ProjectGuitar.com Posted April 5, 2022 Report Share Posted April 5, 2022 Welcome to the Guitar Of The Month entry for April 2022! 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. ----==---- Unsure what to write? Have a look around the entry archives for suggestions! ----==---- If you have any questions about the contest, either PM the moderator team or ask forum members; we're a helpful bunch! This thread is exclusively for entry posts only - any post that is not an entry will be deleted. We love to hear your discussions and opinions on the month's entries whilst the polls are open. Alternatively, head over to that instrument's build thread if one has been made in the entry post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Roland Posted April 9, 2022 Popular Post Report Share Posted April 9, 2022 (edited) Thirteenth Guitar This must be my thirteenth guitar build. My addiction to guitar building started with a Harley Benton kit, and advanced through a series of “improved” Telecaster designs. It’s the playability which interests me. A guitar is only successful if it’s good enough to play with my band. For this it needs a nice sound, must be easy to play, and be reliable. Finish is only there to protect the wood from moisture, and from knocks and scratches. Which is why I’ve never entered a guitar here, where so much relies on the photographic image. Here’s the real challenge. This guitar is built from trees which grew in my village, within 300m of my house: Body – Cedar of Lebanon, harvested in 2015 from my neighbour’s garden. Each branch rang like a bell when it hit the ground. I knew that I had to have the trunk for guitar building. Now that it’s well seasoned it’s a really light weight wood. Body cap – Yew. 300 metres away, from what used to be the garden of the old Manor House. Fretboard – English Sycamore, from the house across the road. Neck – a sandwich of Sycamore, and Field Maple from my own garden. Normally I use an oil finish because it’s easy to apply, and doesn’t colour the wood much. I have a particular penchant for Osmo PolyX 3032, but it does get plectrum scratches. I don’t like pick guards because they cover up the wood grain. So this time, to preserve these special woods, I’ve experimented with polyurethane varnish. But it’s headless! That’s one of the improvements. On a small pub “stage” I have a history of clouting the singer with my headstock. The rest of the guitar is still a 25.5” scale Telecaster. Same pickups. Same controls, although they had to be squashed into the corner. Importantly it hangs on the strap like a Tele, with the bridge, 12th fret, and volume knob, where I expect them to be. The body is wedge shaped. Thin at the top, and deep enough for a 5-way superswitch at the bottom. It also has forearm and belly chamfers. Together these profile improvements make it comfortable to wear and play. They also reduce the weight to 2.55Kg (5lb 10oz). It’s bound on the top edge against knocks, but rounded over on the back edge for comfort. The pickups are: Neck – Oil City Californian. A Stratocaster style neck pickup. Bridge – Oil City Wapping Wharf. A tapped single coil giving both a bright 60s sound, and a fatter 50s broadcaster tone. Five way switching gives: Full bridge, Tapped bridge, Neck and tap in parallel, Neck, and Neck and Tap in series for those warm solos. With these combinations I can play a whole gig of covers without changing guitar. Other innovations: The pickups are held with Allen bolts seated in thread inserts, with neoprene tube around the bolts to keep things steady. I find this more stable than traditional wood screws, easier to adjust, remove, and replace. The neck uses machine screws, ferrules and inserts too. Frets are Evo Gold, so they’ll never need to be replaced in my lifetime. Side dots are Lumilay. I don’t need their luminosity, but I wanted something large enough to see in poor stage light. There are no fret board markers. If the bass player doesn’t know what key we’re in then we’ve got bigger problems. Bridge and headpiece are Hipshot. I’ve tried the cheaper options, and thought I’d try these. Happy so far, except that they account for two thirds of the cost of the guitar with carriage and import duty. Lastly, a shout for AndyJR, who gave me the idea of using neodymium magnets to hold the control cavity cover in place. Screw heads inevitably get damaged over time, and scratch me or my clothes. Build thread https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/219903/1q22-challenge-roland-s-guitar-build More pictures https://imgur.com/a/75tJUsu Edited April 9, 2022 by Roland 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post nakedzen Posted April 12, 2022 Popular Post Report Share Posted April 12, 2022 Here's "Siipi" (it means "wing" in finnish). It's my seventh build, started making these a bit over a year ago to ease the boredom of covid. One piece quartersawn maple neckthrough, ash wings, ebony fretboard. 25.5" scale, stainless frets, graphtech nut, Schaller locking tuners, Hipshot bridge, EMG 81/60 set, EMG PA2 booster. Satin nitrocellulose finish. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProjectGuitar.com Posted April 23, 2022 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2022 Time to vote! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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