High End Build - this one is gonna take a while

[avengers63]

I'm a cheapskate.  There... I said it.

For all the guitars I've built, I've never done anything high-end. That's because I'm cheap. Wilkinson bridge & tuners, used name-brand pickups, plastic inlays, lumber yard woods..... If I put anything of actual quality on the ax, it was old & second-hand. With pickups you can usually get away with it, but not much else. Even the Mockingbird I won GOTM with has used Epiphone pups and a used Kahler with home-made inlays on an ebony board that was salvaged from a factory 2nd and drilled for dots that I had to fill in.

Enough of that crap. I'm finally employed at the income level that will allow me to do just one the way I've wanted to do it. When it's done, this should be comparable to a $5K-10K instrument. I'm going to have to gather the pieces over time as what I'm figuring might be about $1K+ in parts and materials.

GENERAL PLAN: oversized semi-acoustic LP style, Florentine cutaway, white limba bend sides & back, redwood burl top, DePaul Nouveay inlay set. Just about everything else is semi- up in the air.  Here's what I mean...

I'm thinking hard about TV Jones T-Armond pickups

I have a hard-on for old style pups like that. I've also always wanted an ax with regular TVJ's in it, but that doesn't feel right for this one.

I also contacted Lindy Fralin about making me a set of humbuckers built like these....

He's good with it, but they'd be about $250/each. The TVJ's are about $150/ea, AND it would be just a kewl-lookin bucker.

High end means lots of bling, just for the sake of being extra. These Gotoh's fit the bill nicely:

...but do I really want a top/stop bar? NO! I want a gold Kahler.

But a gold Kahler would be seriously out of place with DeArmond style pups. A Bigsby would be way more appropriate....

...but I don't really like a Bigsby that much. I have one, and they're fantastic for what they are, but they're not really my thing. An old Teisco style would be right with DeArmonds...

...but I can't find it in anything but chrome, and only from resellers of suspect-quality Chinese goods  like Guitar Fetish. I also found this thing on eBay...

...whick also looks the part, but it's only in chrome, AND I can't confirm the quality. 

And as much as I would wanna look at a Deusenberg, they're just never in stock.

Man, I REALLY want the gold Kahler, but it'd look/feel dumb with DeArmonds. Then again, I'll prolly be using 3 pups, not the traditional 2, and I throw tradition out the window.

Anyway, this is the inlay set. I'll be getting.

 

I'll be getting a neck from Warmoth. I screw up the fretboard EVERY SINGLE TIME around the 10th-15th frets. It buzzes like that's it's damn job and needs significant attention before it's playable. Zero exceptions. Getting the neck from Warmoth won't be nearly as satisfying or cost effective, but I can be certain it'll be done right. I can get it without frets or inlays, so I can still put the DePaul Nouveau set in without any problems. 

Thinking about it for a second, with the price of lumber being what it is right now, that kinds helps balance out the price of Warmoth. Or I'm trying to justify it to myself. Whatever makes you sleep better.

The only cost savings I'll have is the body. I actually make the hell out of a body. And I already have all the wood necessary for the operation. I've had the white limba back & sides prepped for an acoustic for several years. I've had the redwood burl for maybe 12-14 years, waiting for me to be ready to do a really high end build.

I brought all the side bending crap in from the garage. I might even get started on it today.

 

As always, I welcome and truly appreciate any and all feedback and suggestions.

 

[Invader Zim]

2 hours ago, avengers63 said:

.When it's done, this should be comparable to a $5K-10K instrument. 

I also contacted Lindy Fralin about making me a set of humbuckers built like these....

He's good with it, but they'd be about $250/each.

 

The "but" in the above sentence kind of invalidates the premise you have laid out in the first.

Damn the torpedoes and build the guitar you want to build.

[avengers63]

30 minutes ago, Invader Zim said:

The "but" in the above sentence kind of invalidates the premise you have laid out in the first.

Damn the torpedoes and build the guitar you want to build.

I agree. As I said when talking about the Fralins, the argument against is that it'd be another 2HB guitar at the end of the day. Those are a dime a dozen. The Fralin blade HBs would be unique, but how unique would they really be? Just another take on 2HB. I don't think I've ever seen 3 DeArmonds. 

Still arguing with myself. It'll keep happening until I buy them.

[avengers63]

So a couple of things here...

1) I might be focusing in on the pickups more. Mojo Pickups makes the most reasonably priced Charlie Christian pups I can find. A set of three of these with a tom/stop would be pretty sweet.

2) I have forgotten how I bent the cutaway for this mold.

It's a pretty harsh bend, so I know it'll need time & patience, but I've done it before, so I know I can do it. I just don't remember how I did it.

So if anyone has experience with bends this tight, PLEASE school me.

[MiKro]

2 hours ago, avengers63 said:

So a couple of things here...

1) I might be focusing in on the pickups more. Mojo Pickups makes the most reasonably priced Charlie Christian pups I can find. A set of three of these with a tom/stop would be pretty sweet.

2) I have forgotten how I bent the cutaway for this mold.

It's a pretty harsh bend, so I know it'll need time & patience, but I've done it before, so I know I can do it. I just don't remember how I did it.

So if anyone has experience with bends this tight, PLEASE school me.

It's too thick for the type of bending you are doing. YOU may try using a steam box on that first though. I mean really steam it until it is almost soaking wet . then it may get pliable enough to do what you want. Also make it oversize so you can then cut to size after it has dried for a few weeks.  Otherwise use thinner material and laminate it.

mk

[nakedzen]

There's also the Duesenberg Les Trem II to add to your tremolo options, installs in place of a stoptail.

[avengers63]

Yesterday I managed to make some progress. I began joining the back....

I will NEVER understand why one would not glue the bracing on when the pieces of an acoustic back are joined. Kill 2 birds with one stone. If you don't, you have to clean ip and prep the surface to receive the brace. You're only making more steps and work for yourself!

I decided to have natural wood binding top and back. Looking through my dwindling stash, I landed on chechen.

Doing wood binding is above my pay grade. There's no way around it. I fully believe this is above my pay grade. That being acknowledged, this is how we grow. If we do not push ourselves by doing difficult things that we might not be capable of, we stop growing, both in skill and as a person. I'm trying damn hard to instill this principle into my 13 y/o step-son. Sometimes, we have to make intentional choices as a parent to display the virtues we want to instill into our kids. Sometimes, success isn't the real goal. Sometimes, ya just gotta push yourself and not be afraid to try. Lack of success and failure are often two different things.

Taking MikRo's advice, I needed to thin out the cutaway so it would bend. I secured the piece down to a shuttle along with 2 semi-sacrificial runners.

But I took it one pass too far.

It worked out in the end. The piece for the cutaway had enough width left, and enough length to make a 2nd piece to laminate to the 1st for the right thickness.  It DID bend right, proving Mike right. Thanks for the input, buddy! I really appreciate it.

In other news, I'll prolly be going away from the burl top. A simple, clean, conservative spruce top it a deep quilted maple with a tiger-eye dye/sand back. The spruce would allow the bindings and purflings to shine. The quilt would be just plain gorgeous. 

[ADFinlayson]

Cool looking build this one, looking forward to see ing progress. That cutaway doesn't strike me as a particularly high strength area. I reckon you can get away with thinning your material down there quite a bit which will make bending such a hard curve a lot easier. 

Re glueing back braces on - A lot of acoustics have domed backs, so you would glue the back together, get it down to desired thickness then glue the back braces on while the back is in the radius dish so it conforms to the dome shape. 

[avengers63]

22 minutes ago, ADFinlayson said:

That cutaway doesn't strike me as a particularly high strength area. I reckon you can get away with thinning your material down there quite a bit which will make bending such a hard curve a lot easier. 

Thinning it down = ABSOLUTELY a low strength area.  This is why I made 2 - so I can laminate them and strengthen it significantly. Speaking of which...

It's really easy to put the glue on the wrong side. When that happens, you have to rinse all the glue off under the faucet. This means you'll have to let it sit for a while letting it dry. Pro tip, kids - pay attention and write on your pieces as to which side is which. Harder to be like me when you do that.

Also, the piece with the little chip out is to be on the side inside the box. That little chip won't effect anything. This application is perfect for scrap. I abhor wasting product! 

[avengers63]

The wife verbally poked me in the eye earlier, telling me what I needed to hear. This led me to look for art nouveau inspiration for inlay work on the top. Then I found this. Now I just wanna quit.

[MiKro]

5 minutes ago, avengers63 said:

The wife verbally poked me in the eye earlier, telling me what I needed to hear. This led me to look for art nouveau inspiration for inlay work on the top. Then I found this. Now I just wanna quit.

It's okay John, we all have been there.

Glad I could help with the bending .

Mike

[henrim]

If you want golden hardware you can get a chromed bridge re-plated. Going from chrome to gold, plating can be applied directly on top of chrome without stripping.

Edited April 6, 2022 by henrim

[avengers63]

The chechen binding turned out better than I expected. They are just under 1/8" thick, so I anticipated a problem in the waist. I was not surprised. As I took them out of the foil, one came apart. In handling, another two separated. BUT.... they did NOT crack. This means they can be carefully put together seamlessly when they're put onto the body. Seeing as I expected them to crack, this is not a failure. I see this as 400% more success than I expected.

[avengers63]

Well, I figured out why my kerfing is always such a pain in the ass. It never wants to bend around the inside like I see in the "how-to" videos. It's because I don't cut the slots deep enough to be flexible, and the kerfs are a little too wide. With that knowledge in hand, I milled down some douglas fir. Tomorrow I'll cut the notches. It's tedious as anything, and I just can't stomach it tonight.

But I DID got some other things done.

The back is joined, braced, control cavity cover cut out, and bracing under the c/c/c clued on. O had enough limba cutoff that there was no sense is making the shelf from anything else.

Likewise, the top is joined and reinforced. I made a radical switch into a spruce top. More on why later. I thickened the top with some limba I had cut to be an acoustic top. This takes the top to close to 1/4". With the built-in bracing of the center block, this should be plenty thick on the sides that I shouldn't have to worry about it.

Of course, when I put away the bending jig, I found my Safe-T-Planer that I forgot I own. I could really have used this a couple days ago when I blew up the pieces I was thinning down.

The cutaway laminated about as good as I could have hoped for. Escept for the fact that I accidentally got some wax paper in between on the edge. We'll just leave that our secret and never speak of it again

 

So ya know how, once we get everything in the clamps and we're at a standstill, we just can't help but start something else?

I've had this piece of Guyana rosewood for well over 10 years. It's heavy and hard as a brick. The grain is dense and fine, and looks fantastic when it's polished up. I made a neck from chechen before, but I have no idea what happened to it, and I NEED a rosewood neck. I mean, y'all get it, right? It might be cost prohibitive to buy one, but we being who we are, that translates from a want to a need. Back me up here!

Anyway, I saw this thing some years ago and never forgot it. It was some dark rosewood fretboard with burl block inlays. I always thought that was classy as anything, so we're off to the races on something else I don't need but clearly can't live without.

 

 

[avengers63]

So why did I shift away from the burl to spruce? Because my wise and beautiful wife verbally poked me in the eye a few days ago.

I use her as a sounding board for just about everything. She doesn't think like I do in any way, shape, or form. Her thought process is completely alien to me. She also doesn't know anything about lutherie. This means she will see and think of things I am incapable of. This is an invaluable trait in someone to bounce ideas off of.

So as I was discussing my thoughts on how to decorate the top, she said: "John... You can do the absolute shit out of inlay. Not putting it in, because any idiot with a steady hand can do that. You MAKE them. You make pictures out of wood, and you're damn good at it. I've seen it, and so have others on your guitar board. If that's something you can do, and damn near nobody else can do, THEN DO THAT. You want this to be over the top, then play to your strengths and put a ridiculous inlay on the top of it."

So I spend Monday & Tuesday nights pondering and searching for just the right imagery. I went with the spruce top because it's a classy, traditional guitar top with basically no figure or grain. It's a blank canvass to work with. There's absolutely nothing in it to compete with the inlay. I was seriously considering a flamed claro walnut top, or a deep quilted maple with a dark tiger eye dye/sandback. But she told me to go this way... and she was dead right.

So that's ALSO why I put the limba backing on the top. It's be damn easy to accidentally blow through the top when routing for the inlay. The extra thickness will give me plenty of room for error. 

FYI: The style of all the decoration is art nouveau. Both the fretboard inlay and that on the body will be hard nouveau style.

These are the finalists. Every single one needs to be tinkered with - shaping them to the curves, except for the reclining lady. The hummingbird is the only one that would still have an f-hole. It'd be the flower he's sticking his beak into. Overall, I'm leaning heavily towards the flowers. If I go that route, I'm seriously considering putting some twisty nouveau style line work on the back.

[nakedzen]

I vote for the girl, but I'm already partial to Mucha.

[avengers63]

I'm gluing some veneer so I have something flat to work with when I make the inlays. It's only 2 thicknesses of veneer, so I still might have to put it on a backer of some sort. Counter-clockwise is birdseye maple, plain maple that was pretty warped to begin with, lepoardwood, flamed ash, lyptus, and generic rosewood. I have cherry, walnut, sapele, birch, and red oak in the presses right now, along with others I've already done that I think I might need more of. I have some sheets of abalam MOP & abalone shell I got a long time ago that I just didn't know what to do with. I'll prolly try something with them when the time comes. 

I think tomorrow I'll try and finish up the kerfing inside the box.

I'm back on the road M-F, so progress will come to an absolute crawl now. That's OK. A slow burn will make the finished product that much more satisfying. 

[ScottR]

On 4/7/2022 at 4:48 PM, avengers63 said:

she said: "John... You can do the absolute shit out of inlay. Not putting it in, because any idiot with a steady hand can do that. You MAKE them. You make pictures out of wood, and you're damn good at it. I've seen it, and so have others on your guitar board. If that's something you can do, and damn near nobody else can do, THEN DO THAT. You want this to be over the top, then play to your strengths and put a ridiculous inlay on the top of it."

It's good to see that you had the sense to grab a practical and intelligent woman and made her your wife.

SR

[Bizman62]

An intelligent wife is worth her weight in gold! It would be a pain trying to explain every detail. A good wife knows you, your strengths and weaknesses and if she's really wise she'll accentuate the former to make you do what she wants without you ever noticing it!

[avengers63]

Putting the kerfing in on at least one side of it this weekend. The other side? maybe, maybe not.

As there's nothing else to do on a beautiful Spring afternoon with the kerfing in the clamps....

I gotta say - this Guyana rosewood is hard as a damn rock! It does NOT like to be routed at ALL. It's more than a little chippy when you're routing "downhill". Ya gotta go backwards, and we all know how much that'll make yer butthole pucker up. We've prolly all had the router grab the piece out of our hands before when we first tried it. Scary stuff. 

On the good side, this stuff is completely closed grained and poilshes up beautifully. It'll be a real piece of bling when I get it done. I'm seriously considering using it with the Russian pickguard assembly I bought last year. Or not. 

[MiKro]

Looking good John.

Mike

[ScottR]

I recognize that router table from years past.

Are we a bunch of old farts or what?

SR

[avengers63]

11 hours ago, ScottR said:

I recognize that router table from years past.

Are we a bunch of old farts or what?

SR

Yes we are. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Also - covering the table in formica was one of the best decisions I've ever made as far as my shop tables & jigs are concerned. It has remained completely level through the years, and it's damn hard to gouge up. Glue drips come right off with a little prying of a chisel. If I ever make full shop benches and tables, I'll definitely be getting some more and covering every surface with it.

 

[avengers63]

Alright folks - I want some serious input and opinions, and just as importantly, why you feel that way.

After overthinking everything for several weeks, I finally zeroed in on getting Lollar pickups. The neck is going to be a black face Charlie Christian

https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-charlie-christian-pickups/charlie-christian-for-tele

The question is which pickup to match with it in the bridge. After talking with them, I have two options: either a matching C/C in the bridge, or their El Rayo humbucker.

https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-humbucker-pickups/el-rayo-f-spaced-humbucker

I'm leaning heavily towards the HB, but I would genuinely appreciate the chance to pick your collective brains on this one. Which would you go with and why?

[henrim]

17 hours ago, avengers63 said:

Alright folks - I want some serious input and opinions, and just as importantly, why you feel that way.

After overthinking everything for several weeks, I finally zeroed in on getting Lollar pickups. The neck is going to be a black face Charlie Christian

https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-charlie-christian-pickups/charlie-christian-for-tele

The question is which pickup to match with it in the bridge. After talking with them, I have two options: either a matching C/C in the bridge, or their El Rayo humbucker.

https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-humbucker-pickups/el-rayo-f-spaced-humbucker

I'm leaning heavily towards the HB, but I would genuinely appreciate the chance to pick your collective brains on this one. Which would you go with and why?

Sound qualities aside. The hexagonal shape is so strong that I would think it's difficult to combine it with a rounded rectangle. Maybe it isn't. I would make a drawing of the guitar to see or maybe make cardboard mock ups of different shape pickups and try them on the body blank.