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Finished up this Traditional explorer. This is what i dub my best overall build to date. Specs: Body: 2 piece black limba top: Figured claro walnut (resawed myself) Neck: 13 piece Bolivian rosewood, paduak, purpleheart and maple veneer Fretboard: Ziricote, 25.5" scale, 24 fret, XJ jescar stainless, Blue luminlay side dots Custom wound pickups with matching black limba covers (made the covers and sent them to the pickup maker) 1 volume, 1 tone, push pull split

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 styl

It's finally over. We can go back to acting like adults now. I think everyone knows what I'm talking about.

And on to positioning of the tuners. Other than the added dimension of the two strings being able to move independently, I do it similar to with a fixed bridge - I fit the headstock equipment (in this case the clamp) and then fit some 'sacrificial' strings to the top and bottom positions to line up with the scale length + intonation and with the fretboard/string spacing: Having positioned the two outer ones, I marked the front screw positions and then the two for the middle strings: Then fixing the tuner bases by these front screws, I could string up to get the splay angle, ta

And here are a few bonus pics

Hi guys, does anyone know hot to do this out-standing look guitar. the first one seems to be a combination of dying and natural, but the second one is like the spalted maple were inlayed into the flame maple. Any ideas?? Scorpionscar

So here is what I got done today. First I cut the purpleheart into fitting pieces. The big chunk I had was cut in exactly half, one half will be used for these two builds. The second half will be used sometimes in the future. After cutting it in half, I had to resaw it, but since I don't have a band saw, I ran it lengthwise through the table saw and finished the rest with the hand saw. Here's the result: I also plained them flat with my router, so they are ready for what's coming to them, and this is it: These will be the wings for the black/purple/gold one I designed in pa

So yeah, this thread has been going slow. I finally finished setting up my work area, I now had some additional shelves and roughly 7 more square meters usable on the attic, so some things should be much easier to do than last time. And I'll be tripping over my own feet way less now. I also glued some test pieces together to see how bamboo glues on bamboo and how it glues to the purpleheart veneers. And it went awesome. All the test pieces I had glued couldn't be broken where it was glued. So there we have it, bamboo, even tho it's grass, can be glued like wood. This is dark bamboo gl

I fine sanded the neck today. I also wanted to mention this time I routed the truss rod channel with a jig I made. I got the idea for the jig from a YuoTube video that I watched. My last build I had to fill the channel back in and reroute it. This time it was one and done.

All tuckered out now.

My cat thinks he's funny.

That is actually something i plan to do a video on. Not nearly as difficult as it sounds

I guess its that time again. I had been using a thread that was 2 years old. I havent updated progress in a while. I had been working on a ton of guitars, but havent finished many. I also vow to do more in progress/ video tutorials this year.

Total porn. I'd love to see an over the shoulder of your core-laminate process. I'm kicking around a neck through and trying to wrap my head around milling and glueup of all the veneers.

That is stunning......and really really really good too. SR

I agree. I think the same, two tops and fill with epoxy cause in the zone of the carving in the horns, the spalted maple is deep inside. There are interesting ideas that come to my mind... Scorpionscar

To follow on from 'The Yeti' Series, I have begun work on the second line : 'Hephaestus' (Greek Blacksmith God/God of Fire) I will begin with 1 Telecaster and 1 Jazzmaster in this mode. Obviously, it looks better than this in my head, but as a general idea: I'm still exploring which pickups to use. In my playing I am almost always on the humbucker (I play with a moderate amount of distortion - the lighter end of 'Heavy Rock'), so part of me wants to put in two humbuckers. The other part of me says "you have a strat and a gretsch for that, give y

Time for an update. The weather hasn't been too kind recently, but I did soldier through a 1-C-degree afternoon to plane down the 2.5" thick slabs of sequoia, and cut out the basic shapes with the Jigsaw. There was a LOT of pink snow from this. A lot It's funny, the slabs were so heavy, but once cut down to shape and thickness (standard 1-3/4"/45mm), they are so light! I suppose they are a softwood pine, after all. Having offcuts allowed me to test how sequoia would hold up to the charring ...pretty well. And it was easier than I thou

I endorse this idea, and yes you do have it in you!

I vote for #1 but with the 12th fret inlay.

If we all liked the same thing, it would be a mighty boring world. SR

Put a little burst around the inlay too. SR

When I have a bunch of options, I usually pick the two I like best......and only play one of those. SR

I think it's around 120 options

Those color combos are starting to come together really nice. That burst elevates it to another level. Awesome!

i somehow missed earlier post of bass with three fricking humbuckers? "I like the cut of your jig sir". that is going to have a LOT of options... v nice work.

so... was looking for fretboard maple... and I have some that will match this one... so revision 12321312355532.fgggabade.3329. would love your thoughts.

nothing wrong with wilkinson. They are just the korea/china faction of gotoh (if I'm not mistaken). The gotoh compensated saddles are better and gotoh in general is a hair nicer quality. Also, perhaps it's just me, but when slapping together $1000+ in parts/materials for a guitar... putting wilkinson on it kind of seems a bit... well... out of place?

well, again the only black one gotoh makes is a modern version... (with no side walls) and I'm not sure that would look great. I have found a wilkinson version in black... but we've already purchased a gold gotoh one so... and gold sd510 tuners. Perhaps I'll do black for my prototype... just to be a jackwagon.

You could always get a black one and fit brass saddles?

well, they do it's just the 'modern'. afa I could find they don't make a traditional tele bridge in black. his initial request was that it be a very 'twangy' guitar... and with that in mind - you gotta have the brass barrel saddles!

mmmmmmmm..... make some guacamole!

That mole won't get whacked, I suppose...

Exactly. SR

I'd be tempted to go with black hardware with the turquoise. Black binding would look cool to. SR

Beauty marks..... SR

Ok so I will measure and refill and adjust accordingly!

Looking forward to seeing that

This is my order of operations: 1. Route neck shape/profile 2. Get fretboard blank down to correct thickness 3. Stick fretboard blank to neck 4. Use neck as template and route fretboard flush with neck 5. Radius fretboard 6. Cut fretslots 7. Inlay work 8. Install frets 9. Carve neck I've done this stuff in various orders but I've done it this way for my last 5 or 6 builds and it's the order my most comfortable with because it mitigates risk of the fretboard not gluing on straight, cutting slots is way easier because there is far less wood to saw and I won't have to co

lovely body blank. truss channel looks nice. good work.

Well, considering my first build ever, and first proper project working with wood, involved wenge... I don't see things going any worse than that haha. From the wood db for wenge: Very splintery—care must be used when handling unfinished wood with bare hands, as splinters have an increased risk of infection. Also, Wenge splinters tend to take longer to heal and are more likely to go septic (get infected) than splinters from other woods. Bamboo will be an upgrade in regards of not getting septic wounds all jokes aside tho, I do use protection when handling it, should be ok.

I'll be following the veneering with interest. Experimenting with vacuum bags has been on my 'must try' for ages

This is going to be worth following

Got the LP body sanded, and ready to route wiring cavities. Had a problem with my plunge router not staying locked in place and messed up a body blank and master template trying to route the edges. So I cut another body blank as close to the outline as I could and just belt sanded it.

To me the middle one appeals the most. The figuration on the lower bout fills the entire area nicely. Then again, there's an idea on the top one as well as the longitudinal stripe matches with the neck and string lines. The royal blue with gold hardware has echoes from uniforms from the past, forceful, controlled and arrogant like the Royal Naval Officers from the sailship era! The turquoise doesn't seem to match with the gold hardware but it may be my monitor as well.

so... did some revised mock ups to help my friend decide... would love some feedback if y'all would be so kind altho ultimately it's his choice. That said... I think I'm going to make this turqoise one my secondary...

@mistermikev Thank you. I hope so. The veneer is beautiful curly maple. I will carve the red oak top then use a vacuum seal bag to put pressure on the glued veneer.

My ex father in law's name was Ron Ragen and his next door neighbor was named Billy Carter (same as ex president Jimmy Carter's beer guzzling brother.) As kids my ex and her siblings used to get a lot of mileage out of those little factoids. SR

Bit more progress with this. Apologies for the post being a bit pic-heavy. The pickups arrived. The pickups themselves have a bottom multi-wire connector which, with the three way switch supplied, gives the three options of 'P' bass' (diagonal split); 'Jazz bass' ( single coil); Humbucker. They are passive, so the only connections needed to the PCB on each switch is a ground, a hot out and a 9v in to drive the LEDs: A wants a straightforward 'off/on' for each with a master volume and a master tone. We decided on this as a layout: With those large connectors, I ne

little update... got my 'real' run off the cnc... spent some time with my dragon rasp yesterday... she needs a whole lot of sanding and some details worked out... but getting there... got a little bit of wavy gravy on the underside due to not smoothing the transitions between several arcs... and a little 'brithmark'. will have to decide if I want to do the work to smooth it out or chalk it up to 'character'.