My New Bulbinga Top

[GGW]

Hollow body w/ bulbinga top

Sapelle back and sides

Maple and sapelle neck

25" scale length

Macassar ebony fret board

Kent Armstrong mini humbucker and Lawrence Designed L609 pickups

Shellac finish

This one turned out pretty good for me. The body is hollow with the bridge floating. I did it by routing out the inside of a solid piece. The top is fairly thick but I carved out the bulbinga from below; sort of a carved top effect. I had it done about a year ago but was not happy with a few details. I took it apart and just finished reworking it. I shaved more off the neck, changed the single coil to a mini humbucker at the neck, and eliminated a neck shim I had though I needed. Now it plays and sounds great. It’s got a woody sound but is still quite bright.

Some things I learned are:

1. Go slow on the neck and judge the profile carefully. Luckily I was too fat rather than too thin.

2. It is possible to have too bright a pickup

3. The shellac looks good but is probably too delicate.

4. I won’t carve out all that wood again. Next time I make this type, I’ll do bent sides.

5. I think I’ll always use a two way truss rod in the future. I don’t have backbow, but I have basically no relief. It works because I did a very careful fret level but I would rather there was a bit of curve. I assume it will come with a bit of time. I tried clamping some pressure on the neck but it sprung right back.

I’ve been working on a small body acoustic as well. Should be done soon.

More Images:

Bulbinga

Routing Template

Routing for Wiring

Underside of Top

Neck

Headstock

Body

Front

Back

[govtmule]

Looks fantastic !!

[ToddW]

That's really nice. When you say you carved the top from the inside, to you mean it's thicker under the bridge or something else. I've thought about doing that and using just the wilkinson style saddles graphtec makes for their ghost system.

-Todd

[Geo]

That looks great. The headstock inlay is very classy.

Care to describe your shellac finishing process?

If you're worried about the shellac, you might try something like tru-oil next time.

Edited August 21, 2008 by Geo

[GGW]

Thanks for the comments.

ToddW - When you say you carved the top from the inside, to you mean it's thicker under the bridge or something else

If you look at the link for "Underside of Top", it shows the from the back down towards the underside of the top. When I routed from the top down, I left the thicker sapelle parts for the neck pocket, two pickup cavities and a thickened part for the bridge. The bridge screws go into this block and the other cavities get routed out from the top. From this view, I carved the bulbinga top from below to thin it out. It may not have been science but I tapped and carved until I got a bit of a resonant tap response.

Geo - Care to describe your shellac finishing process?

I padded shellac on with a cotton cloth ball. It takes a while to build up but it's nice to do and looks very nice. It seems to scuff and mar very easy though. It's OK because I won't be travelling around with this guitar. I tried spraying laquer on a previous build and thought that was delicate but this is more so. Oil may be the next choice all right. As I mentioned, I'm working on an acoustic right now and I did a few light coats of shellac and a couple of light coats of water based poly. It looks very nice and should be much more durable.