Last Project

[Racer X]

Never occured to me to submit this, till now (Guitar's been finished for about 6 months or more, now. Oops!), so here it goes:

The body is actually an 80 Chandler body that I was lucky enough to snag, on Ebay. When I got it, it was kinda rough. The previous owner started prepping it, but hadn't removed all the original paint, there were extra holes for both the strap knobs and jackplate (apparently, instead of FIXING the holes, he chose to just make new ones), so time was spent properly wood-filling these holes, and reshaping the mangled jack access hole.

The entire body was removed of it's original taxi-yellow paint, and finessed, so that all flat surfaces were actually flat, and all edges were even and smoothe. Extra attention was paid to the front and back surfaces, by sanding them over a sheet of plateglass, with several full pages of sandpaper adhered to it. Any low spots were filled with Evercoat poly glazing fill, and resanded, till absolutely flat. The front face of the neck pocket was reworked to accomodate a standard strat-style neck (front face was originally a flat, tele-style face). You can still make out the Chandler info, slightly, in the neck pocket.

The graphics were actually designed, within Photoshop, and printed out on waterslide decal paper. About 6 copies were done till they were to my liking. (A computer prototype was created to make sure the sizes and placements were just so).

A local body shop was hired for the paint work: I handed them the body, prepped. They applied the primer, and snow-white basecoats, and handed it back to me, for decal placement. After, they got the body back, for the cleacoat stages. Initially, we agreed to 3 coats of clear, so the body wouldn't be deadened, but after not being quite satisfied at the flatness over the decals, paid for an additional 3 coats. This is a shot right after the graphics were applied, prior to clearcoating:

I wasn't happy with the first neck, so I bought a new one. The new neck was a blank headstock design, and headstock was shaped, using an online picture found of a Strathead Charvel, printed to scale. Neck was finished in a wipe-on satin poly, but was glossed up a bit, when I realized the nice flame within the maple. Shelf routed for the Floyd nut. Neck is a nice width, but was considering having it shaved, to thin it out a little.

All hardware on the guitar was bought new from Mighty Mite, including the Floyd licensed JT-580 trem, except for the pickup ring, which I had lying around, and I temporarily dropped in a high output Epiphone pickup, until funds would allow, and I could decide on what to put in (Extra painting and body work sucked up the rest of my funds at the time. Actually, it doesn't sound too bad.). Body was modified to eliminate the original woodscrew-type trem posts, and inserts were installed. I wasn't sure the control route was exactly like that of a San Dimas Charvel, so I had a control cover made, using the actual body-route as a template.

To ensure that I could drop-d detune, quickly, using the fine tuner, I had the trem blocked for dive-only. All in all, I am thrilled at how well this came out. Better than I had hoped. Body has a nice resonance, plays nicely, and stays in tune wonderfully.

[SG3390]

looks good! seems to have been a successful project! hope you enjoy your hard work!

[Daniel Sorbera]

Very cool indeed. I like the nice clean look.

[Racer X]

Hey, thanks for the kind words, guys. It was fun, but it IS addictive! I'm already working on my next one, and driving the wife crazy! hehe.

[oneshowmaster]

nice piece!

[tikvo]

Nice one !

Love the artwork !

[Racer X]

Thanks. The whole project was kinda based off of Warren Demartini's French guitar. Obviously, I went a different route, in the graphics department. As Randy, Simon, and Paula would say: "I made it my own". hehe.