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Build #3, Baritone Singlecut


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>>kenggg

>>hooglebug

>>capello

Thanks!

>>Maurits

Thanks! This is the first time I´ve ever worked with pearl, so I was kind of nervous about the whole inlay process. Turned out pretty OK, though. I´m doing the logo now, much more work to do on that one...

>>CrazyManAndy

Thanks! I´ve been really unsure about what finish it should have, but lately I´ve almost made up my mind... I´ve been thinking about blue or red, but now I´m thinking about finishing it in a colour that matches the mahogany and wenge a little more. Since I don´t have access to a spray gun I´m going to clearcoat it with nitrocellulose spray cans this time too. I always thought: No spray gun=no bursting. Well, I´m going to try a burst anyway... I´ll try to stain a burst by hand, I saw a tutorial (Myka´s I think) about doing that and thought I might give it a try. Here´s a mockup of what I´ve been thinking about:

collage2-1.jpg

This also shows an idea for a pickguard. I've already made one from tortoiseshell pickguard material, but I don´t know if I´ll be using it or not...

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Mockups # 1 and 5 look best IMO. Though I also think you should go for a lighter finish since the maple and wenge look so amazing together right now without any sort of stain. The pickguard is cool, and I think it blends well but you might not want to cover up any of that pretty wood.

Truly a beautiful guitar whatever way you do it as long as it isn't one of those thick solid color plastic coats!

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>>TheIRS

This mockup was mostly a test to see how it would look like with a burst and to see how the pickguard would look in tortoise and in black. I definitely like the tortoise better than the black, at least with this type of finish. I also tested how it would look with covered humbuckers, the ones I bought are without covers but I might get some later on if I can find covers with the right polepiece spacing.

I started thinking about a pickguard when the router broke and made that nasty gouge in the pickup cavity. A normal pickup ring wouldn´t cover the hole, so I had to either make a pickguard to cover it or make custom pickup rings that were a little wider. Now I´ve done both...

>>hooglebug

I´m sure blue would work too, there are a couple of PRS finishes that look really good with blue tops and natural backs. "Blue matteo" and the Modern Eagle "Abalone" finish (which admittedly is some mix of blue and green, but it looks good!).

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Realy great stuff. This is what I wish more people on this forum attempted. A word of caution on the wipe on stain burst, It can be done and look good but you cant get the same fine feathered transition that you get with a spray gun. I have done both and I tried everything to get a spray like transition, even spraying the stain on with an airbrush. This got the best result after letting it dry a bit but at some point you have to wipe it. Now I only use a spray gun. Believe me I would much prefer to NOT use a spray gun but the result is someway better. Any way you can give it a go and if you are not happy with it its very easy to remove.

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>>eddiewarlock

Wow, thanks a lot! That´s really nice of you! I get influenced by a lot of stuff, Hagström has some really cool guitar designs so I´m sure I´ve been influenced by that. I like these old quirky guitars from the 60´s-70´s too, guitars from other countries than USA. Old Japanese guitars can be really odd but cool, and so can Italian guitars and stuff from eastern Europe. I mean, this one started out with an idea I got when I saw an Ibanez acoustic (a new one, though), it´s not that obvious now but I can see it clearly...

>>thirdstone

Thanks a lot to you too! I'll do some burst testing on some scrap wood first too see if I can get anywhere near what I want, if not I´ll do some other colour.

>>TemjinStrife

Thanks! Glad you like them! I still have problems seeing pickup rings that don´t look "normal", I guess I´m so used to the regular kind that it´s hard to accept anything else.

>>Mattia

Thanks a lot! I´ve never played a baritone so I´ll have to wait until it´s finished to agree on the rock part...

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  • 2 weeks later...

A little progress has been made. The logo has been inlayed into the headstock and the neck has been fretted.

DSC04275.jpg

Head: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04287.jpg

Fretboard: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04278.jpg

I also tried staining a burst on a piece of scrap flame maple, seems like it should be possible to do on the guitar.

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04259.jpg

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Staining a burst is not that difficult, but I have found by experience that it look a lot better to stain the color you will have in the center sealing it with a few coats of lacquer and bursting the edge with the darker color. From your example stain the yellow and then burst the red with tinted lacquer. The curls under the red will light up much better than if they were stained with a darker color. It took me a lot of tries to get to know that.

Here an example, by all means not the best burst, since I did it with a preval (out of air for my airbrush) and it is very hard to control the spray pattern.

DSC02911.jpg

If I had stained the red, all the bright spots on the figure would had turned darker.

Before burst

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/Maiden69/DSC02791.jpg

after

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/Maiden69/DSC02909.jpg

I wanted a more yellow center, but I had to spray a toner coat over it because the burst took much area towards the center.

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That's a similar idea to how I was going to respray our car in terms of the "pop" finish under a translucent tinted clear. We were going to go for fine gold/orange metallic flake under a candy-type dark cherry red. Black/red under ambient light, but popping to rich bright red under reflected light. Pretty much the same theory works with chatoyance in woods....I think using tinted lacquer to burst as opposed to running stains all over the shop maintains the 3D figuring more than as not, as i've found that stains seem to bring down the figures reaction to moving in light. I've fallen out of favour with staining to be honest, as I always feel I lose some of that wow-factor from having seen the wood's figure au naturale after a quick sand and scrape :-\

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>>Maiden69

I don´t have access to a spray gun, and it´s impossible to find tinted clear laquer in spray cans here in Sweden (at least where I live). Never seen anything like those preval spray cans either, had to google it to know what it was... I´m aiming to do a pretty thin burst edge, so if the flaming doesnt stand out as much there I can live with that. Thanks for the tip anyway, I´m definitely going to look for some way to use a real spray gun in the future so then I´ll try it your way!

>>tim_ado

Thanks!

>>Prostheta

I´ve done some test staining on scrap pieces of maple, and I understand what you mean about the reaction to moving in light. I've tried some double staining, and the "stain black, sand back, stain with other colour" method totally kills the movement in the flaming. The flames do get a very high light/dark contrast but the 3D effect totally goes away... I don´t think that problem is at all as big when you double stain with a darker shade of the same colour.

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Carved the neck today. Lots of work left to do but since my kitchen is my workspace and I live in an apartment I figured it was time to let the neighbors have their good nights sleep... Here´s what it looks like now anyway, I tried to shape the volute a little differently. With some more shaping and sanding (lots of it...) it might turn out OK I think.

DSC04292.jpg

Another pic of the neck: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04309.jpg

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Since this guitar will have a hardtail bridge with strings through body I had to have something anchoring the strings in the back. First I just thought I would use standard Telecaster style ferrules, but then I figured I should do something a little more unusual than that. the neck and control cavity plate are both made of wenge, so I made a string anchor out of wenge as well. The small metal ferrules are there to stop the strings from wearing the wood out. I think they´re called blind rivets in English? The anchor isn´t all the way into the body in the pics, I wanted to be able to get it out again...

DSC04350.jpg

A pic of the whole back: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04351.jpg

>>travismoore

Thanks! Yeah, I know what you mean, I remember playing a Warwick bass like 10-15 years ago and it had a wenge neck. They don´t make them with wenge necks anymore, do they?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, she ain´t too pale anymore...

Before staining: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04364.jpg

Stained brown: http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z35/pukko3/DSC04372.jpg

After this I sanded it back a bit, forgot to take pictures...

And here it´s stained, first the whole top with the same brown as before blended with yellow, then a burst with the brown and a darker brown around the edge. After that some yellow all over for a little highlighting. It´s still wet in the picture, looks a little strange in places because of that. I'm waiting for it to dry to see if I´ll stain some more or if it´s good as is.

DSC04396.jpg

>>CrazyManAndy

<<TemjinStrife

Thank you!

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>>Andronico

Thanks!

>>Xanthus

Thanks! You'll have to wait for yours though, with this work pace this one will be done in like 10 years... Yes, that's holes right through the back plate. I've never really thought about leaving it that way though. I'm going to put something on the back of it, I just don't know what material yet. Maybe pearloid, maybe aluminium (would solve the shielding problem too...). My first idea was to put some flame maple there, but the flaming isn't really visible because of the small holes anyway so I ditched that idea pretty fast.

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