shorterthanrich

This is a problem I will be running into shortly too. In order to thin down the fingerboard, I'm going to sand it with a flat block on the back a little before radiusing. But when I radius it I'll have the same issue with the slotting. Dude, I need to get a spokeshave asap. Actually I really just need to get the truss rod in and get on the inlay work....

Jason, post a damn picture of your progress. I want to show people.

Such a good day! Routed the truss rod cavity and the wiring cavity (is there a more technical name for that?), cut the neck down where it goes through the body to raise the fingerboard, and tapered the back of the neck a bit for shaping. Tonight I dremel the neck where the fingerboard ends, sand it down, figure out pickup templates, glue on the headstock ears, and get the body ready to be glued! Tomorrow I taper the rest of the neck, cut the headstock shape out, and glue the body. SO GOOD! Such a busy few days I have a head of me... Pictures tomorrow most likely!

Thats true!

The scarf joint with the veneers was such an odd thing! I helped Jason glue the scarf joint on the hallow body he is working on, and it was a total pain. It kept sliding. It came out good, but it just was NOT easy. I decided to put in the veneers for a few reason. 1) To hide the fact that I KNOW I won't be able to line up the neck veneers perfectly, and that would totally screw up the continuity of the neck. 2) It's gonna look sweet. So, we were worried it was going to be a total mess between the veneers curling, adding more glue, etc - it really looked like it was going to be a glue sliding nightmare. But in reality, it was SO much easier. We got the first clamp on and it sunk it down just as much as we had wanted, and from there on every clamp didn't budge it. It was kind of strange and hilarious. Jason was kinda pissed that he didn't do it on his, . Late tomorrow I should have some pictures of it. I sanded the top down for routing, and it looks pretty good so far! As for the mini-buckers. Heh, when i got them, I didn't realize they were minis. I got them from guitar fetish, so they're GFS pickups. I tested them out and they sounded really great. They sounded a little bit warmer than I expected, which I was actually really happy about. My friend James (who's helped Jason and I with our builds) is addicted to DiMarzio pickups, and I doubt the GFS ones will be as nice. I suggest going to guitarfetish.com and looking through the different mini's they have there. You can't really beat em for the price as far as I know, and they sound better than I reasonably expected from them. Thanks guys! (and girls?)

As far as I can tell, the bridge quality is awesome. wwwdotcomdotnet bout one for another project he's working on too. It's intonatable on each individual string. The construction is flawless as far as I've seen. I havn't used it yet, so I can't really make any judgments in that regard. It is beautiful, seems well built, fully intonatable, and adjustable height-wise.

After watching this thing get built first hand (including the screwups), playing it, watching it played live, I can tell you it looks and feels like a bit more than just a homemade guitar. It is just a homemade guitar, but it really does play beautifully. Seeing it played on stage, I saw a number of people in the crowd pointing out the guitar and saying things like "dude, that things sick, I havn't seen an SG like that," and they didn't even know he had built it himself. The colors look absolutely incredible - some of the pictures don't do it justice. I know there are way better guitars out there, and lots of people in this forum who create masterpieces, but I gotta say, this guitar is a beautiful monster. This being his first build, he made mistakes, sure, but the thing still turned out great. Based on this work, I can't wait to see the finished two guitars he's doing now. My bet is that the hallow body he's working on is going to be insane.

I don't plan on angling the neck back for the bridge, but I will be cutting the neck down where it is on the body to make sure the bridge will be low enough. It's adjustable so I'll make sure to leave room for error so I can raise it or lower it as needed. Is that what you meant? Talking to Jason and my other guitar building buddy, they say my plan solves the problem, but other opinions? Hah, yeah I'll resize them next time! Mozilla automatically makes them fit the window for me so i didn't notice. I'm loving the veneers in the neck too. I'm gonna do the same thing between the body and the neck, and also put it in the scarf joint. Can't get enough veneers! Thanks and I'll keep you all posted! Monday I route the truss rod cavity, bring down the neck where it meets the guitar a bit, and taper the neck down. Possibly also route for wiring. we'll see!

This is my first build - Jason (wwwdotcomdotnet) got me sucked into it. So awesome. We got pretty much all of the wood from Curtis Lumber in NY, but I got the quilted maple top off of ebay. Curtis had no quilited, unfortunately. I can't complain about the piece I got, though - it's beautiful...just expensive. The shape is one I came up with kind of on accident. I was drawing a generic shape to start making modifications to for a more customized look, and as a freehanded it really quickly I drew almost the exact shape I'm going with. I made a few changes along the way, but I'm pretty happy with the initial design. Doing a mahogany body with a quilted maple top, neck through design. The neck is flamed maple and zebrawood, with 3 veneers in between each piece of wood. Dyed black poplar, anagre fiddleback, and dyed black poplar again. Kind of like an oreo... I plan to do a stain black sandback and then green for the maple top. The neck will be natural all the way, including through the guitar. I think this might be kind of a challenge, but completely worth it. It will be a quilted maple green and just totally natural finished wood in the middle. All gold hardware. I'm pretty excited for that! Got most of the hardware from guitarfetish - man I love them! Still need the truss rod, ferules, a nut, fret wire, and maybe some binding (not sure). I'll link some pictures to where I'm at now! I'm trying to get as much done as possible in the next week before I go home for summer and no longer have access to an awesome woodshop... this is the initial drawing. it was just a sketch - the neck is way too fat Here's the overall shot and another separated gluing the scarf joint sweet cocobolo fingerboard and veneers mahogany base and maple top Pickups and bridge laying on it older pic - gluing the body - and lots of hardware! Any suggestions or comments? I'm pretty new at this but I'm way sucked into it and want to learn as much as I can. Jason has been helping me a ton, and I've been trying to read up as much as I can. sweet!

It's so interesting how different the cocobolo fingerboards look than the ones you all posted. That's how Jason (wwwdotcomdotnet) and I thought ours would be from LMI, but they came very orange in color (almost like padauk) . I will post a picture soon - camera batteries are dead. They still look completely awesome, though.