mwcarl

The angle that the strings break over the bridge saddles might also be affecting the playability that you're seeing. With a steeper angle I can imagine that you might experience less buzzing at similar action since the string is being partly 'encouraged' away from the frets. Other than that, I can only imagine the other effects are just ergonomics and how they relate to ones picking hand mechanics.

I agree with Scott, the laminations at the neck heel are distracting. I know how difficult those would be to line up, and the fact that they don't would bug me. Love your explorers.

You had me at curly black limba... I've got to work with black limba sometime, it just looks way too interesting to pass up. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

I've heard a few mentions about the Hipshot headless system, but I can't seem to find any specific information. Any leads RAD (or photos if you already have the hardware)? I assume it's 6-string only. Love the ziricote top. Always appreciate how you show your process (even if I have to bite my tongue a bit every time you call it the 'heal' instead of 'heel'), you've helped me a lot in my own builds.

In case you weren't thinking about it, the size of the knobs for bass tuners is usually your limiting factor. I'm not sure how close together is acceptable, but for your purposes I'd pick smaller knobs. The Hipshot ultralights have different options, the dimensions page shows the sizes of the knobs. With the smaller ones, it looks like you could do spacing of about 1.4"-1.5". EDIT: Link to the ultralights dimensions document.

That's some gigantic neck binding.

It does sound like it might still be possible to save that fretboard, but it would depend on how bad the radius errors are. I suppose part of the question will be whether in the process of correcting the radius you sand through your inlays. I used to have all sorts of problems with radiusing (over-radiusing the edges as you have), but I've learned to go slow and check the radius and level of the board constantly. Without inlays I'd also use a hand plane to speed up the work.

I love watching acoustic builds, eventually I'll give one a go. For your build, that bocote is beautiful, a infinitely nicer than the bocote I've seen before.

Actually I'm pretty sure I know the reason. It's so that when he does builds with a slanted neck single coil, the neck pocket is the same. I think I remember seeing that in one of his builds.

The stain and finish looks amazing. Very clean work all around. If I'm being really picky I'd say that the top join is a bit too obvious.

Is that fretboard Cocobolo? I love the grain, it's probably my favourite wood when it's close to straight grained. I also say go with the F-hole, your design looks good.

I'm not crazy about Les Paul copies, especially painted ones and bullseye at that, but that fretboard looks fantastic. Your work always looks great.

Well I'll be. I didn't know there were flush mount strap buttons for those, and I just bought a bunch of the regular ones from StewMac to install as flush mount. I guess I'll just have to deal with it. Looking good RAD, you're really cranking these out this year.

I like the cocobolo top, I'd love to get my hands on one to work with one of these days. That fretboard however is hideous to me.

Thanks Prostheta, I missed that when I was reading the original post. Looks great, and I like the concept. The body shape really matches well with the bridge.