Blackdog

The only experience I can speak of is not as a builder (I'm only slowly becoming one, hopefully), but as a player (of which I'm not that much either...): I once owned a MIJ Fender Rosewood Tele. This was not only Heavy (with capital H), even despite the fact of the fully hollowed body, but also pretty death tonally. Basically it resonated as much as a brick.... However I see rosewood used as a tonewood for top level acoustics, and that should mean something. PRS McCartys with IRW neck have good sound reports. I guess I'll have to try, for the sound, for the looks and the aforementioned "cool factor" Although I thought that you had to use zebrano to be "really" cool.....

Hi there, I have a question for the experienced bunch of builders around here: Will an Indian Rosewood neck be significantly heavier than a similar mahogany neck ?? I'm considering an IRW neck for a build down the road and I'm wondering if I'll have to tweak the weight of the body to make it balance properly... Thanks in advance for your advice.

Second day of work on the top and the carving is basically done. We used every imaginable tool on this, from the angle grinder, to the scrapers, to files and of course tons of sanding paper !! I'm so happy with the progress of this build !!! This might be the first, but definitely not the last !!! http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...g_017/G_023.jpg http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...g_017/G_025.jpg Tomorrow I'll work with the deepening of the control cavity, now I know the slope of the top. Maybe I'll also drill the wire channels and the bigger hole for the side mounted jack. At this point I'm not sure if I will carve the belly-countour on the back, it's already a thin guitar as it is. We'll see.

OK, after a couple of days spent in dust-proofing the part of the attic I call the workshop, today was the first session of top carving. I had the lip routed all around the body, and I marked on it the central part of the top that needs to remain basically flat. This flat part is at an angle to the back of the body in LPs and PRS. But for this build I decided from the very beginning to keep it parallel to the back. Other designs do it this way and the carving ends up equally svelte. The major wood removal technique was the angle grinder with a flap-sanding disk. This method, recommended by Mattia, works really well. After that is french-curve, straight scrapers and infinite patience... But after the first session things are literally starting to take shape. And it's also fun !!! I'm calling it a day, this build is looking really promising. It's still very rough, a lot of work still to be done on the horns, but I'm very satisfied with the results so far: BTW, the dust proofing, consisting in some drapes of clear plastic separating the shop from the storage, made quite a difference !!!

In my experience, playing it for a year might well be enough. But I would guess that any mild metal polisher like Brasso might do the trick. Gold plating is usually very thin, and you'll usually find nickel plating below it.

And why would you want to do that, if I may ask ?? In my humble opinion, the Nashville bridge in your faded SG is superior to the Gotoh bridge in your picture. If you're after the "easier" screwdriver adjustment, I don't think there's much of an advantage. You still need to release the string tension quite a bit to be able to adjust the bridge with ease. So given the fact that you have to do that anyway, you could just as well use your fingers and the thumbscrews of the original Nashville... I'm not a big fan of Gotoh hardware, anyway. BTW, Mattia is right, Gibson grounds the tailpiece.

Feel free to do so. I'll be happy to help to the best of my abilities.

I am already...... It's happening !!! Even before looking at the price tags. Now I see a nice guitar and I think: "That's great, I should BUILD me one like that !!!" Funny thing is that I should know better. Last year I designed and built the tube amp I wanted. It ended up so well that I wouldn't even consider buying an amp now. If I find a set of specs I like I KNOW I can make a design and build it. This is the Blackdog DualClassic-Reverb: Now, if I could really play music....

Thanks for the encouraging words. My wife is a very hands-on kind of girl (no easy jokes here, pls!) She's an engineer, like myself, and she does stained glass (tiffany and lead) and glass mosaics as a hobby. And she's really good at it. She's also very supportive with my hobbies and interests. We were discussing the other day not only the second build (obviously something has to be done with the "official" body blank), but even a potential third !!! First I have to carve the top of this first build... And if the result meets my expectations we'll see... Crisis Control Report: we finished cleaning (within reason) the previous mess. The design of the "dust confinement system" is ready, and by friday it should be implemented. I'm looking forward to breaking-in that new grinder I bought. It's still shiny and clean and that's completely unacceptable !!!

Thanks for the info. So summarizing: Chambering and tremolo is not a fundamental problem. So far so good. Resawing the blank, the good fellows at Vox Humana (I got the blank from them) said they could and would do it. They didn't even raise eyebrows much. Stability issues, the idea was to have it sliced, come back home, do the routing for the chamber, clean and reglue right away. Within the day. I know that material will be lost in the cut, some replaning will surely be necessary, so the grain lines will not match exactly. I don't mind that much. I'm not sure I really want to go that route, I'm just exploring the possibility. My wife is pretty sure that even a third build is coming down the road, so maybe that would be a better time for a figured top and the chambering. I'm not THAT sure YET.

I'm sure this will not surprise most of you, but while I work on confining the dust at the attic-shop for my first top carving I'm already thinking about my NEXT build. I have a honduras mahogany blank about two inches thick. The original idea was to build a one-piece PRS-ish body with 3 p90s and a wilkinson tremolo. But I started with a prototype that's coming along real well (sans the tremolo, because it's thinner) and so it would be silly to do exactly the same on the second body. So the specs would be a slightly different shape (more LP double-cut), a 24 fret set-neck, two humbuckers AND the tremolo. I was thinking about having the blank "sliced" into a 2cm thick "top" and a 3cm thick "back". Do some half chambering (bass side only) and glueing them back together before cutting the shape. This way I could add one f-hole to the top but it would still look pretty much one-piece. I know this is done on some tele bodies and on some Hamers, so in principle it should work. I could even go the extra step and put some "scandal grade" quilt maple top on it instead of the mahogany one (though that could be considered a waste of mahogany). But in any case do you think that a half-chambered body, with the front pickups and the rear tremolo cavities, will still be structurally sound ?? Thanks for the advice.

Not that it makes much of a difference, but just to clarify. P100s are Gibson made stacked humbuckers, that have pretty much the same form factor of P90s. Just deeper I believe. There do exist P90 type pickups made to fit a humbucker routing, they go by many names: P94 are Gibson's, Phat Cats are Duncans, and quite a few more are out there. That said, if your customer is anything like me, when I want P90s, I want the real deal. So the only real option is to make a new template.

I know what you mean. I don't quite understand your comment on the Dutch weather, though... With the fantastic summer we're enjoying. My point was that I can't go on covering EVERYTHING with brown dust. I'm looking at some basic isolation techniques to cover with dust only SOME THINGS... But there's a will indeed, and I'm already working on a way, rather low tech too. Basically dividing the attic into an storage section and a messy shop section with some heavy plastic curtains. Next weekend is top carving time.

Well, not much progress to report. By friday we sanded the sides (more sanding still needed, though), and run a routing bit to round the back edge of the body. Incredible visual difference once it's rounded. We tried the idea of the flap-sanding cillinder on the hand drill (as seen on the sanding jig). While it works, I discovered two things. First, it's very hard to control. Hence Mattia was right, I needed a grinder and a flap-sanding disc. I already bought me both. Second, the amount of sanding dust becomes uncontrollable very quickly. Remember, I'm working in the attic. And you also keep "normal" things in an attic. Like shoe boxes, off-season clothes, odd stuff. So I can't really continue until I install some kind of dust confinement work area. I'll spend most of the week cleaning the current mess and installing some dust control system. Hopefully the top carving will restart next weekend. (sigh) I post this for the readers that might be considering building in non-conventional places. I remember reading a recent post about someone wanting to build guitars in an appartment. Well, maybe it's like wanting to build submarines in the bathtube. You simply can't. And I'll stop typing now because I'm covering the keyboard with mahogany dust.... Hey !!! Now that I look around everything looks reddish brown !! I'll be back.

Thanks for the positive feedback !! I'm also very enthusiastic about this project and how it's coming along. So some of you want to see pics of all the steps, here we go then. The Blank after sanding. I'm so happy it doesn't look like that anymore... After Rough Cut, the weight reduction was already encouraging... My wife adjusting the templates against the real thing. And now sanding the edges. She's been helping on the project all along. She's sometimes more enthusiastic than myself. Notice that both templates are screwed to each other and shaped at the same time. One of the templates was used to make the fine cut of the body shape using a top bearing router bit in several steps. The other template was set apart for cuting the pickups and control cavities. I've already shown the routed cavities, here's the top and the back of the body. Yesterday we finished the first step in the top carving process: Routed the lip at the edge of the body. It now looks like this: http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...tilde/G_018.jpg Next step is sanding off the marks at the sides. My wife will surely help. She's really good with the sanding jig. After that it's going to be top shaping time.... Slip-ups to report: When cutting with the router, when you lift the finger off the switch, ALWAYS WAIT for the bit to stop spinning before moving the machine. I didn't do it twice and ended up with two small gouges on the flat part of the lip. I could route the lip all around just a millimeter deeper to erase them, but that can be even more dangerous, they'll hopefully go away with sanding. Let's see how it continues. So far I'm enjoying it a lot. Will keep you posted. Thanks again for the interest and support.

It may hinder my guitar playing abilities, you reckon ?? GOOD !! At least I'll have a good excuse for my poor playing !!!

I'm not in the gitaarnet.nl forums, because unfortunately, I do not speak Dutch yet... So I don't think you know me. I'm from Argentina and now live in Leiden. I saw the flap sanding disk at the local Gamma before and thought that it might be the ticket, when I saw your pick of the inner sanding of the top in the other thread I said to myself: "That's it !!!" Anyway, I'm trying to use a flap sanding cillinder attachment, which is somewhat silmilar concept and should do pretty much the same. I don't have a grinder (yet), but I believe what I'm trying to use might still work well. If it doesnt, well... Another visit to Gamma for a grinder. I also saw the factory tour pics of the Hamer factory. And they just use the same 3 steps: lip, grinder, scrapers. Thanks for the feedback.

What a great forum you have here, guys !!! I’ve learned tons browsing through your posts and tutorials during the past weeks !!! So this is my first build ever. In the past I have put together the usual Strat from ready-made parts, and I work on my own guitars in terms of customizing and some mods (like converting an SG Standard from HBs to P90s). For the first time I have an attic, not too big, but suitable for a light workshop, so I decided to give a go to this dream I’ve had for a long time. The Project: I recently bought a McCarty and have rediscovered my love for PRS guitars. Since I’m building in the attic, I thought it was only fitting to build a Paul Tribute guitar. The Specs: One piece mahogany body, carved top. (No maple cap this time) 3 P90s (because I have some), some simple control scheme like vol, tone, rotary or vol, tone w/push-pull, 3-way toggle. Fender scale set-neck, maple with rosewood FB, straight string pull headstock design. Wilkinson/Fishman tremolo (because I have one in the drawer) or wrap-around fixed. The mission statement: I want to make a guitar of top quality and finish, doing things in the proper way. Since I will have to do with normal hand- and power-tools in the available space, I'll have to work out solutions to problems using imagination and the valuable help of forums like this one (so much collective inspiration here). I will be solving the problems as they appear along the way, only making compromises when the solution becomes impractical within the available resources. I decided that being this my very first build I would start with making the body and buying the neck unfinished from a local luthier (Vox-Humana in NL). They will shape it, attach the truss rod and the fretboard, radius it and do the fret work. I will do the headstock shaping, veneering and drilling, final sanding, inlay work and fitting to the body. So I spec’ed the neck to them and bought a piece of 2 inches thick honduras mahogany “almost” wide enough for the project. I’m missing maybe half an inch of wood for the widest part, so I plan to just glue a small piece (about an inch cut from the same board) to the proper place before rough-cutting the shape. Once carved and sanded it will be a one-piece body for all practical purposes. Since I was going to do so many things for the first time, I decided to build a proto-flight model (a term we use in the spacecraft business), that is a prototype, but with good enough materials to fly if necessary. This means that I’ll be learning the different techniques on the prototype, but if I don’t make any un-recoverable mistake at any given step, the prototype will “also” become a guitar. So I went visiting some lumber places and bought a rough board of mahogany, more than wide enough for very little $. After two days of sanding I found a very nice tightly and straight grained, perfectly quarter sawn piece of wood. It ended up being 43mm thick. This pretty much precludes the use of a tremolo, so as a first compromise for this prototype I’ll use a wrap-around hardtail and save the tremolo for the other piece of mahogany. This is the proto body blank after sanding. I’ve got some pictures of all the process, if someone is interested in seeing anything in particular, just ask. In a descriptive way: I traced the McCarty body on cardboard as a first approach. With that I rough-cut the body shape. I built two templates out of 12mm MDF. I shaped them with a sanding accessory and the press-drill, and adjusted them well to the shape of the original. One of the templates was used to fine shape the body with successive passes of a top-bearing straight-cutting routing bit. On the other template I carefully cut the 3 P90s and the rear cavity openings. I removed as much wood as possible from the proper places of the body by drilling, and then with the template in place I routed the control cavity (for an initial depth, it will need to be routed deeper once the top is carved), and the pickups pockets. So this is what it looks like so far. http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...tilde/G_015.jpg http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x166/Bl...tilde/G_017.jpg The mistakes so far: Some marks on the sides of the body, from uneven routing, etc. Not too deep, they should disappear nicely by sanding. The marks you see on the top are from the screwdriver I had to use to pry off the template from the body. I used some two-sided tape that was extremely efficient… Next time I’ll just screw the template down to the body in cleverly chosen places (where wood will be removed). Anyway, these marks will go away in dust as soon as I start carving the top. Routing one of the pickup cavities the bearing on the bit slightly crawled on top of the template at one point, leaving a small round notch on the side. I will try filling the notch with the epoxy I use for the inlays, mixed with mahogany dust I collected when sanding the board, for the proper color, and then sand down to shape. Hopefully it will end up good. So no show stoppers so far. I have already started to test the carving strategy on some of the mahogany cut-offs. So far, the steps I’ll probably be using are: Route a straight lip around the body (leaving the final thickness of the body at the edges). Use the sanding attachment on the hand drill to remove wood and approximate the shape of the carving. Shape the carving with the French-curve and straight scrapers, in the old fashioned way. And of course, hours of therapeutic sanding……… I’m really satisfied with the results so far. If the carving goes well the prototype will be a viable guitar, so maybe I’ll even give a try to making a neck….. Thanks for reading.