avengers63

Mother's day weekend. All I managed to get done was some more kerfing, rough-cut of the top, and some rough measurements on the top for placement. The template I have for the f0holes is WAY too small for the size of the body. Wifey volunteered to help design an art nouveau style f-hole, so we'll just see what happens. I also ordered some more chechen. I'm CONSIDERING making the neck after all. Chechen neck with ebony fretboard and headplate would be appropriate. Then again, as this is a "price is no object" build, I've never seen an ebony neck.......

CCs do not normally have a ring. I was going to put it in a chechen ring to match the binding because it'd be a royal PITA to get the screws & springs into the base without it. I was also going to make a chechen ring for whatever is in the bridge. This would hopefully level out the two shapes for a more visually balanced feel. In other news, I didn't get jack done over the weekend. I was off Thursday-Sunday, but I had oral surgery to have 2 teeth removed. One of them took a little bone with it. On the other hand, percaset is a wonderful thing

Their advice was based purely on sonic balance. As for visual balance, I'll be making pickup rings from chechen. That might help unify the appearance a bit. Honestly though, looks are completely secondary in this decision. I'm a LOT more concerned with how the pups will sound. Listening to the sound clips again yesterday, I lean more towards the La Prima, which is a mini-hb. That throws a monkey wrench into the whole visual package. Having a CC in the bridge just doesn't seem right to me somehow. Prolly cuz it's traditionally been presented as a neck only. I know it's been shoehorned into the form of a Tele bridge for years, but that never sat well with me. It's a jazz neck pup. I mean... you wouldn't try and put one of those floating p/g mounted pups into the bridge, so why try and force a C/C into it?

Alright folks - I want some serious input and opinions, and just as importantly, why you feel that way. After overthinking everything for several weeks, I finally zeroed in on getting Lollar pickups. The neck is going to be a black face Charlie Christian https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-charlie-christian-pickups/charlie-christian-for-tele The question is which pickup to match with it in the bridge. After talking with them, I have two options: either a matching C/C in the bridge, or their El Rayo humbucker. https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-humbucker-pickups/el-rayo-f-spaced-humbucker I'm leaning heavily towards the HB, but I would genuinely appreciate the chance to pick your collective brains on this one. Which would you go with and why?

Yes we are. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Also - covering the table in formica was one of the best decisions I've ever made as far as my shop tables & jigs are concerned. It has remained completely level through the years, and it's damn hard to gouge up. Glue drips come right off with a little prying of a chisel. If I ever make full shop benches and tables, I'll definitely be getting some more and covering every surface with it.

Putting the kerfing in on at least one side of it this weekend. The other side? maybe, maybe not. As there's nothing else to do on a beautiful Spring afternoon with the kerfing in the clamps.... I gotta say - this Guyana rosewood is hard as a damn rock! It does NOT like to be routed at ALL. It's more than a little chippy when you're routing "downhill". Ya gotta go backwards, and we all know how much that'll make yer butthole pucker up. We've prolly all had the router grab the piece out of our hands before when we first tried it. Scary stuff. On the good side, this stuff is completely closed grained and poilshes up beautifully. It'll be a real piece of bling when I get it done. I'm seriously considering using it with the Russian pickguard assembly I bought last year. Or not.

I'm gluing some veneer so I have something flat to work with when I make the inlays. It's only 2 thicknesses of veneer, so I still might have to put it on a backer of some sort. Counter-clockwise is birdseye maple, plain maple that was pretty warped to begin with, lepoardwood, flamed ash, lyptus, and generic rosewood. I have cherry, walnut, sapele, birch, and red oak in the presses right now, along with others I've already done that I think I might need more of. I have some sheets of abalam MOP & abalone shell I got a long time ago that I just didn't know what to do with. I'll prolly try something with them when the time comes. I think tomorrow I'll try and finish up the kerfing inside the box. I'm back on the road M-F, so progress will come to an absolute crawl now. That's OK. A slow burn will make the finished product that much more satisfying.

So why did I shift away from the burl to spruce? Because my wise and beautiful wife verbally poked me in the eye a few days ago. I use her as a sounding board for just about everything. She doesn't think like I do in any way, shape, or form. Her thought process is completely alien to me. She also doesn't know anything about lutherie. This means she will see and think of things I am incapable of. This is an invaluable trait in someone to bounce ideas off of. So as I was discussing my thoughts on how to decorate the top, she said: "John... You can do the absolute shit out of inlay. Not putting it in, because any idiot with a steady hand can do that. You MAKE them. You make pictures out of wood, and you're damn good at it. I've seen it, and so have others on your guitar board. If that's something you can do, and damn near nobody else can do, THEN DO THAT. You want this to be over the top, then play to your strengths and put a ridiculous inlay on the top of it." So I spend Monday & Tuesday nights pondering and searching for just the right imagery. I went with the spruce top because it's a classy, traditional guitar top with basically no figure or grain. It's a blank canvass to work with. There's absolutely nothing in it to compete with the inlay. I was seriously considering a flamed claro walnut top, or a deep quilted maple with a dark tiger eye dye/sandback. But she told me to go this way... and she was dead right. So that's ALSO why I put the limba backing on the top. It's be damn easy to accidentally blow through the top when routing for the inlay. The extra thickness will give me plenty of room for error. FYI: The style of all the decoration is art nouveau. Both the fretboard inlay and that on the body will be hard nouveau style. These are the finalists. Every single one needs to be tinkered with - shaping them to the curves, except for the reclining lady. The hummingbird is the only one that would still have an f-hole. It'd be the flower he's sticking his beak into. Overall, I'm leaning heavily towards the flowers. If I go that route, I'm seriously considering putting some twisty nouveau style line work on the back.

Well, I figured out why my kerfing is always such a pain in the ass. It never wants to bend around the inside like I see in the "how-to" videos. It's because I don't cut the slots deep enough to be flexible, and the kerfs are a little too wide. With that knowledge in hand, I milled down some douglas fir. Tomorrow I'll cut the notches. It's tedious as anything, and I just can't stomach it tonight. But I DID got some other things done. The back is joined, braced, control cavity cover cut out, and bracing under the c/c/c clued on. O had enough limba cutoff that there was no sense is making the shelf from anything else. Likewise, the top is joined and reinforced. I made a radical switch into a spruce top. More on why later. I thickened the top with some limba I had cut to be an acoustic top. This takes the top to close to 1/4". With the built-in bracing of the center block, this should be plenty thick on the sides that I shouldn't have to worry about it. Of course, when I put away the bending jig, I found my Safe-T-Planer that I forgot I own. I could really have used this a couple days ago when I blew up the pieces I was thinning down. The cutaway laminated about as good as I could have hoped for. Escept for the fact that I accidentally got some wax paper in between on the edge. We'll just leave that our secret and never speak of it again So ya know how, once we get everything in the clamps and we're at a standstill, we just can't help but start something else? I've had this piece of Guyana rosewood for well over 10 years. It's heavy and hard as a brick. The grain is dense and fine, and looks fantastic when it's polished up. I made a neck from chechen before, but I have no idea what happened to it, and I NEED a rosewood neck. I mean, y'all get it, right? It might be cost prohibitive to buy one, but we being who we are, that translates from a want to a need. Back me up here! Anyway, I saw this thing some years ago and never forgot it. It was some dark rosewood fretboard with burl block inlays. I always thought that was classy as anything, so we're off to the races on something else I don't need but clearly can't live without.

I'm really digging the headstock. It was a clever idea to use the V router bit to make the channels in the body. They should really pop once it's painted.

The chechen binding turned out better than I expected. They are just under 1/8" thick, so I anticipated a problem in the waist. I was not surprised. As I took them out of the foil, one came apart. In handling, another two separated. BUT.... they did NOT crack. This means they can be carefully put together seamlessly when they're put onto the body. Seeing as I expected them to crack, this is not a failure. I see this as 400% more success than I expected.

The wife verbally poked me in the eye earlier, telling me what I needed to hear. This led me to look for art nouveau inspiration for inlay work on the top. Then I found this. Now I just wanna quit.

Thinning it down = ABSOLUTELY a low strength area. This is why I made 2 - so I can laminate them and strengthen it significantly. Speaking of which... It's really easy to put the glue on the wrong side. When that happens, you have to rinse all the glue off under the faucet. This means you'll have to let it sit for a while letting it dry. Pro tip, kids - pay attention and write on your pieces as to which side is which. Harder to be like me when you do that. Also, the piece with the little chip out is to be on the side inside the box. That little chip won't effect anything. This application is perfect for scrap. I abhor wasting product!

Yesterday I managed to make some progress. I began joining the back.... I will NEVER understand why one would not glue the bracing on when the pieces of an acoustic back are joined. Kill 2 birds with one stone. If you don't, you have to clean ip and prep the surface to receive the brace. You're only making more steps and work for yourself! I decided to have natural wood binding top and back. Looking through my dwindling stash, I landed on chechen. Doing wood binding is above my pay grade. There's no way around it. I fully believe this is above my pay grade. That being acknowledged, this is how we grow. If we do not push ourselves by doing difficult things that we might not be capable of, we stop growing, both in skill and as a person. I'm trying damn hard to instill this principle into my 13 y/o step-son. Sometimes, we have to make intentional choices as a parent to display the virtues we want to instill into our kids. Sometimes, success isn't the real goal. Sometimes, ya just gotta push yourself and not be afraid to try. Lack of success and failure are often two different things. Taking MikRo's advice, I needed to thin out the cutaway so it would bend. I secured the piece down to a shuttle along with 2 semi-sacrificial runners. But I took it one pass too far. It worked out in the end. The piece for the cutaway had enough width left, and enough length to make a 2nd piece to laminate to the 1st for the right thickness. It DID bend right, proving Mike right. Thanks for the input, buddy! I really appreciate it. In other news, I'll prolly be going away from the burl top. A simple, clean, conservative spruce top it a deep quilted maple with a tiger-eye dye/sand back. The spruce would allow the bindings and purflings to shine. The quilt would be just plain gorgeous.

So a couple of things here... 1) I might be focusing in on the pickups more. Mojo Pickups makes the most reasonably priced Charlie Christian pups I can find. A set of three of these with a tom/stop would be pretty sweet. 2) I have forgotten how I bent the cutaway for this mold. It's a pretty harsh bend, so I know it'll need time & patience, but I've done it before, so I know I can do it. I just don't remember how I did it. So if anyone has experience with bends this tight, PLEASE school me.

I agree. As I said when talking about the Fralins, the argument against is that it'd be another 2HB guitar at the end of the day. Those are a dime a dozen. The Fralin blade HBs would be unique, but how unique would they really be? Just another take on 2HB. I don't think I've ever seen 3 DeArmonds. Still arguing with myself. It'll keep happening until I buy them.

I'm a cheapskate. There... I said it. For all the guitars I've built, I've never done anything high-end. That's because I'm cheap. Wilkinson bridge & tuners, used name-brand pickups, plastic inlays, lumber yard woods..... If I put anything of actual quality on the ax, it was old & second-hand. With pickups you can usually get away with it, but not much else. Even the Mockingbird I won GOTM with has used Epiphone pups and a used Kahler with home-made inlays on an ebony board that was salvaged from a factory 2nd and drilled for dots that I had to fill in. Enough of that crap. I'm finally employed at the income level that will allow me to do just one the way I've wanted to do it. When it's done, this should be comparable to a $5K-10K instrument. I'm going to have to gather the pieces over time as what I'm figuring might be about $1K+ in parts and materials. GENERAL PLAN: oversized semi-acoustic LP style, Florentine cutaway, white limba bend sides & back, redwood burl top, DePaul Nouveay inlay set. Just about everything else is semi- up in the air. Here's what I mean... I'm thinking hard about TV Jones T-Armond pickups I have a hard-on for old style pups like that. I've also always wanted an ax with regular TVJ's in it, but that doesn't feel right for this one. I also contacted Lindy Fralin about making me a set of humbuckers built like these.... He's good with it, but they'd be about $250/each. The TVJ's are about $150/ea, AND it would be just a kewl-lookin bucker. High end means lots of bling, just for the sake of being extra. These Gotoh's fit the bill nicely: ...but do I really want a top/stop bar? NO! I want a gold Kahler. But a gold Kahler would be seriously out of place with DeArmond style pups. A Bigsby would be way more appropriate.... ...but I don't really like a Bigsby that much. I have one, and they're fantastic for what they are, but they're not really my thing. An old Teisco style would be right with DeArmonds... ...but I can't find it in anything but chrome, and only from resellers of suspect-quality Chinese goods like Guitar Fetish. I also found this thing on eBay... ...whick also looks the part, but it's only in chrome, AND I can't confirm the quality. And as much as I would wanna look at a Deusenberg, they're just never in stock. Man, I REALLY want the gold Kahler, but it'd look/feel dumb with DeArmonds. Then again, I'll prolly be using 3 pups, not the traditional 2, and I throw tradition out the window. Anyway, this is the inlay set. I'll be getting. I'll be getting a neck from Warmoth. I screw up the fretboard EVERY SINGLE TIME around the 10th-15th frets. It buzzes like that's it's damn job and needs significant attention before it's playable. Zero exceptions. Getting the neck from Warmoth won't be nearly as satisfying or cost effective, but I can be certain it'll be done right. I can get it without frets or inlays, so I can still put the DePaul Nouveau set in without any problems. Thinking about it for a second, with the price of lumber being what it is right now, that kinds helps balance out the price of Warmoth. Or I'm trying to justify it to myself. Whatever makes you sleep better. The only cost savings I'll have is the body. I actually make the hell out of a body. And I already have all the wood necessary for the operation. I've had the white limba back & sides prepped for an acoustic for several years. I've had the redwood burl for maybe 12-14 years, waiting for me to be ready to do a really high end build. I brought all the side bending crap in from the garage. I might even get started on it today. As always, I welcome and truly appreciate any and all feedback and suggestions.

You seem to have gotten the hang of it.

Yea....... I'm not sure I'd trust them for the fine tuning that intonation needs. That, and it's kinda making me mad that I can't find my good tuner. It's almost the principle of it now.

So here' the end result. Wilkindon EZ lock tuners, Peavey Super Ferrite singles, pearl white p/g & back plate, upgraded pots & switch, 2nd tone replaced with phase switch. I can't find my tuner right now, so setting the intonation isn't possible. It actually plays extremely well. Even before the upgrades, it outperformed it's price point. The neck is comfortable, and the fretwork is comparable with a mid-grade guitar. Were this to have had better tuners, electronics, and p/g material, this could easily have been a $400 guitar. I spent an additional $50 and made it into one.

This is the only thing that really went sideways. I wanted to upgrade the trem block to brass. It was only $22, and SHOULD have made a tremendous tone difference. Or maybe not. I'm still vulnerable to some voodoo now and then. Regardless, it would have been a significant upgrade over the crap pot-metal. Unfortunately, not a single damn hole lined up. NOT ONE. Upgrading the entire bridge isn't in the cards right now, so we'll just have to stick with the garbage for now. Later, I might trade the chrome hardware for gold. That would bling it up even further.

One big fear was immediately quelled. I won't have to modify the body at all. The pickups are old 70's Peavey Super Ferrite singles. They're bogger than a Strat single, so I was concerned that I'd have to hog out some of the body to accommodate their footprint. Were that the case, I'd have given it a swimming pool route. Thankfully, this wasn't the case. That's obviously the p/g from the Corvus, just to test fit things. I used it as a template for the placement on the replacement p/g. In otder to do so, I had to get it all lined up, clamp it down, and re-shape the pocket on the Corvus p/g so it all lined up perfectly on the replacement. And what is the replacement? WHITE BEARL, BABY!!!! Gotta bling this thing up a little. To no surprise whatsoever, the shape of the replacement is a little off from the original. And none of the holes line up. This is what you get in these sorts of things. The Kramer had -zero- shielding on the body. Another thing typical of a $150 Chinese guitar. And we always have to do the preview...

SOME DISASSEMBLY REQUIRED So before I do anything to it, I have to take it all apart. A pic of the p/g assembly is in order. It's exactly what you'd expect from a Chinese $150 guitar. Cheap crap all the way through. I'll be re-purposing the pups as they actually sound good. A little generic, but better than some I've had. Everything else went into the trash. Good thing there's a sticker telling me not to throw it away! I was just about to toss the neck when I saw it. So they took the time to make sure the neck is flat sawn. This is not the normal Q/C you get from China. I'm hoping it's Kramer's influence, and that all of the necks in this budget line are flat sawn. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that the neck & f/b are 2 pieces. So there you go. I have a lot of guitars I just don't play for one reason or another. The doner for what's going into the Kramer should make some of y'all happy. It kinda makes me sad. But I just never played it, so it gets torn apart.

I grew up in the age of Heir Metal. As a result of EVH's initial endorsement, Kramer quickly became one of the major players in the field. As others came in, Kramer lost it's mystique, but never it's quality. Then the age of Hair Metal died. Kramer was bought by Gibson and immediately shelved, never to be heard from again. They did the same thing to Steinberger. Recently, Kramer has been allowed to be a thing again. They have -no- marketing backing or production push from Gibson. Big G is offering no infusion of cash to help make their investment pay off. Yet somehow, they're really trying to get it going. One of the things they've done is make budget guitars in China. This brings us to my latest waste of disposable income: the Kramer Focus VT-211S. I really appreciate that Sweetwater put that warning label on the box. So here's the scoop with this thing: mahogany body, maple neck & f/b, AlNiCo V pickups, hair metal purple paint. Every single thing thing else about this is garbage. Unsealed tuners that turn like crap, dime pots, cheap switch that came broken, pot-metal trem block, and a nearly transparent pickguard & backplate. BUT...... it's only $150 for a painted mahogany body & maple neck with alnico V pups. The body & neck make it a fantastic modding platform. So we're off to the races.

Yes. Apparently, the Soviets still hadn't figured out 1/4" plugs when this was made. We had been using them since at least the 1940s, but they're literally on the other side of the world and still hated America at the time, so who knows. I haven't decided if I'm going to cut it off or try to find an adapter. At this point, I'm just hoping all the wiring, pups, and pots are still fully functional!