pauliemc

Some snaps of the back. The rear panel is Walnut to match the front, Just steamed to tone down the colour & grain a little. So it is not so huge a contrast in colour as the top is to the back of the body. Sanded to 4000 grit, oiled & then polished with 000 grit steel wool.

You can see the neck profile here. the lack of a glue joint for the neck is visable also. I will throw up some snaps of that soon as I have them taken.

Just finished this one. This was built for myself as an experiment with Trapazoidal neck profiles & future pickup testbed. The spec is as follows.

Sapele Neck & body with a black walnut top.

Rosewood 25.5 inch scale fret board. Side dots only.

String thru - Hard tail Fender bridge - Chrome.

3 way toggle switch. 01 vol. 01 tone - Chrome.

Gotoh mini rotomatics - Chrome.

2 X Blues engine Pickups - Nickle.

Brushed Varnish finish to top of body. Oil on back of body & neck. Poly to face of headstock.

The main bulk of the body (the back), the neck & headstock are all cut as one piece from a large block of Sapele. The top is 12mm thick Black Walnut, 2 piece, not book matched. overall the body is 52mm thick.

The neck has been shaped to a Trapazoid profile with permission from Rick Toone (http://www.ricktoone.com/2007/11/trapezoidal-nec.html) Or at least my variation on it. I have altered it to better suite my playing style. The sides of the neck have been striped with 4mm Walnut to match the top. Kind of like a heavy binding. This is all topped with a Rosewood board.

All hand carved using a band saw. hand router, rasps & som sand paper.

I like the inlay on the board. Get yourself on here http://www.williamlaskin.com/ to see how to make big inlays realy work well.

You gona do a multi laminate neck ? would look coooooooooool

I posted it as being a LAminated neck, but I'm changing the layout. it's going to be Lacewood with Sipo laminated.

Sorry. My mistake. I meant a 5 or 7 piece laminate. you know. Lotsa detail goin on.

I think the feathers would look cool, maby make them up & just place them on the board for a visual to help make up your mind. But the fanned board might be enough so you may be right to ditch them. Never realy know untill you realy get into the build.

I like the inlay on the board. Get yourself on here http://www.williamlaskin.com/ to see how to make big inlays realy work well.

You gona do a multi laminate neck ? would look coooooooooool

Who gives a rats ass about the sound clips anyway. I dont think I have a single guitar I havent swapped the pups out for duncans or TV Jones. I think most of us on here are serial tweakers, & we all know not to judge the sound untill we get it plugged into our own gear & set up to suit us.

Still nice to see someone start to make a mark for themselves, GO JADEN

I cant choose between Simo and Jester atm...

If you had to cough up £5000 for it, which one would you hand over the cash for first ?

No time to think - 2 seconds, maby - choose !!!

r-dub - Im not a fan of acoustics at the best of times. But i do like this one for some reason, Realy nice shape to the body & excellent wood choices visually. Cool guitar.

andyt - Im with Wez on this one, I much prefer the original swirl. I think it could do with a neck pickup to balance out the long board & big empty body space. Still. Gotta dig this thig, Love your builds man, gimmie more !!

jvillavicencio - Nice choice of woods, The pichup covers are realy funky, But the bridge pup looks to be set a little out of place & the top/bottom horns dont work with the ass end of the body. Its a nice piece, but just doesent work for me.

Simo - I prefer the back to the front of this, realy nice cherry on there. Only thing that kept this from my vote was all the electronics. I know theres not a whole lot in there but all those knobs & switches just throw me a little. Apart from that all I can say is

Jester - Holy F@*K !!

More of a museum piece than a guitar i rekon. id be terrified to play it if i owned it. So this gets my number 2 place. Should be Number 01, but the whole "petrafied too damage it" thing would drive me nuts.

PRS tait - Big improvement on the last time i saw it up here. I love the shape of this thing & the new finish only enhances it. Reminds me a lot of my old Les paul. I cant stand mis-matched pickups, but somehow i dont realy seem to be put off by them here. This was my number 01.

hoogle - not sure about this. Nice finish, Nice inlays, nice overall body shape. Overall a realy cool guitar, but the ass end swirl seems to close up the space behind the bridge too much. Loosing the tail piece & putting the strings thru the body following the line of the swirl would be my approach here. But still. realy sweet build.

Maikkeli - very cool. The finish on the top could be a little more vivid, I dont realy like inlays that cross frets unless they are a big thing covering 4 or more fret areas. but apart from that this is rockin.

J, got my guitarist sub yesterday - good stuff, pages of reviews & even sound clips on the CD - should be out in a few days

aaargh, this is horrible... folk are telling me this and im not a subbie so cant see it...

didnt know there were sound clips !

COOL !

Maby some body here could send you their copy, or make a copy of it for you.

Its a good piece in the magazine. Havent heard any of the clips yet.

you gona angle the template (make it wedge shaped) with the thick side towards the posts ?. I do it for floyds on my builds, it lets you get a deeper cavity at the back of the trem, better for pulling the fooker way back. kind of a lazy lions claw route from a jem

Holy crap wez. where did you find that maple

If I remember correctly, Ibanez had the same issue when they were developing the "chrome boy". I believe they ended up using nickel over copper as well or something similar. Are you gonna post pics? Id love to see the process you used!

Yea. they went the same way in the end. Chrome is too hard & splits far too easy. I have no photos of the plating process, they didnt exactly let me wander about the shop floor. Ill take a few piks of the body & throw them up.

Woe, realy brought out the flame in the maple with this new finish man. cool.

Is that the brush on laquer or the spray version your using ?

This thing turned out amazing! I want to do a Satch at some point in the future, but I want to attempt a chrome finish...

Not to hijack the thread, but I just started a thread for a guitar I will be doing a similar finish on. Ill be using an image as opposed to fabric, but I was wondering if it might not be a viable option to print my images on canvas, though it might effect the image quality slightly. Do you have any experience with something like that? Its a strat shape body with fairly large round overs over which I want the image to conform smoothly. There is probably a better material that can be printed on that works well for this kind of thing, but im kind of a rookie.

I have tried canvas, Drove me up the wall. I found it to be very heavy & thick. It adhered well but it took an insane amount of bulking to achieve a smooth finish.

The materials Scott is talking about are very thin in comparrison to the canvas myself & most other artists use to paint onto so they will be much more suitable. They will take a print much easier & cheaper aswell.

Personally, Id prefer to use a different fabric. I have had great success with satin, acrylic & cotton. All 3 are thin & easily plyable to get into awkward curves.

You could try Vinyl, works realy well & needs very little work to get a realy good finish.

I have a chrome JS in the works aswell. total pain getting the plating done, ended up going for a nickle finish over copper over the wood. Electroplated. Ruined 4 bodies trying to get it right. the fifth one came out OK. The plater wont even try it over timber again as it was so difficult to get right . Next one will be carved from a block of acrylic, then plated.

I vote green and a smaller font.

whats wrong with his font size ? AT LEAST ITS NOT ALL CAPS

But seriously. Id go with the green. something like emerald or forest green, Get aniline dyes & dilute them in alcohol so they are realy vibrant. Will look killer

I know iv said this before about your stuff, but your presentation photos are fu@%ing mind numbingly good. You dont see stuff presented like that very often. I particularly like the use of the Forklift

Did you intend the green on the left to work so well next to the blue on the right ? (above)

Pay attention folks, when displaying your work, this is how to do it

Use titebond original.

Titebond 2 can stain lighter coloured woods like maple, ash, birch & so on. Stay away from it.

I suppose that would work. Of course, I am still seriously contemplating inlace, some sort of black with gold dust or something.

I sometimes get bell brass, go at it with a file & make a heap of filings, Mix it in with clear epoxy.

you need to make up the mix while the brass filings are still bright, so within a few hours of filing them. Then use it like filler for your trim. Once sanded smooth (wait 4 days to sand it) it looks realy cool.

You can use stainless steel aswell, or chrome. Not chrome plate, actual chrome bar. its a bitch to find but it looks cool.

Used to do that all the time, Bad habit i got into a few years back. Just use a realy sharp chisel to take away the excess in the corners, 5 mins for each pup cavity & your done. Just make sure it a REALY sharp chisel.

Count me in on the interested party party . Your work is awesome ! I've got an off hand trick to dye wood black that works like a charm. PM if interested.....

and yes - PICS of the one piecer !!

Its ok. I have some Black aniline on the way from behlin. realy good stuff.

Picked up the sapele for the other JS today. 18x2.25 inch 15 foot long. Should have enough in that i rekon

The matching JEM for this freaky green JS is started aswell. Body almost ready for the fabric

Scott. I will record & post the build on the one piece. Hey even one person interested is worth a look

Great! I love your work.

Speaking of which it's been a while since we've seen anything of the rising sun.

SR

Yea. That one is killin me. The black aliline faded a little after about 2 days, so I held off on the oil finish for it to see how it went. Completly gone at this stage, absolutly no black to be seen .

I think i will be knocking the Stewie mac colour tone stuff on the head after this. Thats a blue, red & green guitar that faded. And now a black thats totally vanished.

I have some Behline black aniline on the way to get back on track. be up and running again within 2 weeks.

Looking great. I really like the fabric finish on this one.

As for pickups, I'm feeling a set of zebras in black pickup rings. The chrome isn't bad, but a little loud against the more natural/pastel colors.

Tried a set, Got lost in the mix, didnt have enough presence to make the look work. The chrome is bright but the zebras just faded into the background. So big shiney chrome jobbies are goin in.

Scott. I will record & post the build on the one piece. Hey even one person interested is worth a look

Jimmy has it nailed here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipdlGSLYk4...feature=related

Beautiful body work Paulie

Thanks Muzz. I luv carving these JS style things. Has to be my fave body shape out there. Have another one starting later this wee, whole thing carved from one chunk of sapele (except the fret board) Neck & body as one chunk. I might take some piks & put it up. wotcha rekon ?

About the iffy wood choices thing (MDF)

The red guitar being held up by the guy with the decidly dodgy hair above is mostly Blockboard. Cheap, nasty, manky stuff that should never make it into any guitar. But still, this old geezer seems to get a decent sound goin.

I hadn't even thought of that. I did some poking around and like the look of gold and brown pearloid (I found some binding strips). The gold would really go well with the hardware. Thanks for the idea. Any idea how to get a nice, uniform channel for putting that stuff in?

Your gona have to make yourself a template & use a narrow router bit to cut the channel. Its easier than it sounds. Just take your time & it will be no problem.