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Guitar Of The Month - February 2021


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Welcome to the Guitar Of The Month entry for February 2021!

ProjectGuitar.com's Guitar Of The Month contest is a showcase for members to exhibit their creations and to vote on their favourites. The contest is open entry for any and all members, new or old. Winner(s) receive a featured article at the head of the ProjectGuitar.com homepage and elevated member status. ProjectGuitar.com receives tens of thousands of unique visitors monthly; Guitar Of The Month is a great way to showcase your creations to the world!

Submissions are open throughout the month with public voting open in the last week. Polls close on the first weekend of each month.

Lastly, if you didn't win a previous month's Guitar Of The Month contest, you are encouraged to enter your build again the next month for a maximum of three consecutive months. Sometimes one entry just hits it out of the park and eclipses everything!

Tips and Guidelines

  • Upload a maximum of eight photos for the instrument in your post
  • Ensure that your guitar has a name otherwise we'll make one up ;)
  • List additional descriptive information specific to the build; for example....
    • The woods and materials used, especially if there is something unusual in there!
    • Scale length(s) and other specific configuration details
    • Electronics, pickups, etc.
    • Is this your first build, fifth or five-hundredth?
    • A bit of information on your own background as a builder helps give context to your build.
    • Was it built in the garage, at school, work or in your own shop?
    • A summary of the build's history. Was it built for yourself, friend/family or a client? Did you design the instrument and its specifications or was it built to spec?
    • What were the inspirations behind the instrument and why were various build aspects chosen?
    • Any background on what makes it special?
  • Posting a link to your guitar-building website, Photobucket, Facebook, etc. is fine, even if it is your business. In the spirit of fairness towards less experienced builders, we encourage professional builders to consider whether their entries constitute being "fair".
    • Commercial "standard" models are not a valid entry, guys....Guitar Of The Month is about unique and characterful builds, not rubber-stamped production units!
  • We reserve the right to pull entries that are thinly-guised adverts; ProjectGuitar.com is about community, sharing build processes and the exchange of ideas - not a vehicle for adverts by members that don't engage with the community.
  • If you documented your build in the forums, post a link to the thread; instruments with a build thread shared tend to attract more votes from the general community. In our experience this is the biggest attractor of votes.
  • ProTip: Voters vote with their ears as well as their eyes....if you have any soundclips of the instrument or even a YouTube video, do post it! Everybody loves to look at beautiful instruments, but hearing them demo'ed is 10x as important.

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Unsure what to write? Have a look around the entry archives for suggestions!

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If you have any questions about the contest, either PM the moderator team or ask forum members; we're a helpful bunch!

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  • 3 weeks later...

My final allowed resubmission, since December and January's were both outstanding worthy winners

 

 

Name: Yeti

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Type: Custom Precision-Bass

Body: Live edge English Ash, Epoxy

Neck: Canadian Maple (scorched, engraved), Rosewood Fretboard

Scale:  32"

 

Components

Pickups: Fender Vintage P-Bass Pickups (Passive)

Bridge: Hipshot 'Kickass' 4-String

Machine Heads: Gotoh GB707's

Pots: CTS 250k Log and Linear

 

Other

Snaplock Strap locks

Custom CnC Pickup Ring

Custom Black Anodised Aluminium Truss Cover

Custom Black Anodised Aluminium Neck Plate

 

Build#: First ever build

Experience: Floating shelves, basic DIY joinery

Cost: Don't-Tell-The-Wife territory.

 

Made at home in the garden and the spare room (thanks Covid...), as a 'thank you for being you' gift for a close friend and bandmate (nickname 'The Yeti') who has had a challenging year.

 

Story/Process

I began with a lot of research (how I found this site!) and watching things like Crimson Guitars on YouTube. I had been playing around with the idea of doing a River Table, but thought a similar effect on a guitar would be cool. Most other 'River Guitars' I saw were true 'River' style - with the Epoxy through the middle.

 

Doing an epoxy edge instead of river-core had the bonus effect of looking cool and unique, whilst maintaining the structure and sound quality of the tonewood Ash.

I found a waney-edge lumber yard about an hour's drive away. I walked out with 5m of rare English Ash (his words, not mine, something about a disease wiping the species out?) and some sequoia I'll use at a later date.

Sourced the Epoxy (deep pour variety) from a company in Stoke-on-Trent.

Components were a mixture of Guitar shops around Europe/UK + eBay. Custom Aluminium parts were made by a guy in his workshop in Pennsylvania (he was really hard to find). I didn't want to make him a Bass that looked great but had bog-standard cheap parts in it, so wherever possible or relevant, I forked out the extra cash and got something middle to top-of-the-range.

This all began in September, juggling WFH with a toddler and typical British weather. The 'Indian-Summer' helped with all the hand-planing and sanding I had to do, as I obviously couldn't do all that indoors.

Being my first build, I wasn't brave enough to tackle the neck (lot of specialist tools required for that as well), so I sourced a quality one and customised it by burning it with a torch and making a logo I then engraved into the head (as well as into the Truss Rod Cover and Neck Plate)

The rough timber was hand planed, then a piece selected and a rough shape cut out. I did a 1st epoxy pour (blood red), and drilled in some secret long holes for the epoxy to go into the body of the guitar to give it a strong mechanical hold rather than just gripping the edge/bark. After this I cut it to rough shape, leaving space for the 2nd (Clear) pour for the top horn (again, secret 'foundation columns' drilled in). Then the final outline was cut out, and a 3rd Pour done to fill some natural splits and knot holes in the wood.

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I could then begin planing the edges into a gentle sloped profile (I don't like guitar that are too 'blocky', whilst keeping a 1-3/4" thickness through the middle. One thing I learned, is that before doing this, you should definitely cut out your cavities and pot holes first. It was fine, but made a simple job later on much more difficult. Once this was all done and the pickup and jack holes routed as well as the neck pocket, the whole thing was sanded to 5000 grit to keep consistency between the epoxy and the wood.

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I then followed Andy's guide on wipe-on-poly process for those  who don't have a workshop, here: https://www.projectguitar.com/tutorials/finishingrefinishing/bedroom-builders-wipe-on-varnishing-r67/  . I finished with some Automotive fine polish applied by hand (as per the guide). The fully shielded cavity's cover was cut by hand from a piece of perspex I got off Amazon.

The action and everything about it came out perfectly, to the 10th of a degree - so absolutely stoked about that. Two minor problems persisted: One of the knobs doesn't sit perfectly centrally in its pocket (pot alignment issue) by about 1mm. This will wear itself a smooth hole with very little use so I'm not worried. The other slight issue is that one of the pickup guard screws' heads snapped off when screwing in (from hand torque, which I find odd for a screw). He's a purist for finger-style bass playing, so no pickguard to get in the way of the beautiful wood grain.

 

I am absolutely thrilled with how it all came out. It plays and sounds brilliant, and I cannot wait to give it to my friend.

I also can't wait to start my next one - which will be a burnt-husk + epoxy + led + Raspberry Pi build for myself from the same Ash wood. 

 

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Lastly, a huge thanks to the owners and workers of this site, for making a great place for people to come together and share this stuff - but most importantly to users @Bizman62, @Andyjr1515, and @mistermikev for their help and guidance when a few things got a little tough for a total newbie. You guys helped make this.

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Just for the sake of getting the competition running, here's my resubmission:

 

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With this one I wanted to challenge myself properly.  This is my fourth full build, built at the community college workshop during wintertime Saturdays. She's a semi hollow LP-profile neck-through as I titled the thread but let's just call her Ovie... So:

  • Top: Flamed Ovangkol from Madinter, Spain
  • Body: Torrefied Estonian Alder from the sauna department of the local hardware store
  • Accent laminates: 0.55 mm flamed Birch a fellow builder got from a bankrupted flooring factory
  • Neck: Maple with Cherry and Nogal stripes from the outlet of another flooring materials factory
  • Fretboard Merbau from the same flooring factory
  • Hardware from AliExpress, Banggood and Ebay
  • Pickups: Humbucker sized P90's (Ali)
  • Finish: Crimson Guitar Finishing Oil
  • Final finish: Self cooked wax mixture of Carnauba, Beeswax and Pine Turpentine
  • Weight 3,36 kg/7.4 lbs

As you can see, the body has been shaped using a Les Paul template and the headstock owes a bit to PRS. The rest has just been improvised.

Designing the F-holes:

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Just short of putting it all together:

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The pickups were a bit tricky to install, especially the springs:

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Fast forward to today:

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The devil is in the details: The jack is recessed - and that's wax I didn't notice when shooting these pictures!

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I tend to leave the upper neck too wide so I widened the nut with offcuts of the fingerboard. The truss rod cover is also from an offcut.

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The back:

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And how does she sound? Well... When I play she's yelling and screaming but a fellow builder got some very pleasing music out of her. Just as expected...

 

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Wow - looking at the above, that makes for some seriously stiff competition!

Nevertheless, I have just finished this, my "Three's No Crowd" and so into the fray we go :)

I've been building guitars and basses for around 8 years - many for my own use or for fellow band members but occasionally I take on commissions for folks who want something a little bit different.  This is one such build.

It's a shortscale (30”) headless four string bass - a commissioned build that seeks to blend a traditional look with some very modern features.  It uses the Nova Guitar Parts headless system from Andre Passini in Brazil – an excellent and ‘great bang for the buck’ system – and is also fitted with the unique Super-Quad pickups from SimS Pickups in the UK.

Each Super-Quad can switch, with SimS patented Tri-Logic switching system, between a split coil, single coil, and full humbucker.  And some clever wizardry in the switch means there is no volume change between the options!  The choice of configuration is indicated by a red, blue or green LED, although the pickups themselves are fully passive.

And this bass, as far as I or SimS know, is the first one in the world with THREE of them!  

Here is the spec and some finished shots:

Scale Length:                      30”
Top Wood:                          Walnut
Back Wood:                        Mahogany
Neck:                                    9 piece Mahogany and Maple Laminate
Fretboard:                          Ebony
Pickups:                               SimS Pickups ‘Super-Quads’ (UK)
Electrics:                              Master volume and tone; On/Off toggles per pickup; SimS Trilogic Switching per pickup; 9v for LEDs
Headless System:             Nova Guitar Parts (Brazil)
Weight:                                7 lbs 0 oz

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The build thread is here:

Thanks for looking!  :)

 

 

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