pauliemc

Id probobly throw a realy light/thinned out blue or amber over the black. just to add a little somethin to the mix.

looks cool in black.

Me and you gotta start the McGuiver club...............

Nice work , as you've displayed throughout. Don't get in a hurry at this point - the finish is the last half of the journey .

Yep we have qualified for that club a few times over, now if I could just figure out how to scoop out the ferrule holes with my Swiss Army knife ..........

My desk is covered with little bits of ash all stained in different colours, here is my fav so far

Yea. the blue always looks good on ash. Doin a blue ash geet myself, With some black gone on first to bring the grain way up.

I assume the pickguard is white, like the pups ? this thing is gona look schweeeeeet !!!

But get a move on - your as slow as me

Dunno about GOTM but it does look good on quilted maple.

OK, Well the blanks are cut to thickness & rough shaped a few days now. No movement so thats a good sign.

will be making 2 necks together. 01 with no inlay, & 01 inlayed with a cartoon space ship. I will throw up piks if anyone is interested.

Of course we're interested. Your work is top notch and an inspiration to all of us.

And you owe us some pics from projects begun.....and only nearly finished.

SR

HA HA HA, yea i suk for takin piks. even worse for up loading them. Promise ill be good for a while & put a few up.

BLUE !!!!!!

im doing a blue guitar at the moment with quilted maple.

OK, Well the blanks are cut to thickness & rough shaped a few days now. No movement so thats a good sign.

will be making 2 necks together. 01 with no inlay, & 01 inlayed with a cartoon space ship. I will throw up piks if anyone is interested.

OR... get one of these, reshape the radius to 7.5" (or whatever you consider a "vintage profile" using one of these. Remove the old fretboard, glue on the new, trim the edges to the neck shape, fret, crown, presto!. The over hanging fretboard will have the same amount of "stick out" as the old so there shouldn't be a structural difference there. total coast 13.65 + 15.95 + frets and hard work

Was just about to suggest the same myself.

If your gonna do it, then do it right with a complete replacement board. Botch jobs have a habit of goin down the crapper.

the raven inlay is cool. What way are you gonna approach the feather on the body ?

Started it late last night, using a chopping saw. it's hard work to cutting that hard maple. I might switch it up an use my dremel. what do think?

I REALLY like the inlay!

Chris

Thanks I'm happy how it turned out to.

I probably wouldn't try the feather until the top was at its final carve/thickness. One idea would be to use the scroll saw to rough it in although it might be tough with the carve. Personally I would use the dremel with an end mill bit to rough it in then use some carving tools to finish it up.

Like you read my mind man .

Id use a dremil with some very small bits. I use a set of micro chisels for this kind of stuff aswell. metal engravers chisels, more like sharpened steel spikes than a standard chisel.

the raven inlay is cool. What way are you gonna approach the feather on the body ?

I think were all screwed. The diablo is buildin up such a lead you would need the starship Enterprise to catch it

I have had a Ash neck (2 piece horizontal laminate) for 3 years on my strat with no issues

Cool. What fret board are you using ?

Any taughts on the tone aspect of it ?

As for the weight. I may just be lucky but the 2 blanks i have cut are realy light. Not quite as light as my walnut necks but almost as light as maple. But I will see when they are finished i suppose.

Oddly enough they both have a very diferent tap tone. despite being basicaly the same billet just split down the middle. One is very hollow sounding & loud.

The other is kind of quiet & very high pitched.

I'm number 11!

I didn't expect this kind of guitar to get far here, to be honest. I'll be entering a shiny wood porn guitar next month, though.

I duno man. Your guitar looks like something from southpark, you know, or a prop from a pixar movie. Not ment in a bad way. I fookin love it , The front is very plain looking but that only helps exagerate the look of it. All the hardware just pops out as big bold shapes. It almost looks like a miniature in that first pik.

It may be that its so far off the traditional concept of what we are used to seeing here that its getting overlooked. Its just not the norm.

I mean look at the back of mine. Somebody taught it was foe-chrome, Someone else said polished pewter. But its just a crap load of poly polished to livin hell.

Its the same with yours here, Its done so well that the freaky genious of it is getting missed.

Maybe you could stamp "Lighting Boy" in the back...

You will have to work it with rasps and files as I think it would be hard to keep the spoke shave sharp enough. Also watch the soft grain as it will cut faster. If I was going to do it (I would use a Louisville Slugger ala John Fogerty) I would laminate it and try to get it as close to quartersawn as I could.

I dont use a spoke shave for necks. I only use rasps. The router is used for the front profile (fret board taper, headstock shape) but then its rasps all the way.

Guy wants flat sawn so im kinda stuck there. Its started anyway. But ill be doing a laminated version aswell. could make a nice experiment to see how they fare.

The back profile will be 22mm at the first fret up to 25mm at the 17th. so its gona be fairly beefy. I rekon there will be no problems.

I had a piece in the vice earlier to see just how strong it realy is. at 50x22mm thick 300mm long - it started moving the bench before it snapped. (bench is mabe up of 3 9x4 inch pine boards 6 foot long, bolted together for a top with 6 more 850mm long for legs) so its strong.

Proper order. Always keep one for yourself.

its a good idea to have a few floating about for examples, you know, demo models for neck profiles, finish samples etc.

I had 24 at one point for those kinds of reasons. for the benafit of the customer, not for me, i swear to god

+1 to that.

my niece sent me a text asking me if i had any "spare" guitars!!! *** does that mean? what is a "spare" guitar?

I always have some spare guitars, I generally give them to poeple with a spare 2 or 3 grand in cash that they can give to me.

I wouldnt use it just because of the HUGE grain lines and massive amount of runout ash always has.

I duno. Im thinking i might just try it & see what happens. They use it for hurls over here & those things can take a serious hammering. I have an old one that is still pin straight after about 15 years.

If nothing else it will answer the question of wether its a useable neck material or not.

Shitty. Good thing I didn't move home after all.

yea, kinda sucks materials wise here sometimes. On the plus side i found a few hundred board feet of spalted beech, some flamed & quilted aswell. Just gotta store it up to dry it for a year id say.

This is comin along nicly. like the neck, but I have to agree with the comment about the good quality maple you canadians get, just not fair. If it wasent for Terance & Philip I think Id just have to hate you all

Don't be hatin the Canadians just because we have the most natural resources in the world.

Terrence and Phillip should have there own show.

Yea man. Terrence & Philip rock

But im right about the maple. You Canadians get AAAAA flamed & quilted maple like we Irish get rain & dodgy boy bands.

I mean look, I got some timber the weekend, I got 2.5x18 inch sapele 45 foot long (3 15 foot boards) & it cost less than 0.5x7 inch 6 foot long of AAAA(maby) quilted maple.

This is comin along nicly. like the neck, but I have to agree with the comment about the good quality maple you canadians get, just not fair. If it wasent for Terance & Philip I think Id just have to hate you all

Proper order. Always keep one for yourself.

its a good idea to have a few floating about for examples, you know, demo models for neck profiles, finish samples etc.

I had 24 at one point for those kinds of reasons. for the benafit of the customer, not for me, i swear to god

Gotta love ash, Even the plainest looking example can be carved to give realy cool grain patterns,

This thing is looking cool enough to stiffen yer nipples dave

Was asked to make a replacement neck for a friends JEM7.

He wants it slightly thicker than the standard ibanez. Ash with a rosewood board, & no scarf joint, Something similar to a standard fender neck as opposed to the standard ibanez jem unit.

It will be northern hard ash, im fairly sure the wood will be more than strong enough for a neck ,but never having tried it I am wondering about tone.

Has anybody here ever tried an ash neck ??

Yeah, I took that design originally and tweaked it a little to try to make it more comfortable to play sitting down and make it look a little less awkward overall. I also will add comfort contours and such as well as a contoured neck heel.

Not knocking your design, But the original BC Rich model was designed with symetry in mind to make it balanced looking. The lower horn is set along the same line as the rear upper section. The top horn & rear bottom section are then set accross the centre (almost) to make a star.

By altering the line of the rear upper section you have made your seem kinked/bent in the middle.

Id look at it again & refine your shape a little to balance it visually.

pauliemc - FREAKY GREEN SATRIANI : This is a solid guitar. I could see it on stage every night working hard. I like the work it is clean and professional. I like the fabric although it is not my cup o' tea. I am not sold on the neck joint although it looks like it has great access. The only area of concern for me and it could be the angle of the pics is the distance between the string-through ferrels and the bridge. Also I tried the jack in the control plate and will not do that again. Excellent example of innovation within the constraints of a satriani model.

Glad you liked it. was an interesting experiment. Your right about the neck joint, Absolutly savage fret access.

The heel was intended to give some semblance of a traditional feel but ended up being even less noticible than an aanj.

As for the strings, I wanted to try out the whole vaulted string thing, It makes for some funky tones in acoustic instruments so i figured id try it here.

I imagine the strings chime like a piano. I had a short scale S470 back in the day that this reminds me of.

I would have liked to see the neck joint recess line rounder... I think it is the square shape that is throwing my eye.

Otherwise props!

I agree on the heel, But the guy i built it for prefers a square heel.

Cant complain realy, i was let go to town on the rest of it

The sound is very very clear, kinda jumps out at you. I suppose chime is a good description now you mention it.

pauliemc - FREAKY GREEN SATRIANI : This is a solid guitar. I could see it on stage every night working hard. I like the work it is clean and professional. I like the fabric although it is not my cup o' tea. I am not sold on the neck joint although it looks like it has great access. The only area of concern for me and it could be the angle of the pics is the distance between the string-through ferrels and the bridge. Also I tried the jack in the control plate and will not do that again. Excellent example of innovation within the constraints of a satriani model.

Glad you liked it. was an interesting experiment. Your right about the neck joint, Absolutly savage fret access.

The heel was intended to give some semblance of a traditional feel but ended up being even less noticible than an aanj.

As for the strings, I wanted to try out the whole vaulted string thing, It makes for some funky tones in acoustic instruments so i figured id try it here.

Lots of choice this month. made it a total bitch to pick a winner. But here are my toughts anyway.

Our Souls ZUZU

Nice explorer, I realy like the grain in the front, & the carving being retained on the back is a nice touch. I would have liked the cavity covers to be a cleaner fit, But thats easily fixed.

Crow Custom 22

I like this. The flame is not too heavy & works well with the gradiated finish. Excellent inlay work & love the headstock.

I think a stronger contrast in colour is needed for the fretboard inlays, But still - cool.

Overall a realy nice guitar, should be my No. 1, But something is bugging me about the photos, cant put my finger on it, just a gut thing

RESTORATIONAD Diablo

Excellent build, as usual. Nice lines, Realy cool top wood.

I would like the pups to be a darker wood than the fret board. But that said, id probobly buy this. Cant say much better than that.

madhattr88 Rascal

Talk about keeping it simple. Not much to say here realy, Nice wood choices, Nice pickup choice. Id change the bridge, But other than that its perfect.

avenger Mirrored iceman

The white with the mirror works realy well. Although im not sure about the red. Its cool in some piks but seems more orange in others. Most likly the camera so no worries. Freaky neck joint, Nice build over all.

Hitone Skeleton

This is excellent, Realy like this one. Its almost toooooo far out there. I kinda wish there was more going on inside it, but that would probobly ruin it.

SOUND CLIPS ? we need some, have to hear this thing

strandberg Egronomic

My number 01. Love this thing. The grain on the top looks like its bunched up around the funky bridge. I generally hate headless guitars but not this one. The body shape reminds me of a pelvic bone or scapula from a dinosaur for some reason

Not you Aitn got a name

Realy cool. as usual. I can never tell if your builds are approached as a musical instrument, or as Art.

metalhead28 Ginger

Freaky clean build. Nice top, Cool neck, Nice finish, Even like the pickups. Only reason you lost out to Strandberg is I hate lots of switches.

accidental chef Mary ann

Nice build. The claro walnut was a good choice. Bigger tummy cut would make those layers realy jump out on the back. Realy nice guitar