Bryan316

Would you consider painting the pinstripes on? It would be relatively easy to go buy some good pinstriping tape from an autobody shop or any auto parts store. Just use the tape to replicate the design, stick em down, and then mask off the rest of the body thoroughly. Get auto paint in the color you want, and give it three or four VERY light coats of paint. Make sure you do good prep work. Clean the whole top of the body very thoroughly. Get rid of dust. Paint in a room that you can close the door and keep air from moving around, and dust from settling on the paint. Your other option, is to make the pinstrips from vinyl window decal material. Go to a sign shop, and ask them for a small section of material in the color you need. They'll always sell a section for five bucks. Then, draw trace and Xacto trim the decal. Use soapy water to slide the vinyl material onto the guitar, and a credit card or driver's license to smooth out the bubbles.

There's a few ways to do this. First, you gotta figure out just how much curve you want. I'll give you an idea of how to do it right on top of your template. Get a square stick of balsa wood, or a fiberglass kite frame piece, or just about any thin straight item that's still flexible. On your template, mark your insides of the wings, and a straight line. At the midpoint of the straight line, mark some notch lines parallel to the straight line, to use as a curving point. Use some thumbpins from a cork bulletin board, to make anchor points. Place your flexible stick againt the pins. Then, flex the stick to create your intended curvature. Use your notches to measure how far you curved the stick, and stick a third pin in the middle to keep the stick flexed. Do the same for the other wing, making sure to flex the stick the same amount as before. This will assure symmetry. After you flex it as much as you think looks appropriate, draw a line against the staright edge. There's your curve!

Well BC Rich makes clear acrylic guitars, and people seem to dig them. A resin body would probably sound a lot like an acrylic guitar. But with bass, the body's resonance seems to have more profound effects on tone. Because you're not typically utilizing a lot of effects or overdriven amp channels. With a bass, the tone of the woods in the bass and the pickups chosen is what you're really looking for. I can find tons of differences in tone and response and sustain, depending on the differences between two basses. Dense woods like Mahogany and Maple and Walnut make very bright, midrange-strong basses. Lighter woods like ash and alder and basswood have a deeper resonance for more naturally thick low end. So is resin going to be a dense or light material? That'll be the most prominent effect on tone. After that, your choice in pickups and electronics will let you tweak the sound of the bass.

Quite metal! I never wanted to do a Mystic paintjob on a flat-topped guitar, cuz I always thought the color-shifting effect would look better on a carved top body like a PRS or a Jackson Soloist or a Satch JS1000 rounded body. But the Mystic effect really shows up on those nice long bevels! And doing the headstock was a very wise choice. Too many people build a wicked body, and leave the headstock plain with a black painted front, that's it. You kept the theme of the guitar from head to toe. Excellent. We need pics of this axe on stage under the stage lights!

I've recently guilt my project bass completely from 2x6 boards of pine. Just scrapped em together, and started working. It was incredibly valuable as a practice session. Don't use the cherry! That wood is quite nice and certainly valuable as an actual instrument. Just go buy a length of a 2x6 or 2x8, and "build" a guitar from it. It's scrap, so you can make mistakes, redo things, practice the neck pocket a couple times, practice shaping the radius of the neck's back, and practice the volute and how big you want it. And when you make a mistake on the pine board mockup, you won't feel bad about wasting the cherry. Another benefit of the pine model, is checking for balance and comfort. You might find you want the forearm contour deeper or shallower, or the top strap button further forward, or relocate the control knobs, or countless little adjustments to your design. It should cost you $15 for an 8 foot section of a 2x8, and it will prove valuable by the end.