Maikkeli

Putting the neck together...

Tonewoods and shaping the body.

I’m a hobbyist working now with my third guitar. You can check out photos of my previous projects, The Sun and The Moon.

My on-going project is a Les Paul with real gold top, so I will finally apply gold leaf onto the top. Other features include a vine theme inlay, a modified/contoured body shape for better playability and quite a bit of binding.

I’ve been working with this for two months now in the evenings. Should be finished in May, so please be patient with updates.

Here’s a Kisekae-simulation. I think I’ve made up my mind with the not-so-common hardware choices but I’m open for suggestions.

Learning the guilding technique

I'm replying late to this thread, depictive of a hobbyist busy with another profession and other things to do. I entered my 1st guitar for GOTM in May and my 2nd for December (take a vote!). As a freshman it’s a little hash to expect that I’d have a build thread with this level of experience and insecurity. Maybe I’ll post a build thread for my next one, but you really should be deciding according to the pics posted at GOTM and nothing else – if someone wants to bluff they could easily share photos of someone else building their guitar. What I’d like to see is people keeping to the limit of 4 photos for GOTM – having 10 pics is much more of an infringement of rules than not having a build thread!

”The Moon” - Thinline Telecaster

Hi folks! I’ve been building guitars for two years now and this is my second creation. I wanted to make a versatile Tele while paying respect to the original design. Special features include koa top on thinline construction, angled headstock, mammoth ivory inlays and Graphtech piezo saddle pickups.

Specs

Body: Mahogany body with three hollow compartments, koa top with multiple bindings, polyurethane finish

Neck: Wild olive tree (East Africa) with mahogany strips, ebony fretboard with 12” radius, mammoth ivory inlays with moon and acacia theme, Earvana compensated nut, headstock at angle (Gibson-style), sculpted heel, bolted through ferrules

Electronics: DiMarzio Twang King pickups and Graphtech piezo saddle pickups with active electronics; separate volumes for coil and piezo, mini-switch for selecting coil/piezo/both with mono cable, signal split with stereo cable for separate processing of electric/acoustic signal

Hardware: Gotoh hard-tail bridge, Planet Waves auto-trim locking tuners

See all photos here

For sound clips: coils piezo

THE SUN

Model Number: No 1 - my first DIY guitar

Body: Swamp ash with quilted maple top, pearloid binding

Color: Turquoise/blue with 3D–staining and black burst (thanks for the tutorial!)

Neck: Bolt-on with ferrules, standard thin-shape maple neck with ebony fretboard, varying radius from 9.5” to 12”, pearloid binding, 22 jumbo frets, Earvana compensated saddle

Inlays: mother-of-pearl and abalone sun cross theme at 12th fret, mother-of-pearl sun theme at 3th, 5th, 7th and 9th frets

Headstock: 3D-routing, Planet Waves auto-trim locking machines, GraphTech string retainers

Pickups: DiMarzio D-Sonic (Bridge), DiMarzio Chopper (neck)

Controls: Master volume, master tone with push/pull phase change feature, 3-way toggle switch for pickup selection, 3-way micro-switch for neck pickup coil selection (single/parallel/series), 2-way micro-switch for bridge pickup coil selection (single/series) while phase switch on tone pot selects upper/lower coil in single-coil mode when only bridge pickup is selected

Bridge: Hipshot US Contour Tremolo