Johnny Foreigner

or...

excuse the very quick and sloppy photoshopping...

looks REALLY good. thumbs up! :D

from this:

to this:

equals big improvement - on something that was already very very impressive.

nearly done, just need to glue the nut & wire

that looks AWESOME.

could I use a hacksaw blade if I grind down a side a wee bit?

Could you use a raccoon as a bath sponge? Sure.

Would you want to? Would you get acceptable results? Not sure.

I vote green and a smaller font.

awesome tune. Just listening to more of their stuff on myspace. Me likey a lot.

G, for sure!

+1

If it were me, I'd just sand the tip of that horn back until the chip is gone and then blend the curves till its smooth. When you are done I doubt anyone will know that horn is 1/8th inch shorter. It will be a little work to get the entire thickness mahagany and all reshaped, but probably less than you'd think.

that's not a bad idea... i'll see how the filler tests come out and if they're not good enough, I'll revert to reshaping the entire horn. thanks scott.

been a little preoccupied with other **** going on in my life, so been limiting working on this to a few hours at the weekends.

made some progress though, and starting to feel like I'm approaching the final furlong.

with the HS veneer glued on, I routed it flush with the mahogany:

I'm continuing to be impressed by the figure of the maple I got, as I didn't think I paid that much for it.

trying to figure out what to do about this:

it's a little bit of tearout on the upper horn, no more than 1/8" across. I'm going to be dyeing the back and neck black, then dyeing the top and HS veneer black, sanding back and dyeing blue.

So I think my options to conceal this boo-boo are:

- binding (last resort for me, because I think it will be a nightmare to cut the channel [and will look rubbish] the way the cutaways meet the neck

- wood filler

- titebond as filler

i'm doing some tests with wood filler and titebond on scrap to see how obvious the plugged sections are. I actually have a similar ding on the neck (silly mistake with the router) that I also need to conceal.

any thoughts appreciated.

I also finished carving the neck this weekend:

and i'm pretty happy with it. i ran through the grits up to about 1200 and the smooth wood feeling (that's what she said) was pretty awesome. the profile is pretty much a match for my crappy Tanglewood LP copy which was to hand (as I'm refinishing it) and always felt nice to play.

next up is leveling the fingerboard and installing the frets. Going to go read up a lot before I start on that. It's probably the part of the entire build that I feel least confident about, so I'm looking forward to getting past it, but not much relishing the scope for error....

Ok, here goes:

SJE: there is not a thing wrong with this guitar, but it didn't really do much for me either. very clean, very nice looking piece, but I'm not a fan of extra strings or natural finishes, so it left me a little cold

The invader: like others, once I saw the inlay and the killswitch, I thought this guitar was going to be mindblowing. And while it's absolutely fantastic, and shows incredible workmanship, it just ended up being less than the sum of its prospective parts, and ended up slightly underwhelming.

oblaty: love the finish, but there's something about the thickness of the body that I find slightly inelegant to look at. But very clean, professional work and a great finish.

avenger mk3: I like some of the details: headstock design and neck join design in particular, but the overall design lacks cohesiveness to me. Excellent execution, though.

texas tele: got my vote for three reasons. 1) i don't like teles, so the fact i like this tele speaks volumes. 2) last months thinline missed my vote by a gnat's todger, so I'm making up for that. 3) great build thread.

OM-18: the reason that we should have separate acoustic (and bass?) GOTMs. Looks *amazing*, but no acoustic will ever, to me, look as good as a lecky.

gecko: incredible work, but I think I'm suffering from explorer ennui. that and I didn't really like the finish or the abalone topped knobs.

killemall: ditto on the explorer ennui, plus I don't really dig natural finishes or wood cavity covers. really, really clean work, but not flicking my switch for whatever reason

comicaster: really just missed the mark for me. there's nothing wrong with it, but I'd just like to see you translate some of that incredible energy - which you currently put towards *quantity* - and use it for quality. Spend three months building something from scratch, that's your own design and that you pour some of yourself into.

The quality in the last couple months has been incredible. applause all round.

Your PRS type build is very impressive! I'm also working on a similar build. Schecter/PRS inspired with some original details and such. Coming along slowly but surely...

Thank you. It's coming along okay - a couple mistakes but nothing too bad. When do we see pictures of your build?

Hey Tom,

I can't help you, but I noticed you're from Melrose. Pretty cool. I live in Malden.

Hey Frank.

I'm actually not far from Malden - on Washington St, up towards the fellsway.

But I'm also from England - been in the US (and Melrose) just over 2 years.

the ones i found were from ebay seller bezdez and they're $9. which is pretty tempting, but not if they're rubbish.

Ok, I've searched and searched and searched and still can't find what I'm looking for.

A few weeks ago there was a little mini discussion on someone's thread about truss rod - the stewmac hotrod vs the lmii vs whatever.

If I recall there were some pretty strong recommendations about particular brands. I've just found an intriguing looking new, 18", double-action TR with a blue sleeve on the bottom rod - very similar design to the lmii rods, I think - and they looked familiar, so I was wondering if they were indeed one of the ones recommended in the other thread. They're less than half the price of the Stew Mac HRs.

Thx

Tom

What's the benefit of leaving the part of the pickup route that isn't the 'ears' bit higher than the 'ears' bit?

As in, what's the disadvantage of doing the entire route to the depth of the bits at the side?

PS if your bookstore only sells Ayn Rand, you should probably check out Borders or Barnes & Noble. It'll blow your mind!

For classic rock stuffs, I'd go with the guy from 38 special in the song "Hold on Loosely"

just had a listen. me likey.

John,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

calm down, dear.

Number 2 is my favorite, with number 3 close behind.

+1 on that

I also like that you used Marvel and not DC. Stan Lee is the man.

I respectfully disagree. Stan Lee was given the job my his uncle and put his name on others work as the writer. Note that with the exception of the Silver Surfer series (which was horribly written), he didn't "write" anything without using an artist who could write as well, thus allowing him to abuse his position to hijack their work.

What Stan IS is a great huckster and salesman. He's very charismatic and a terrific face for the company.

JACK KIRBY was the man. Without Jack, we wouldn't have Marvel, period. The one positive I can say about Stan's "work" on the books he did with Jack is he gave them some focus. Kirby was overflowing with ideas & stories, but didn't have focus enough to tell them in a sensible way. Just look at his work at DC. He was given a free hand and created some great things, but frankly the stories weren't that good.

And on a similar level, I really like the subtext of isolation and parental narcissism in Spot's First Walk, but found the theme of education as a form of mass control in Spot Goes to School to be a little heavy handed.

Maybe when you're done reading your comic books we can play at being Power Rangers. Bagsy being the red one!

[/patronizing lecture by grown up who reads grown up books but can't resist the childish urge to start a flame war]

Mixing up some colors, I'm currently leaning toward the combo on the right side of this scrap:

+1

So I'm curious what everyone's preference is for the ultimate guitar sound, as captured by another player.

For me, it's Andy Cairns' sound on 1994's Troublegum: http://www.myspace.com/therapyquestionmark - have a play of 'Screamager'.

It can be a rhythm sound, a lead sound, whatever. That sound that you want to replicate when you play.

yeah, i'm hoping.

next up: avoiding screwing up the neck!

I'm sure it will improve the more builds I do, but I am going through this build paranoid about everything I could possibly screw up!