I might ever make some mock ups from black card and place them on there to see what it would look like... if I can be bothered.

if you left the design like that would there be any difference to your other guitar?

Well they'll look a little similar, but far from identical.

I very much doubt they'll sound or play the same. The other has a scalloped fingerbard & tele hardware, this has a sustainer and my own (most likely P-90 style) pickups, so they are pretty different.

I think a small pickguard like #5 looks good on a carved top guitar like a Les Paul because of the way it separates itself as a separate plane from the surface; I'm not so sure how good it would look on a flat top like this.

I know what you mean.... I could always make a card one like I said above (if its just the #5 design, it wouldnt be any harder to make the real thing really), I could just place it on there and see how it looks before I do anything permenant.

I'll play it by ear and see how it turns out.

Thanks for all the comments!

Edited April 25, 2006 by Ben

[Ben]

Update:

Progression:

• Cleaned up inlay on 12th fret and done 5th fret inlay (look good from afar, less so up close, but I'm satisfied)
  
• Glued neck to body wings
  
• routed for tremolo
  
• Begun routing freehand for pickups, then stopped before I screwed up. I'm going to make templates soon
  
• Carved neck/body transition. Pleased with how this looks and feels.
  
• Improved body carving.
  
• Sanded body. The dye has been sanded off so its all quite pale for now.
  
  
  • Broke headstock http://www.projectguitar.com/uploads/emoticons/default_biggrin.png' alt=':D'> Should hopefully be able to fix this soon. Started a thread if anyone can help.
    

  Annoyances:

  [*]The previously mentioned headstock break

  [*]EXAMS

  I'll try to get pics later today

[Ben]

Heres a photo:

As you can see its a lot paler without the dye, and also the glue lines from the original table are a lot more evident, whereas when dyed they were nearly invisible. The pickup routes arent finished, and neither is the trem route. I just roughly removed a lot of the material before I glued the wings on to save me some time later.

Lots of sanding ahead.

But looks like I got the headstock fixed thanks to peoples help on this forum

Edited May 14, 2006 by Ben

[Jon]

Great job fixing the headstock! It's coming along very nicely.

[Robert_the_damned]

Thats looking killer! I love the body shape...very explorer/ mockingbird/SG/Iceman! very nice indeed. I like the fact you've decided to do your own thing with the pickups...defently a good call. Pickguard #5 would look good I think and it'd give it another visual tie to an SG

Looking forward to seeing this thing finished!

[Ben]

Thanks Jon and Robert,

Heres a few more photos. They're a bit dull [thanks to the weather] and crappy [thanks to my camera/ photography skills], but they show some stuff like the neck/ body joint etc.

***I'll edit in the other photos as thumbnails in a sec. Posting this for now so I dont lose what I've written while I try to figure out what the hell is going wrong with my computer***

EDIT: My computer and imageshack don't seem to be getting on so well, so I'm uploading them to my yahoo account. The time remaining bar says 24 mins, so in 24 mins I will post a link

I've been spending ages sanding this afternoon and its getting pretty smooth. Plus the sanding seems to make all the grain patterns stand out more, as some of the photos show. I also drilled the cavities in the back for the rotary switches on the 2 horns. This was a real pain, as my handheld drill had trouble with such a large drill bit and kept getting hot and stuggling. It was also difficult to keep it straight and get the correct depth. Turned out ok though. The routing on the back is a little scruffy, but will be covered up, so I'm not too bothered.

Thanks to exams, progress will grind pretty much to a halt soon for quite a while. My first exam is next week (22nd May) and they finish on the 29th of June.

Edited May 15, 2006 by Ben

[Ben]

At last!

Heres the link to my yahoo account with a few more photos:

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mrbutteri...album?.dir=814e

[!!METAL MATT!!]

I love that design!!! but I hate the Bridge and the Pickups

All "n" All its

!!METAL MATT!!

[jer7440]

Gotta love the head bangin' storm trooper! That guitar is pretty sweet too.

[rsguitar]

Nice guitar My first guitar build was also made out of oak since the lumber yard near me only had oak big enough to make a guitar with..... Looks great!!!!!!!!!!

[Ben]

Do you hate the pickups because of how they look or what they are, Matt?

If its the look of them you dislike, then that isn't going to change (except maybe the colour, I'll test and see if white or black looks best), but if its the sound of jazzmaster pickups you dont like then dont be decieved by the covers. I'm making my own pickup's to go under the covers. They'll have a variable 'heat' , with resistances up to about 16K each, so they should be able to cope with high gain metal stuff too Plus the switching means I could have them in series, = 32K, but that's maybe slighty OTT

How heavy was your 1st guitar, rsguitar? I was expecting this one to be pretty heavy, even with all the chambering, but its strangely turned out to be very light so far.

More surprisingly, its not even neck heavy. I was worried that it may be, since although the body may be chambered, the neck is still a solid piece of oak. Plus it has 24 frets proud of the body.

Thanks for the comments!

Edited May 16, 2006 by Ben

[rsguitar]

How heavy was your 1st guitar, rsguitar? I was expecting this one to be pretty heavy, even with all the chambering, but its strangely turned out to be very light so far.

More surprisingly, its not even neck heavy. I was worried that it may be, since although the body may be chambered, the neck is still a solid piece of oak. Plus it has 24 frets proud of the body.

The body design was some where inbetween a bc rich gunslinger and a jackson soloist. But it had a farington shapped hole just below the neck. It only had one pickup and it had a flat mount kahler with a marlbe paint job. So to answer your question about the weight it was actualy fairly light. I would guess yours to be a bit more heavy than mine was.

I must say that some oak has a great look to it as does yours..

[!!METAL MATT!!]

Do you hate the pickups because of how they look or what they are, Matt?

If its the look of them you dislike, then that isn't going to change (except maybe the colour, I'll test and see if white or black looks best),

Well you know its my mind set that P90's are A rock and blues pickup (Just how I think) this design could be a wicked metal axe but to me the pickups and bridge mix it up to much, first that style of bridge SCREAMS cheep at me (again just me) and the pickups just look out of place BUT try the black maybe that will help

But man this is your Axe dont let what I think stop you from building the guitar you want, I still love this thing and when its done im sure it will kick ass

!!METAL MATT!!

[Ben]

But man this is your Axe dont let what I think stop you from building the guitar you want

Dont worry, I wont Its not really intended to be a metal guitar, I'm not even into anything more metal than a few metallica songs that I quite like.

The bridge screams cheap because it was cheap as was pretty much everything for this project (except the stupidly expensive magents and wire for the pickups), cos its all I can afford.

[Ben]

Added a few more photos:

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mrbutteri...album?.dir=814e

I got bored of it being all pale so I quickly wiped on some wood dye. It really brings out the wood grain. Also highlighted all the dents and scratches that needed sanding out.

Sanding is so dull, yet seems so much more interesting after a couple of hours maths revision

Exam on monday

[!!METAL MATT!!]

I would Clean them Body routs up man

!!METAL MATT!!

[Ben]

Don't worry I will be doing when I get the time and motivation to make templates. The current scruffy routes are all smaller than their intended final size.

[!!METAL MATT!!]

OH Ok you had me a bit freaked there

!!METAL MATT!!

[Jalien21]

dude, matt. you spelled living wrong in your signature. (cool guitar)