I decided to give a second chance to this guitar: this is my eighth build so far and was intended to be a sum of all things I've learnt in three years of guitar building. I decided to call her Ladybug, or Coccinella in Italian, because of the inlay on the twelfth fret. The guitar has been built following the plan of a '59 Gibson Les Paul, but woods and decorations are all customised.
The body is made of european ash with a big weight relief chamber, while the top is Indonesian ebony, a wood really similar to Makassar ebony, but more porous and lighter.
The guitar has a full curly maple binding on body, fretboard and headstock with a thin ebony purfling between the binding and the body. The body has a real golden mother of pearl purfling made with the traditional teflon strip technique.
The fretboard and the headstock are inlayed by hand with a rose themed layout. The full inlay is made of almost 300 tiles and the materials used are white mother of pearl, abalone paua, australian greenlip abalone, green abalone, rosewood, and red dino recon stone. On the headstock the writing Delky (a joke from my surname Del Col ) is inlaid in golden mother of pearl.
The neck is a five parts laminated (Indonesian ebony/hard rock maple) with a 15° scarf joint and a volute. The finish is high gloss poly.
All the hardware is golden: Gotoh TOM bridge and tailpiece; Hipshot open machine heads with tulip button, SD covers on pickups, Freeway 6 positions toggle switch (traditional positions + split coils).
Seymour Duncan Jazz + JB pickups.
CTS pots and Orange Drop caps.
Here is the building thread on the ProjectGuitar.com forums for this guitar
This is my FB page Massimo Del Col where you can see other builds and inlays and this is the official page of my guitars Delky Guitars and Inlays.
Let me know your opinions!
And finally a video of the guitar running through a EVH 5150 made by the young but talented guitarist Marco Bruni.