henrim Posted April 4, 2022 Report Share Posted April 4, 2022 Back in the 80's in my teens I made my first guitar. My own design, inspired by the metal guitars of the time. I made the body of mahogany. Two humbuckers and standard tremolo. It had a Ibanez neck. I then got more in to hard rock and got my self a brand new white Gibson Les Paul Custom -88 (worked hard to gather that money!). I then took my build a part and sawed off the horns it had on the neck side. Making the shape more like a RR Jackson. I also chiseled a cavity for third humbucker (not enough space for four I guess!). I did not finish the rebuild at the time but I have had the body blank with me ever since. Now, three decades later, it was the time to see if the guitar can still be salvaged. First I thought it can't. But then I thought it's worth to try. I leveled the body and cleaned the pickup cavities. I had to move the neck back a bit but I can make it 24 fret with 24,75 scale length. Originally the body was black sunburst with clear lacquer. At some point I painted it some sort of flaky candy red. I'm going back to original. I wouln't want a sunburst but the edges have to painted and I want to show some of the beautiful Brazilian mahogany. Wood that you can't really buy these days. Original neck was all maple. Now it will be maple with an ebony fingerboard to better match with the black sunburst. I have made a neck plank, cut a scarf joint and chiseled a truss rod groove. Using hand tools as much as I can this time because I want to remember the feelings I had when I did this guitar for the first time. Quite therapeutic 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted April 4, 2022 Report Share Posted April 4, 2022 Hand tools! So underrated yet so powerful! Jonnes don't know what that is: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted April 5, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 5, 2022 Got the neck dimensioned. 22 frets is what is going to fit. Tightly. I’ll get to try out the neck shaping fixture I made some time ago. Headstock shape will be finalized once I get tuners. I need to make new gauges that I have planned for the neck shape before I start carving. And I guess I’ll radius the fretboard first. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted April 7, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 7, 2022 Got the neck carved to shape. Profile is kinda flat C. Really flat. I keep on thinking that I would like to play with that kind of profile but I don’t know, haven’t ever played with one. But I will find that out the day this gets finished. Neck fits nicely in its new pocket. Next I need to bolt it on so that I can finish the heel area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted April 8, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2022 (edited) Neck bolted with five M6 bolts. I only had Phillips head countersunk screws but I’ll change them to hex socket heads later on. Edited April 8, 2022 by henrim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted April 9, 2022 Report Share Posted April 9, 2022 9 hours ago, henrim said: I only had Phillips head countersunk screws They're not Phillips, they're Pozidriv. You can tell that by the "half-cardinals". They may look interchangeable but using the wrong type screwdriver can ruin the slot. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted April 9, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 9, 2022 58 minutes ago, Bizman62 said: They're not Phillips, they're Pozidriv. You can tell that by the "half-cardinals". They may look interchangeable but using the wrong type screwdriver can ruin the slot. Thanks for correcting me. I just meant to say they are the type I would never use. You gave the reason why not. I prefer Torx because they are universal. But for the looks I rather use hex socket heads (metric). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted April 9, 2022 Report Share Posted April 9, 2022 Yepp. Just for the record I wasn't trying to be snappy. It just seems that surprisingly many people are unaware of the difference. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crusader Posted April 9, 2022 Report Share Posted April 9, 2022 Wow this guitar looks so much like my first build, middle pickup and all, and the story behind it too. Looking good! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted April 10, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2022 Milled a triple pickup ring. I will shave a few millimeters of the width still and clean it up but this is now how the pickups will be mounted. EMG’s likely. The thing is made of POM. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted April 12, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2022 (edited) Fretted the fretboard with some jumbo size stainless steel wire I had. Not much leveling needed. For dressing I learned a neat trick just a while ago, which everyone else probably knows but I feel stupid I hadn’t thought it before. I ground and polished one edge of a needle file and it’s butter smooth against the fretboard. I could dress the frets without using protecting masking on the board. There wouldn’t be any scratches but I use tape to prevent ebony from burnishing. Anyway the tape doesn’t rip and the file slides soooo smoothly. Edited April 12, 2022 by henrim 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted May 4, 2022 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2022 When I first built this body 30+ years ago I cracked the thin portion behind the tremolo cavity with a blunt chisel and too much force. I did batch it back then but it wasn’t very nicely done. Now it was time to fix it again. Fortunately I never throw anything away so I still had a few leftover pieces of the original wood While I was at it I found a crack in the body. I injected glue in to the crack and reinforced it with a ‘bow tie”. Now I guess it was probably not very good idea to use a different type of wood there, but we’ll see how it holds. This fix also gave me an opportunity to raise the tremolo 2mm. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted May 5, 2022 Report Share Posted May 5, 2022 Neat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted May 13, 2022 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2022 Prime time 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted May 18, 2022 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2022 Paint it black. Also there is a reason why I may not be so active with guitar building for some time. I’m painting some motorcycle parts at the same time. They are from my Ducati 350cc mark 3 Desmo -69 that I have had since -92. Eight years ago I was driving it and the front felt bad. I took the fork off, disassembled it, and found the cause. While I waited for new parts I found some other things to fix. Eventually the whole bike was disassembled in to pieces. I had not really thought about it but it happened just before my daughter was born. So here I am 8 years later putting it back together. The same story as with my two guitar builds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted May 19, 2022 Report Share Posted May 19, 2022 9 hours ago, henrim said: it happened just before my daughter was born. So here I am 8 years later Daughters... They really can make a man's life a mess! Just the other evening my younger one, the musician, called to ask if our old keyboard were available because the one her granny bought when she was a child had issues. No problem other than I couldn't find the transducer. But I had some D size batteries so I took it to her (my wife said that she wouldn't have bothered...). Later that evening she sent me a message that she found the transducer at her place! Oh well... The funniest thing is that she now is the keyboard player for a metal band with a female growler vocalist. Now how credible is a 1990's Casio keyboard for a metal band??? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Professor Woozle Posted May 19, 2022 Report Share Posted May 19, 2022 3 hours ago, Bizman62 said: Now how credible is a 1990's Casio keyboard for a metal band??? Didn't Ronnie Dio play the "Rainbow in the Dark" keyboard riff on a little Casio of some sort? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crusader Posted May 19, 2022 Report Share Posted May 19, 2022 Nice work there, I love the triple pickup ring! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted May 19, 2022 Report Share Posted May 19, 2022 8 hours ago, Professor Woozle said: Didn't Ronnie Dio play the "Rainbow in the Dark" keyboard riff on a little Casio of some sort? No clue about that but I know for sure that some bands/performers use/have used scorned home instruments both on stage and on recordings. There's some similarity to top guitar players playing el-Cheapo guitars just because of their less than stellar sound, or using the original Lomo cameras for unpredictable effects in photography - don't know how well the emulated lomographic after-effects work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted September 15, 2022 Author Report Share Posted September 15, 2022 I started to draw a new guitar so I guess it’s time to put this one together before I start building anything new. I had forgotten fretboard side markers. It would have been a good idea to put them in before fretting but obviously that didn’t happen. So I sawed 45 degree (or so) slots with a fret saw and glued in some 0.5mm aluminum sheet pieces. Then cut the extra and filed the pieces flush. I only made them this way because I was lazy. Anyway they look better than I thought they would. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bizman62 Posted September 16, 2022 Report Share Posted September 16, 2022 11 hours ago, henrim said: they look better than I thought they would They sure do! I've been thinking about doing the same using 0.5 mm veneer but that would reveal mostly end grain. Metal doesn't suffer from that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted September 18, 2022 Author Report Share Posted September 18, 2022 If it was someone else I would feel sorry for the poor bastard. I had a nice glossy black finish on this one ready to be buffed. I matted the surface and only then I realized this should not be glossy at all! Had a semi-successful hand painted burst on the top but it has to go now. Or actually it’s primed already. Just need to order some 2k matte black. I don’t really like black burst’s but here was the idea that the beautiful mahogany would be somehow visisible. Anyway I know it’s there and who else would care. I think 15 year old me would agree. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted September 22, 2022 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2022 Never thought about how to wire this thing. The body had four holes for pots and one for switch. So that is a given. I think I would like to have individual volumes and then a master tone. The most straightforward way would be to have the middle pickup always on and have just a toggle for the neck and bridge pickup’s. Middle pup could be turned down with the volume pot. Or then I could have a 4-pole 5 position rotary switch and wire some combinations (I have those switches and I would rather use something I already have). Rotary switches with more than 3 positions are awkward to use but then again may not be a big thing with this guitar. I was thinking something like in the attached sketch. For clarity I have omitted grounding to the back of the pots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted September 22, 2022 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2022 Scratch that. There’s no space for the 5-position switch and the body is already painted. Not going chisel it anymore. The first alternative from the previous post it is then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henrim Posted September 26, 2022 Author Report Share Posted September 26, 2022 Another reminder to protect any threads before painting. In many cases I don’t bother. I just tap the the threads open afterwards. These are M7x0,5 though and I don’t have many fine thread taps. Luckily I got the threads clean with acetone and cotton swaps. That was 1k primer. 2k top coat wouldn’t be that easy without a tap. I tried that earlier this year when I painted my old Italian motorcycle frame and started to tap open the passenger foot peg mounts. To my surprise they were not M10 as I would have guessed. Neither were they M12. Literature revealed they are 7/16”x20. Two imperial threads on an otherwise metric Italian bike! I couldn’t get them clean without so I bought a tap that I will most likely never use again in my life. Anyhow I will spray the new top coat on this soon. I just need to finish one other paint job before. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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