Jump to content
Entry in the May 2024 Guitar of the Month contest is now open ×

82DeanZ

Established Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    199

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by 82DeanZ

  5. New Project - JS6

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted

    RGGR,

    What is it, an Extra 300??? Looking at the wing profile.

    Good luck with your neck. It's gonna have the regular 22 frets????

    The plane on the stand is called a Dazzler made by Great Planes. It does in fact have a very large airfoil surface area which make for some killer acrobatics (think 3D). In a couple of the pictures you might see the remains of an Extra 300 which met a rather untimely and spectacular end when the wing mount broke loose mid flight. However, I have a direct replacement which I have yet to build which you can see in one of the pictures if you look closely.

    Yes, the neck will be the standard 22 frets. I'm trying to decide between rosewood and ebony for the fretboard. I'll be putting a graphtech nut and Planet Waves Autotrim tuners on it and a Hipshot hardtail bridge. Here is a close up of the Birdseye blank:

    Birdseye%20Neck.jpg

    The dimensions of the blank are 73.5 in long by 4 in wide by 15/16 in thick. Should be enough for two necks easily.

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  7. New Project - JS6

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted · Edited by 82DeanZ

    That's looking awesome! Great work! I love the JS6/6000.

    Thanks Darren. I know you're a big Ibanez fan since I'm pretty sure I see you over at JEMSITE all the time!

    Wow..

    i think your guitar body will make really good sound..

    good wood..

    good luck..

    Kamsahamnida! Thank you Hyunsu! Compared to the woods you get, mine is merely pedestrian! I will do my best.

    RGGR Wrote:

    Sometimes I wish I could move along some faster, but I guess this will be one of those 2 year projects. (like first build done in 2 years, second one in 4 months, third one in 3 weeks.......)

    I know exactly what you mean. My first project took almost five months! This one so far has taken me two Saturdays worth of effort.

    how far along are you with the neck, or are you gonna give a secondhand JS neck a re-run???

    I have a very nice piece of Birdseye Maple for the neck. This weekend I ordered three fretboards from warmoth (Birdseye Maple, Indian Rosewood and Ebony - probably go with the Rosewood, although the Ebony might look nice too) and a truss rod from Stew Mac so I can get started on the neck as soon as everything arrives. Shouldn't be more that a week or so. I'll try and take more progress photos for this project. By the way, I like the way your neck looks. I think for my next project I will try a laminate neck. They look so cool.

    PS. How much for that model airplane??? ;-)

    Not for sale! Too much fun! Actually, the experience of building R/C models came in handy when I started building guitars. It gave me experience working with CA and Epoxies, sanding and even finishing skills.

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  9. New Project - JS6

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted

    Well, that's two votes for black! Honestly, that's the direction I was leaning as well. I played around with the Virtual Guitar online program and decided I liked the black hardware best. I'll try and post screen captures of the Virtual Guitars in the next day or two.

    RGGR:

    Thanks! I'm watching your thread to see how yours is going. Any more progress? You're doing the body shaping now I think. Man, that sure is a lot of work, right? On mine I think I am going to thin down the horns a little bit and deepen the lower cutaway some more and then I'll be done with the shaping. Would love to see some more pics of your guitar!

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  11. New Project - JS6

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted · Edited by 82DeanZ

    Hi all,

    I've always loved my JS series Ibanez guitars (I have two JS1000's - a Black Pearl and a Brunt Transparent Blue). One of my favorite JS guitars in terms of looks is the JS6 which can be viewed at Rick Beatty's site here:

    http://www.excaliberstudio.com/js6.html

    Unfortunately, this guitar is no longer being produced. Therefore, I thought it would be a great second project for me. I finished a JEM replica not too long ago and I thought this would offer additional challenge with the radiused edges. I already had a glued up blank composed of two pieces of authentic Honduran Mahogany. I used the readily available plans for the Ibanez Radius. Here is a sample picture of my progress so far:

    JS6f.jpg

    Here is a link to a couple of other progress pictures:

    Additional Progress Pictures

    The outline was of course done with a bandsaw. The radiusing was done with a spokeshave and two surforms (rat tail and plane) followed by 100 grit on a rubber block.

    Like the Ibanez JS6, it will be a hard tail. It will also be tung oiled like the JS6. However, I'm not sure if I'll go with the chrome hardware or perhaps gold or black cosmo. What do you guys think? Thanks for looking!

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  14. Finished my Jem Tribute!

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted · Edited by 82DeanZ

    Thanks for your comments everyone.

    amazing job man! it looks better than factory made jems! want to sell it to me? haha

    You're the second person that offered to buy it from me. I took it in for my guitar lesson this week and couldn't get it out of my instructor's hands! He wanted to buy it as well.

    Also, funny you should make that comment about factory JEMs because that is why I decided to make my own in the first place (a large part of the reason anyway). It's getting hard to justify spending the $1800 or so that they want for your limited choice of a blue or white JEM. Not to say that those aren't nice guitars, but they do tend toward the mundane and are relatively expensive for guitars with opaque finishes. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on a guitar I want some serious eye candy in return. I may go all the way with my next guitar and add in the monkey grip, pyramid inlays and lions claw. Now that I have some experience I feel more confident that I could pull it off. Again, thanks for you kind words.

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  15. Finished my Jem Tribute!

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted

    I couldn't say that that top was going to come out with such a figure since on the unfinish states look plain w/ not much figure.

    It suprised me too. In fact, I wasn't even sure I should stain it. I was going to leave it natural, but in the end I said what the hell. I think Drak's Solar Lux Black technique really helped to bring out what little figure there was. I literally pulled the maple out of the bargain bin at the local hardwood store. Who knew?

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  16. Finished my Jem Tribute!

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted · Edited by 82DeanZ

    Thanks for you kind words.

    a lot of guitars with maple necks kinda look like rosewood would look better, but on yours the maple looks great, very much a part of its personality

    I agree. On this guitar, the contrast between the deep blue and the white maple looks really nice. The deep blue and the greens and blues in the abalone reinforce each other nicely as well. ASM answered your question regarding natural binding. B) It's not easy to do. Next time I will clear coat the binding edge first and then tape and stain to make cleaning up the line easier.

    Very nice!

    Great job popping the maple figure, binding looks very sharp too - I like it.

    Thanks Setch. Coming from you that means a lot. I respect your work enormously.

    is this the emmys or a guitar building site  haha, nice finish job

    MzI

    Oh wait...I forgot to thank my sponsors! I'd like to thank Delta power tools for providing the inexpensive, but workable band saw used in the making of this guitar. I'd like to thank....:D

    Thanks again everyone.

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  17. Finished my Jem Tribute!

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted · Edited by 82DeanZ

    Hey All,

    Well, I finally finished my Jem Tribute guitar. Well, really more of a USA Custom as it turned out. See my original progress thread here:

    http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...=0entry120854

    Here is a teaser pic:

    Body%201.jpg

    See the rest of the pics here (scroll down for the finished pics):

    http://www.pariah-now.com/Guitar%20Build%2...uild%20Page.htm

    It is really quite pretty in person with a high WAF factor (wife acceptance factor). The specs are as follow:

    One piece alder body with a 1/4 in maple top (bargain bin) and natural binding.

    Quarter sawn maple neck with maple fret board with abalone inlays and abalone side dots.

    Satin finish on fretboard and headstock and tung oil on the back of the neck.

    Grover 18:1 mini locking tuners with graphite nut.

    Dimarzio Evolution neck and bridge pickups.

    Gotoh Wilkinson Bridge.

    Gold 3-way switch

    gold abalone topped dome knobs.

    Jem style output.

    Flame maple trem and control cavity covers.

    Special thanks to Wes for suggesting adding the maple top when I overplaned my alder blank. Special thanks to Drak for the stain black - sand back - stain desired color technique (I even used Solar Lux black!). Special thanks to Brian for the Jem style output tutorial. Special thanks to whoever it was that posted a bass or guitar with wood control and trem covers. I forget who you were, but thanks for the idea whoever you are! And thanks to everyone who posts in general (and of course thanks to Brian for hosting Project Guitar) because I really don't think this project would have come off as well as it did without you. Thanks!

    The guitar plays and sounds like a dream and sets up better than any of the production guitars I own. I did the fret level myself using a sharpening stone. Right now the action is at 1.0 mm and no buzzing or fretting out. Thats pretty low. I may actually raise it a bit. Thanks for taking a look and let me know what you think or if you have any questions or comments.

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  19. The Les Paul Studio Project

    in In Progress and Finished Work

    Posted

    t says to buff it into the furniture after 15 minutes...but I bet that would mess up the top pretty bad...we're not working on a piece of a chair

    Mike,

    Just run down to the local hardware store and get some #0000 steel wool. I know it sounds brutal, but trust me it works great. It will take some of the shine out of the tung oil finish, however. When I did my neck this way it left it with a sort of semi gloss or maybe even satin like finish. Felt great.

    You're doing a great job! Can't wait to see the finished product.

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

  22. !Warnings! For The First Time Guitar Builder

    in Solidbody Guitar and Bass Chat

    Posted

    No big deal to me, I'm just glad to help. Every online community has its "forum police" (even this one although this forum seems to have fewer of them and the members are much more willing to be helpful), but I'm not one of them. If I see a post that I know has been addressed before, I realize I'm in a unique position to help and I'm perfectly happy to do so. I hope you found the information useful!

    Best Regards,

    Mike.

×
×
  • Create New...