Guitar Of The Month May 2024

[ProjectGuitar.com]

Welcome to the Guitar Of The Month entry for May 2024!

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!

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.

[Junior64]

Here's my entry for May, the "Phantom Surfer".

My drawing is based on a VOX Phantom, but everything else is Fender or Fender-style.

• Alder body

• WD Music PHNSR paddle neck, 25 1/2" scale with hand-shaped headstock

• Tonerider Surfari pickups

• Fender Mexico Jazzmaster tremolo

• Allparts roller Tunematic bridge

• CTS pots, CRL 5-way switch, Switchcraft jack, Orange Drop cap

• Gotoh vintage locking tuners

• TUSQ XL nut

• Hand cut GFS vintage white pickguard

• Lil' Daddy Roth "Custard Pie" metalflake nitro over silver base

 

 

 

Edited May 23 by Junior64
better photos & added scale length

[LFlab]

5 string ultra shortscale travel bass "Short Stuff".

So, I was looking at the Maurizio Miezo travel basses, and also the Mayones Cali basses, but there were things on both I did not like, so I decided to roll my own

21" scale length, 5-string

5 piece through neck (maple, indian rosewood and mahogany), ebony fretboard, mahogany body with a pau ferro top, and birdseye maple back. Headstock has madrone burl veneer front and back.

Schaller rollerbridge, including the spacer underneath

Schack humbucking pickup, my own clone of a Stingray 2eq preamp (the switch is a coil tap for the pickup)

Here it is with the biggest bass in the collection

Rear, bought some maple at a woodworking show, and that turned out to have quite nice birdseye grain.

Also, I recently bought an old Inca bandsaw (50 euros!  ) so I did all the resawing myself, a really helpful tool in guitarbuilding.

I have since fitted Kluson "Mini Bass" tuners I came across by chance, and those really are a better fit. The Gotoh's I had on there earlier are quite large on the tiny headstock.

Quite happy with this instrument. Finding out string gauges and tuning was a bit of a process. I tried tuning it to regular bass tuning (well regular for me at least, I tune my 5-strings EADGC), but that did not work with a few string sets. Ended up tuning it EADGC, but an octave up (as the Mayones Cali basses are).

Hurried the finishing process, because I was keen to hear it, So a refinish is on the horizon, but as it is a travel bass, and possibly gets knocked around, not that critical.

(and also, working on some other instruments  )

I have also devised a guiding jig to cut the fret slots

A laser cutter is also a really helpful tool.

[ProjectGuitar.com]

Time to vote!