Leaderboard

Okie dokie, that's a wrap! This is really my first proper commissioned build, and I'll be delivering it to its new owner later this evening. Really hope he digs it! I sold some guitars I built a while back, somewhere around 12-14 years ago, but I've never taken someone else's "dream design" all the way from sketches to finished guitar before. Honestly it was a pretty nerve-wracking experience. This is probably the best sounding guitar I've ever built though, and has a looot of natural/acoustic sustain for some reason. I'll post some video/audio in a bit.

Welp, can't have a month go by with no entries, right? This was my first "real" commission build - I sold some guitars that I built a long time ago, but never took someone else's design from the ground up and made it a reality, so this was a new experience for me. He's a big fan of PRS guitars, and his design choices obviously reflect that; it's the Custom body shape with a flat top, basically. He had a Strat with a neck he really loved, so I took some contour gauge and caliper measurements of that and duplicated the thickness and profile as closely as I could. Specs: - 25.5" scale, 24 Jescar stainless frets, abalone position and side markers. - Indian rosewood fretboard. - African mahogany body. - Curly maple top with natural faux binding. - Curly maple one-piece neck with 2x carbon fiber reinforcement rods. - Seymour Duncan Custom 5 and 2x Classic Stack pickups, 5-way blade, volume/tone/tone - Gotoh tuners. - Hipshot bridge. Didn't get a long demo recorded or anything, but this is what it sounds like through a 1987 Mesa Mark III+ And that's about it! Cheers my dudes.

The lower edge, or "horn", kinda hits the "cutaway" at a little under 90 degrees. So it kinda does curve out, but only by a little. The paper design for this came out in 45 minutes and two beers, so the next day when I made the template out of plywood I left enough material to make a few edits if needed; I can't remember if I changed the design of the lower cutaway part, but if I did it would've been subtle. After I'd cut the template, I had something I could actually hold in my hands and lap, and figure out whether it'd be comfortable or ergonomic - I figured it would, so I started building the thing! And as it's turned out, it's balanced pretty well on the leg, and it goes okay propped up on the finger: Queensland Maple is definitely not a true maple - I find it looks and to some extent sounds much more like a mahogany. But much cheaper, in this part of the world! Did the truss rod slot with the router in the jig. Marked out all the carves on the body. Going off what I mentioned earlier, I did the paper plans with reckless abandon, so on the timber I decided to take my time and really visualize what would look and feel decent. Had at it with an angle grinder wielding a 60-grit flap disk, for the concave parts such as the lower edge leading into the cutaway. The top edge was entirely rasp and file work. I couldn't get the plane in there, for the risk of creating a "hump" where the shoe hits the neck, and I wanted a flat but shallow bevel, so I just went steady by hand. And the back end of the guitar was also slightly concave, so grinder and flap disk made an appearance again, Really starting to look more like an aircraft than a guitar, which is about the time I started calling it the "Valkyrie".

Today I took it out of the clamps and became a sawdust factory. I must say that routing cavities is my least favorite thing to do on a guitar build. On the other hand it is starting to look like a guitar. SR

That's a great idea! I'll be giving that one a go tomorrow. Also a solid idea. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, using a high-powered electric drill to excavate a few cubic millimeters of material can be quite the overkill. I'll add a pin vise to my list of goodies to buy with the next shopping run! Incidentally, I remember my father had a collection of those when I was a teenager running amok in his garage - he spent his professional life designing PCB's for microelectronics companies, and I understand the pin vise is also used for drilling out holes in circuit boards. Drilled the headstock for tuner holes using a 13mm spade bit, with sacrificial ply clamped to the underside. My spade bits are fairly new and thus still mostly sharp, but it's always a mission stopping vibrations from causing an oval hole. Now, Warwick's tuners seem to measure in at 13.8mm. I don't have a 14mm spade bit, and, more to the point, I don't yet have a drill press to ensure a non-oval hole. So I went with the safe option - drill a smaller hole, and ream it just a touch. Rolled up a sheet of 120 grit around a pencil..... Stuff it through the tuner-hole, and then remove the pencil. The roll of sandpaper now wants to unravel, and that keeps the paper perpendicular to the surface of the headstock, and making contact all around the inside of the hole. A coupla good strokes up and down and all around the place, and I've got a neat 13.9mm hole. The tuners now "click" into place.

Everything in this post was done on the last day I had off before starting that big run of work. Six weeks ago. I was definitely rushing, definitely trying to just get it done, before the onslaught of sleep deprivation and stress and maniacal stage crew. I had a really, really good feeling about this part of the build. I'd overcome most of the "difficult" bits, and all I had to really do before finishing was the bridge, tailpiece and pickup routing, a ton of sanding, then job's a good'un, right? Well, got most of it right. And then, I had just one clamp on the template for the last one, and the whole thing slipped and went sideways by about 3 or 4mm. Honestly, the photo makes it looks a lot worse than it was. Funny how they do that. I was lucky in the fact that I noticed pretty quickly - another few mil and it would've blown sideways through to the chambering. I cut a piece of maple to size and glued it in with wood glue mixed with dust. Worked pretty well. Tried getting the corners of the pickup routes to size with a 6mm bit, but of course that bit lacks a bearing, and I was conscious of the risk of burning the template. It didn't come close radius of the pickups, anyway, so I cracked out the chisel. And with that, I packed up my tools, definitely did not sweep up quite all of the sawdust, and put the project upstairs for a month.

After 3 days of intermittent tomfoolery with the electronics…. the result is…. NEW GUITAR DAY!!! new guitar day!!

This guitar is a twin to the one that won GOTM in May. That one was for a test drive to keep in my office for potential clients and this one I sold to a client. It has almost identical specs other than a rosewood fretboard, different color and pickups. Build thread is Here. Specifications: Name: Claymore Body: Honduran mahogany (maple veneer) with grain matched cavity covers. Water based lacquer finish. Neck: Paduak (maple veneers) with flame Maple binding and luminlay side dots. Tru oil finish. 25.5" scale length. Fretboard: Indian Rosewood with MOP logo at 12th fret. Headstock: matching maple with Wenge and paduak accents. MOP inlay. Frets: Jumbo stainless with hemispherical ends. Hardware: Evertune bridge, Hipshot locking tuners, Graphtech nut. Electronics: Bareknuckle aftermath set with camo finish. Push push volume for coil splitting.

Strings on at last and sounding great

The shaping is mostly done except for some minor details. It now flows smoothly from part to part, just like it was one single thing instead of a bunch of glued together pieces. SR

Next I roughed in the neck join and started in on the top. SR

Put some strings on! Screwd the bridge on! Liked what I heard!

This looks so perfectly crafted that I kinda hate you a little bit

In one of my bands, we played Iron Maiden - Rime of the Ancient Mariner. During the quiet bit with the ships timbers creaking, the other guitar player would rock his guitar back and forth on his leather strap which made creaking noises exactly like the record. It was dumb but super effective. Semi-related: -We also did YYZ, and would kick a small PA that had reverb springs during the solo where the whip snap sound is. -At the beginning of Ozzy - I Don't Know, we moved a mic in circular motions over a cymbal while the drummer used soft mallets. Sounded just like the record.

OK, updated pics so you can see the properly oriented pickguard 'paint dripping' effect. And the neck, so far. I'll probably blacken out the Floyd cavity soon. Just have to decide what switches I want for the pickups and drill them. Probably not doing a slide switch here, either a 3-way toggle or 2 mini-switches I think.

So I finally finished this project and thought it might be fun to post the results here despite not being active for 10 years. Here it is in all its glory! As mentioned above it's walnut and maple neck-through. Finish is oil and wax. Closeup body. The top knob is a 4 way rotary switch (Bridge HB - Split Neck+Bridge - Split Neck - Neck HB). The other two are volume and tone. Headstock. The recessed tuners aren't by design, I made the headstock too thick to fit them and didn't feel like sanding it down. Back side. Some of the more visible mistakes. I took too much off of the neck and had to glue on a scrap piece. On the back the ferrules are uneven and I had to file two of them just to get them in. Also, mid way through the project I decided to change from having back loaded electronics to putting everything on a pickguard, after having already started to work on the control cavity from the back. I also got a bunch of wax stuck in pores and gaps. I've also broken three screws by not drilling pilot holes well enough! All in all I'm really happy with the project. I still love the design and it turned out pretty much exactly like I wanted. I think I'd maybe prefer a more glossy finish. Best of all, it's actually playable!

Ok, ok, here's a story of recklessness and restlessness. A few weeks before I started my last big run of work, I was looking at the pile of offcuts I had accrued underneath my staircase, and thinking about how I should really reduce my level of clutter in the household. That was really it, y'know, the whole thing is just a big clean-up mission, and definitely not because I wanted to build another guitar... First up, I had to figure out whether my offcuts were of the correct dimensions to start a guitar build. I had nothing wide enough, but several thinner pieces, so a 7-piece laminate neck it shall be. I've got Maple, Walnut, Oak, and Queensland Maple in there, and the whole sandwich should be long enough to do a neck-through. Got those bits all planed, trued, glued and clamped, and then sat down to draw up the plans. Now, I've never even owned a Flying V styled guitar at all, so we can mostly put this one down to curiosity. On the few occasions I've tried one out, however, I've always been seriously pissed about the inability to play sitting down. Not everything's a gig, man, and I practice seated! So I needed to shape the lower run of the guitar to accommodate for balance. The weird little arse-end was in part inspired by the LTD Arrow, but equally it just came about from the lines of the insides of the "V" coming together. If I'd just met them in the middle, it would've looked strange. The carves are penciled in at this point. I'm going for a single pickup, most likely an EMG 81 until somebody can convince me otherwise, and a single volume control. Wings are Queensland maple, fretboard will be Tassie Oak stained black, reverse headstock, and a 27" scale length for all that baritone badassery. Scarf jointing, by hand, with a tenon saw. With all the power tools and jigs available to me nowadays, I still feel most confident doing it slow and steady. Marking out all four sides and checking regularly is the way to go. Hate clamping up scarf joints though! I tried the salt trick, which helped a bit. And at this point, I'd like the drop the bombshell on thickness. Not body thickness, not neck thickness, but neck-through thickness....

Marked up the fretboard with my steel rule, calipers, square, and a sharp knife. I'm using Tasmanian Oak for this one. Couldn't find much in the way of resources about how this wood would fare as a fretboard, so I'm really taking a punt here. The hardness seems to be in the ballpark, although not as resilient as other species, and it handled the fret slotting saw with no splintering. With such a violently-shaped instrument, I couldn't do a normal round-over on the end of the fretboard. It's gotta look violent! Glued up, then I radiused it, and stained it jet black. Frets installed. And then I carved the neck, with my usual method of rasps and files, then scraper and sandpaper, plus a touch of angle grinding in just the right places. This shot also shows the whole gull-wing thing - don't quite know how I'm gonna fit pickups into this thing!

Hi Apols for being in absentia much of the last 6 months - I had a lot of small project catching up to do and got to the point where it was more important to 'just knuckle down and get on with it, Andy!' rather than ramble on in mega-threads about the crazy way I go about stuff The next project I'm going to do is a corker and I promise I will fully document it, but here's a quick and dirty update of the last full project, completed a few weeks ago. The basic spec that Matt - the prospective owner - gave me was: - back of a fag-packet sketch - 5 strings - 30" scale - single cut - single SimS Superquad - Walnut top - Through-neck - it had to fit in a Hiscox electric guitar hard case He was also happy for me to try a couple of things I hadn't tried before. This was his sketch: He wanted it relatively light...so I chose English Oak (one of the heaviest british native species) for the back My usual notched neck approach: Plenty of chambering, as well as a back scoop. Oh - and some purpleheart just to add a bit more weight : Used the method I've tried before to get neck binding with demarcation stripes for free by using body binding strip : One of the reasons I like through necks - you can be brutal with the body carve. Upper fret access done and back scoop just about to start! : Then to the front to try to take out some of the 'beluga whale' look that single cut basses can sometimes suffer from: And one new gamble experiment - cutting a control plate from the back wood. Before I glued the top, I routed the control chamber from the top to within 3mm of breakthrough, then used a Dremel to cut round the remainder with a 1mm bit: Which gave me a grain-matching hatch: And the chamber of which I would later bind with acoustic guitar roundel purfling strip: Which gave me one of my neater-than-usual hatches : Next post, the finished pics

Glued up some wings from Queensland Maple. I got a huge slab of the stuff for my Infinity bass build, before deciding to go with Walnut for it's body wings, so after taking a slice for the neck lamination I had almost the entire board left over. I had to router-thickness it to 34mm to fit my design, then plane all the ugly router marks away, and do a bit of creative board-planning before the glue and clamps. Before I go too far forward, it's important to address the fact that my neck-through is far thinner than my wings - the core is barely 23mm thick, while the wings are 34mm. Purely born out of the stock I had available, this is now a major focus point for the guitar, and I'm going to build a super-thin instrument that doesn't "feel" super-thin. And, a box-cove bit makes the transition much cooler. Gull wings. Ran out of acrylic, so I went with 6mm ply for the templates, with the edges splashed with CA for a touch of extra hardness against the bearing. The tips were dauntingly fragile, so I went for a lot of passes, and somehow still managed to end up with a fair amount of burning. After worrying about the fragile horns on the body, I somehow managed to tear-out the headstock nub. Damn! As seen by the pencil marks, I decided to go for a re-shape anyways - sometimes, and especially when a plan comes together so quickly, it really does take disaster for you to sit back and rethink your paper plans.

Of all the skills involved in luthiery, this is one of the many that I have little experience in. That doesn't mean I can't give it a shot though! I am rather hesitant of taking tools to this headstock to try and solve a problem, and creating one much worse, but then nothing is gained without calculated risk. I'll think upon it! Anyways, luckily I did remember to put that truss rod inside (although I sat bolt upright in the middle of the night wondering whether I had or not). Next job was all about getting the neck ready for carving, namely, thicknessing properly. A sled constructed of an MDF base and two pine rails cut to the correct angle provided a base for my router to ride along. Because of the size of the router base, I could only get to within about 60mm of that all-important heel transition, but I'll get the rest of that later with the grinder. So it's time to radius the board, using my homemade sanding block. Mask and gloves on - I don't want to end up allergic to my own cocobolo fretboard! Fret bending, with another homemade DIY abomination I call my fret bender. The paper clips are simply there as spacers to allow the fret tang to ride between the washers, which I could've made look a lot better by simply putting a smaller washer between the two bigger ones - but I forgot to pick up some smaller washers that day at Bunnings. Excuse my punk-ass looking device, but it works! Gave the slots a quick flick of the ol' saw to get the edges back to proper depth after radiusing, and starting whacking frets in. One part of this process I must convey - I cut the fretwire down to frets, drilled 24 holes in a block of scrap, numbered them, and then foolishly placed the block on top of the guitar body. When I gave the first fret a solid hit with the hammer, and all the frets flew out of the block and went all over the garden floor! Bollocks, guess it has been a while... Right onto neck carving. I tend to use rasps on sections at the nut and close to the heel, and try to get a solid profile. Then, I'll hold the rasp with a hand at either end, and push the rasp sideways down the neck. Not sure if this is a generally orthodox approach, but it does remove enough material to call it a very basic neck within about half an hour by hand. This shot shows the very trapezoidal look that I ended up taking. As much as I know I can remove material to "shape" a neck in a short period of time, I know that I have ample time to re-visit the shape. Besides, there will be a lot of sandpaper to see before this thing gets strings, so I call it a day on shaping.

Using a pinpoint and sharp scribe as an awl is a good idea, so many parts of guitar making needs an accurate centre indent. A scribe used as a centre marker would be good to make a drilling template to ensure ferrule holes are in a straight line and evenly spaced. I tried out a technique to seat the truss rod nut into the channel on the practise neck first. The truss rod nut sits 0.8 mm lower than the rod ends, so the channel needs to be at least this much lower where the nut sits. Previously, I have deepened the channel there with a full size router, not a good idea. I tried my mini router with a carving bit To set the depth I put 1 mm cutting boards on the neck and lowered the bit until it hit the bottom of the channel and tightened the lock. Then took away the 1 mm spacers and routed with the Dremmel. The blocks of wood are clamped 28 mm away from where I want the extra depth route to end. It went OK . The rod at the headstock end now goes all the way in Making sure there is no rocking and the truss rod is sitting flush within the channel.

All of these steps are to get some midtones in the figure, which really increases the three dimensionality. SR

Thanks guys, I’ve been spending the day sanding the body and it’s now smooth as a baby’s bottom :)

A little update on why there haven't been any updates on this. Basically, I put the bridge and the tuners in and put some strings in to see if everything is aligned, and how far away the strings are from the fretboard, to see if I need to recess in the bridge a little more. I also put in one pickup to see if I have enough adjustment room on that side... So while the strings were up, I decided to put the rest of the electronics in as well, and try to play it fretless. It's so much fun, I've been doing exactly that almost every day for the past 3 weeks, and I can't get myself to taking it apart again and finishing it properly. As far as the front side goes, I'm really happy how it turned out... there will be some light sanding around the audio jack hole to take out the "edge" and make it all flow a bit nicer. And the pot knobs will be different, I won't use these for sure. While gluing together the backside, the last piece of olive slipped a little so there's a visible gap that I filled with olive sanding dust and CA glue, it's nice and smooth, but it is visible and kinda frustrating, but it is what it is. Once I make the electronics cover etc. we will see how much of it will bother me. Otherwise insanely happy how everything else turned out. And my favorite part, the neck/scarf joint and the subtle volute. Absolutely love how the bamboo looks and feels after fine sanding and 2 coats of satin minwax finish. Probably the best feeling neck I have ever had in my hand. I can't wait to finish this, but I also can't make myself take it apart to finish, because playing it fretless is such a joy... So yeah, that's it, I will take it apart on friday and see how far I can take it over the weekend, and hopefully next week it'll be done.

Slow progress at the moment but had a change of plan…this may turn out to have been a foolish plan but we will see how it goes. I have tipped the neck on each side and filled in the bottom sections with epoxy. Thinning the neck whilst not melting it will be the main concern now.

Finally got some progress on my LP4. The Top has been glued on for a while and today I did the initial shaping. Its a bit of a laborious method but its the way I've always done it and I'm improving each time I mark it out with lines to follow the router with, this time I made paper templates and I flip them over to get it equal each side. I first go round the edge with a Router bit with a wheel guide then change the Router bit and follow the lines This is the setup This Template matches the R9 contour at the base And this is how it's used, I set the height and the distance in. I take 9 passes with half inch increments. The stopper guides me some of the way and the rest is free-hand following the lines marked out on the top Here's the final result. I still haven't figured out exactly how to mark the lines to follow at the top bouts so I just free-hand it till it looks somewhat right. I also didn't think it through well enough around the Tailpiece area but it will all be good in the end

I went and get myself a cheap bench grinder from Screwfix which I'm very impressed with - I'm sure it's only a cheap stone that won't last long but it's very quiet and very smooth. I switched it off, went and made a coffee and it was still spinning why I got back I got a flat bit online. I'm trying to avoid using amazon where possible but it was the only place I could get hold of a 40mm flat bit which I thought was odd. Ground the bit into a radius on one side by eye, then I drew round it and used that as a reference to shape the other side. Tried it out on a bit of scrap and it worked really well. The only trouble was that I was getting a bit of tear out at the front and back - where end grain appears. So I sharpened it as best I could on my oil stone, essentially just took the burr that the grinder made on the back. Then did a second test, also this time extra slow, next to no pressure and got a much better result, end grain a bit rough but nothing a bit of 120 wouldn't sort out. I'm liking this method - much safer than a router, I can do it after carving and I can angle them if I want to by angling the table on the drill. I also got the pocket routed This is a nice bit of maple, hard to see from all angles but the flame stretches then entire width and perfectly perpendicular to the centre line. The only thing that's proving to be a real pain re centre line is that it's a 1 piece top and body so I don't have any seam to help me if I lose centre, so I have to keep redrawing it when I do something like carve the top or route the pocket. Carving with thumb planes is quite nice though, the grain direction is nice and predictable with no centre seam to throw me off.

Here is an awesome piece called Uncle Eddie by Sergey Golovin to keep up the inspiration levels on your build

Hey thanks so much!! Thank you very much!!! I made the nut and installed the trem. Everything seems lined - up! This thing is loud man! I wonder how it sounds plugged -in!

Suddenly, trapezes make so much more sense to me.

So I actually added some retarder and crossed my fingers. Worked. We go from this 2-3 days ago: To this today, slightly darker edged version, w/ Floyd:

Asking is the path to knowledge. The splines add friction. Thus the holes in your knobs should be just a little smaller than the outer diameter of the shaft but larger than the inner diameter measured from the bottom of the splines. The ridges should cut a bit into the wood. And the split in between gives some flex. If the knob becomes loose you can carefully pry the gap more open for a better grip. Here's how the size of the hole should look (red)

Puzzle complete. Just need to epoxy some pieces. For this last round I’ll use rubber bands vs clamps due to all the body curves

I got the fretboard polished. And fretted. And dressed. SR

Hello again! This one, I've been planning to build for nearly ten years. I was always a fan of the Warwick Infinity NT bass, and in a previous life I started building one back in the UK. I think I even started a build thread, back in the day, but I dare not go find it! I moved over to Australia before it was even close to finished, and left the project behind. After I got back into the luthiery saddle last year, I figured I'd grab some timber and give it another go. @Prostheta, it's happening... 34" scale length, 5 strings, 24 frets. Queensland maple and maple neck, walnut wings, flamed maple top, and cocobolo fretboard. MEC pickups and preamp, Warwick 2-piece bridge and hardware. Alrighty, timber shots! Ran the old rusty handsaw and jigsaw, depending on mood, through the Qld and Maple pieces and set them in my router sled setup for a solid thickness. Note to anyone who remembers my last build - I finally got myself a router! Hand plane over all faces, slathered with wood glue, and right into the clamps. Glued the wings on, and laid the template over the top for a look, before grabbing that old jigsaw again for some rough shaping. Scarf joint got done here as well, and headstock ears too. Rough shaped, and I'm starting to get real excited about this thing... See y'all next time! - Jam

Now that's a real improvement! Before the yellow it made me think of the heraldry of my hometown but now it's something entirely unique! The blue fretboard would suit the theme but obviously you can't have it...

Hi, welcome! Cool log-I love it when people start from the log. So primal. You should talk to @Bizman62 about that. He is currently using some poplar that came down on his property, I believe. My gut reaction is that your wood probably has not dried completely as it is still in log form, and wood is typically milled and then dried. But 10 years is a long time-I could be wrong. Try milling a piece and see what the moisture is like in the middle. As far as quarter sawn vs flat sawn go for an electric guitar body-make that decision for looks. It will be plenty stable either way.

Update: 1. When waxing the top of the body, the wax filled up some pores in the wood. These are visible as the walnut is dark and the wax is white. Don’t like how it looks, so I’m planning to sand the top down and refinish it. 2. Trying out a different truss rod cover with my signature. Here’s the work-in-progress:

Wowzer, so it's been over a year since I touched this. Between work and projects at home, I haven't really had time to progress anything guitar related. On a positive note, I'm no longer tinkering in the conservatory. My big project has been constructing a 3x3m timber framed pent workshop at the end of the garden - there have been some delays due to timber availability (pandemic crap) and awful weather. It's basically useable now though, and contains (almost) all of my tools. I should be finishing a run of new fencing next week, allowing an electrician somewhere to run the SWA along for power. Framing is all 2x4. Shiplap cladding on the outside, weather gap and membrane 11mm OSB3 sheathing, 100mm mineral wool insulation, and then 11mm OSB3 for internal wall lining. It even has a nice little window and a full-sized external fire door with British Standard dead lock and night latch. Roof is 18mm OSB3 with EPDM weather proofing.

Round tuits get easier to find as your get older. Tartan paint is always going to be rare! SR

Cheers Scott, I got the table from a local importer who got it from Bali, I am not sure what kind of wood it is, it might be Monkeypod or Indonesian Teak. Amazingly it has a fifth leg, right in the middle, I have never seen that before. It replaced this table which has been moved to the basement, I saved the top from an antique table that only had two legs, each with long base at 90 degrees to the leg, and the top was broken along one of the joins. I rejoined the top stripped all the dark brown finish off of it and and made a new base for it out of Tasmanian oak. I am looking forward to using my home made fret slotting jig again soon, If you are interested in manual photography this site is a great tutorial https://www.photographytalk.com/beginner-photography-tips/the-exposure-triangle-explained

Ehhh, not really. "Lemon oil" for fretboard conditioning doesn't actually contain lemon oil, it's just mineral oils with lemon smell. So you can't really build up a finish with it. It's just to keep the piece of wood moisturized. It would have achieved what you wanted to achieve with the coat of danish oil, turn darker and look/feel fresh

The Color Explosion Police are on the way here with horns and sirens blazing. Officers Green, Blue, and Yellow have reported to me they are in transit, pedal to the floor with an All Alerts Bulletin posted. I'll take a pic with the pickguard template later on to give things some perspective. Its all planned out, I can see the entire thing finished, this is just the background. I wanted to get some clearcoats on it so I can breath a bit easier, then I'll re-shoot the Floyd cavity (again), then more clear.

Started this one at the tail end of last year, or early this year.. (That region of time is all a bit of a blur thanks to not being allowed to leave home) in the old garage for my friend Duncan. He's a big Big Country fan being a Scott of a certain age and wants something inspired by what Stuart Adamson used to play for a 60th present to self: I gave my usual it will be inspired by but not a replica response which he was cool with and we came up with this mockup. The thing is pretty much just a les paul with 2 spiky, symmetrical horns and it's a bit narrower at just over 12" wide according to the limited research I could do - there isn't a huge amount of information on them, certainly no templates. I mean why would there be, it looks horrible. The inlay is inspired by the Big country logo with a sort of negative of the original sg2000 inlay design, then he wants dots for the rest of the markers. The original is all white abs binding like a les paul custom but we're going for natural binding on the bod, maple binding on the fretboard plain old ebony on the headstock with my usual moustache shape. I got a couple of extra nice Bosnian maple billets for him to pick from which the mockup is based on and he said he didn't like the seam/chevron style figure (to be fair, most of the SG2000 aren't even figured maple) so I was scratching my head on how best to achieve what we both wanted to make and almost to the day Mike messaged me to tell me about his latest score, and after just a tiny bit of begging, he sent me a couple of one piece curly maple carve tops because he's an awesome dude. This was the lesser of the two tops, because you know (Luthier dibs) According to google photos, I created this album in Oct 2020, so I guess that's when I made a start on it and roughed out the top and an African mahogany body blank - I've taken to drawing around the templates with a 1/4" washer and cutting roughly to that line so I can glue pieces up oversized where possible to prevent glue dribbling into open grain at final dimensions. It's slightly more effort routing the final shape being thicker but easier on sanding which is my least favourite thing. BTW, I used illustrator to trace a pic of the body and printout out the design, transferred it on to mdf to make the template. No pics but I routed a channel in the mahog from switch to control cavity before glue up. At least I hope I did... I guess we'll fine out. Glued up and routed and did a bit of work on the neck blank (actually looks quite tidy for me). This is my first time using genuine mahogany - one of the old bed posts my dad gave me last year. That was as far as I got before packing it all up and moving. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I routed out the neck shape and stuck the fretboard on. I rescued this fretboard from a dodgy glue up on Matts tele build (still unfinished) but I was able to reuse it here - the shorter scale and only 22 frets made that possible, Indian ebony is expensive so glad it wasn't wasted after all. It's a hair too narrow for the neck but that doesn't matter because it's getting a binding channel anyway. Then today I got the mahogany down to correct thickness. I've been getting rather blumpy with these lockdowns so opted for manual instead of the drum sander and got a sweat on. This is a new (to me) stanley no6 from ebay and an absolute joy to use compared to my cheap Amazon Basics and Faithful planes. I'm on a mission to replace them all for Stanleys when they come up at a decent price. Next up will be carving

It's easiest if you imagine the two sections of the switch moving clockwise in sympathy from position 1 to 4 and then follow the trail it makes from pickup to volume pot, like following a train on railway tracks as the points move across (ignore the 'R-M' thing for the moment); The top section shorts out the 2nF cap and bypasses it completely, but the 22nF cap gets connected between the pickup and ground, effectively making it equivalent to a typical tone control set to zero (aka the 'T- Low pass' setting). Lots of highs are lost and the sound is warm/muddy/dull/bassy etc The 22nF cap is again connected to ground, but the 2nF cap bypass gets removed and is allowed to remain in circuit. The 22nF again acts as a low pass filter, but the 2nF acts as a high pass filter at the same time, resulting in a narrow band of frequencies to pass (you lose some lows through the high pass and lose some highs through the low pass, what's left is the 'untouched' stuff in the midrange, aka the 'T+ B- Band pass' setting). The 22nF cap gets disconnected and the 2nF cap gets bypassed again. The pickup is effectively connected directly to the volume pot with no filters applied (aka the 'T+ B+ Filters Bypassed' setting). Not dissimilar to a tone control on max. The 22nF cap remains disconnected but the 2nF cap gets inserted back into the pickup signal. It acts as a high-pass only, which cuts the bass out of the pickup signal (aka the 'B- High pass' setting). The sound becomes thin/weedy/shrill/bright etc It's not clear what the 'R-M' switch is for, but if you close the switch the extra circuitry gets bypassed and has no effect on the pickup signal. If the switch is open the extra 470k/1nF circuit is added in series with the pickup signal, which acts as a kind of additional high-shelf filter; high frequencies can pass freely through the cap, but lows are forced to travel through the resistor, which slugs some of their energy on the way to the output. You'd probably end up with a moderate bass cut/treble boost when you activate the circuit. I wonder if 'R' and 'M' stand for something like the German terms for 'bright' and 'normal' or 'rhythm' and 'lead'?

Even after keeping them under water, it won't dissolve in water, so when you put them out to dry, spread nicely and keep an eye. Just to be on the safe side.

ooooh that's fookin' sexy, I'm glad I'm not entering anything in GGBO next month

And his guitar teacher was Joe Satriani. One of Joe's other students around the same time was a young Kirk Hammett. Small world.

Hello all!!! Back from the dead!!! It has been six and a half years since I have done any work on this guitar, and about 11 years since I started it. At this pace I plan to be done by the time I am 70. Anyways, I finally have some better woodworking skills and enough money to buy necessities. Plus, I am not a total moron anymore, just a partial one. I decided to sort of reset this project because there were a lot of issues: 1. The fretboard was way too thin -- I was warned by many on here about that one 2. The frets were not seated in all the way 3. I hate hardtail style bridges 4. Everything was just... ugly and rough and quite poorly done. All that being said, I took off the fretboard using a clothes iron and some putty knives and the back of a thin flush cut saw. I then sharpened my handplane and got to work making things flat that were supposed to be flat. Particularly the top, neck-fretboard joint, and the back. Didn't have to take off much material, so it wasn't too bad. I am going to swap the hardtail bridge out for a recessed tune-o-matic. So to deal with the existing holes, I got some plug cutting bits from good old harbor freight and cut a few for the string ferrule holes in the back, and the bridge holes in the front. I bought some cool macassar ebony veneer that I plan on laminating to the top and back faces (excluding the carved edges). Starting to think that I may as well just fill the front holes with some epoxy instead of having to drill them out and plug them, since they will be covered up anyways. I don't see how that would be an issue according to my googling. I also roughed up the neck a little when I was removing the fretboard, and I'll probably fill that spot up with epoxy and wood dust as well. Here's a veneer shot. Looks like it matches the general color scheme here. Not sure yet if I'm going to bookmatch it or just tilt one sheet to fit the whole face. If I tilt it, it would either have a cool effect, or look like total crap. I'll mock it up before I do it. Also, have you guys seen this technique for laminating a veneer? Looks really easy. https://youtu.be/dysWUDX6PdE So anyways, I ordered a bunch of parts, a new pre-slotted fretboard from LMII (no zero fret this time because I'm a big boy), and a fret press attachment for my drill press so these new frets actually get seated. Hopefully I'm not breaking any forum rules with this hyperbump! This time I mean business. Thanks for reading.