Flying V ...

[Southpa]

Well, J dropped by earlier last week and picked up the scaled down V I've been working on IN MY LIVING ROOM for the past 4 months.

Its not done, ya see, J is the painter (he painted the topcoat on my truck). So he is looking into the "swirl" method and might go with black base and hugger orange (the same paint on my truck ) polyurethane- enamel swirl job and clearcoat. But my part of it is done, I'll probably just re-install and setup the hardware after the paintjob.

Heres all the pics, sorry, not organized very well. Maybe I can talk J into adding HIS progress to this thread. Either way, we'll get to see the finished project in the future.

All mahogany set neck, 25 frets. The neck is actually half of a perfectly q-sawn piece of 4X4 handrail. I still have the other half for a later guitar. Its scaled down to 87.5% actual size as the guitar is for his sons to play, and maybe they'll leave his Ibanez Gem alone . "Hey, if the kids wanna play all the power to them!" But now J seems to like the V more, says hes been playing it alot. I wonder if it will ever get painted... .

I scaled it to 23.5" so I could fit all the hardware. Custom body bevels, carving and volute. It has a single DiMarzio "superdistortion" HB rated at about 14KΩ DC resistance (scavenged from a LP copy that will be chambered one day). Despite the small size and weight (6 lbs even) this guitar has a BIG voice.

Tuners are black Grover locking minis, pretty good balance overall. MOP dot inlays in a rosewood neck with jumbo frets. TOM bridge with approx. 5 degree neck angle as well as scarf jointed headstock, about 15 deg.

I didn't go overboard on finishing as I knew it would be largely wasted effort. Its still a bit rough and I think I stopped at 180 grit. The guitar is going to be played, bumped and scratched for who knows how long and there is no case for it yet. When J gets the gumption he will strip it down, do an epoxy grainfill and prep it for painting, no rush.

Edited March 21, 2009 by Southpa