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My New Guitar


GGW

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Three piece laminated maple neck with ebony headplate and MOP inlay

Sperzel tuners

Compensated nut carved from Trem-Nut material

Lacewood top over a chambered white ash back

String through body, ebony bridge with bone saddles

EMG-S and EMG-89 pickups

The ash is colored black with india ink

The lacewood is stained with homemade artist oil colors stain

Lacquer finish from Deft rattle cans

I’ve finally finished my guitar and wanted to show it off. I first did one build of a USACG parts project and learned so much that I thought I may as well do another one from scratch. It may not be up to the standards of some of the builds I see here, but I’m very happy with the guitar. It plays very well and sounds great. The body has four main chambers. I can really hear the chambers acoustically, but less so when plugged in. The sound is bright and clear but woody and fat as well. Just what I wanted, and the sound is still improving.

I had the opportunity to do this because in my town we have an arts center with studios for rent. One studio is a fully equipped wood shop. I enrolled in an open shop class which meant I could do any project and had the instructor there as advisor on wood issues. Most people are making furniture and this was the first time anyone had done this.

I also wanted to especially thank everyone on the Project Guitar discussion forum. I’ve mostly been lurking, using the search function ;-) and enjoying the discussions. I want to thank one member from quite a while back on the subject of neck carving; I don’t remember the name or post title. His point was that to do the whole thing meant carving the neck as well. Get a piece of 2X4 and practice. I was going to get a premade neck, but took his advice and got a cutoff at Home Depot for 99 cents and went out in my backyard with a rasp. A while later I had a bad neck, but the next one was quite good so I got some maple and made the neck as well.

The next one will be even better….., I have some bubinga!

Body Glue Up

Chamber Template

Body Unfinished

Trussrod

Headstock Inlay

Fretting

Body 1

Body 2

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For some reason the body shape reminds me of toast.

Thats not a bad thing

I like it a lot

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Thanks for the all the comments everyone!

"Jamm <I'd call it Teles Paul>"

That's about what I had in mind all right. I combined the things like best about the different styles. That's one of the things that I like about this place; no one thinks it's blasphamy to show a tilt-back headstock on a bolt on neck. :D

"erikbojerik<How do you like the 89 in the bridge position?>"

The pickup is great but there are issues with output levels. I tend to think of it as having three pickups: neck single, bridge humbucker and bridge single. All three sound great and have totally different characters. The loudest is the bridge humbucker position, the next is the neck, followed by the bridge single. I strictly made this to play at home making recordings so I can easily compensate, but if it was live, I'd always have to be on the volume control. There may be a bit of room for height adjustment but the 89 is both the quietest and loudest so you'd be going in circles. I only put on one volume control so maybe a setup with more than one would sort it out. I've got the switch as a push-pull on the tone control.

"Telenator<Love the headstock inlay!>"

Going by the lore of the old bluesmen from which comes the spirit of all things rock and/or roll, you need to name your guitar after a woman (reverse all for alternate genders). My two young daughters are very acomplished dancers so my logo is a tribute to them. The best gig I've had for a couple of seasons now is composing and recording music for their modern dance shows.

"Desopolis<That lacewood looks very different then the "lacewood" I'm used to seeing.>"

I know what you mean; now. I started getting the parts together a while back and was learning about wood at the same time. I'm in a smaller town in Canada and we have one building supply place that stocks a bit of "exotic wood" on display. I chose between what they had in stock against what I had read. Lacewood had come up as a good guitar wood and they had a nice block of it and cut me off a piece. After I started work, I started to notice other examples of lacewood and they all looked different with the large rays within a more random look that most people would be familiar with. When I looked closer at my piece, I realized that this pattern was there, but it was on the edges. Basically, I appear to have gotten a cut that does not go the more common way. I still like the pattern for what it is though.

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  • 1 year later...
"erikbojerik<How do you like the 89 in the bridge position?>"

The pickup is great but there are issues with output levels. I tend to think of it as having three pickups: neck single, bridge humbucker and bridge single. All three sound great and have totally different characters. The loudest is the bridge humbucker position, the next is the neck, followed by the bridge single. I strictly made this to play at home making recordings so I can easily compensate, but if it was live, I'd always have to be on the volume control. There may be a bit of room for height adjustment but the 89 is both the quietest and loudest so you'd be going in circles. I only put on one volume control so maybe a setup with more than one would sort it out. I've got the switch as a push-pull on the tone control.

Nice guitar - I can't recall seeing this one before, so it's great that the thread got dug back up through being referred to by the Indian ink tip.

IIRC, there is a modification out there which you can carry out on the EMG-89 to equalise the levels somewhat. I suspect it brings that humbucking level down which may not be preferable, although it does solve your circular issue :-D

Sorry i'm unsure as to where this modification is, although it does exist.

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