3DogNate

Here's a shot of the naptha wetted top And lookie there... there's something you dont see everyday... a tele with a trem route.

Still working on it today.... Got the f-hole routed and the top glued on. Need to order some dye tomorrow so that I can try to get the body ready to spray next weekend. As soon as my truss rod gets here so that I can take measurements, I'll draw up a CAD file for the neck and start on that.

Top marked for cutting out Top roughed out on the band saw.

Lookin good... can't wait to see it shiny.

OK I got a bit more done today. Made a lot of sawdust chambering the mahogany. Band sawing the body blank. Flush trimming the blank to the template on the router table Hogging out the bulk of the chambering cavities. And Here are the finished chambers, hope to get the top glued on and serviced tomorrow.

That pretty much sums it up. I ordered the plans when I built mine. It works a treat

Here I am joining the top bookmatch halves in the spanish clamp. and here is that gorgeous 1 pc Honuras Mahogany body core with the template outlined on it for band sawing out later.

Today was template making day... I drew up the design in CAD and started busting out a set of templates today. I'm just breaking in the CNC so I'm still leary of doing a whole body in the machine... maybe next time.... but since this is a one off I thought I'd do templates that I can combine with other tele templates for a Thinline or other H-H or Trem style teles. There are a few other templates... but you get the point.

Looking good... Nice job on the binding..

Oh, it's gonna be a Tele body shape with Les Paul style controls. The guy that commissioned the guitar is a Tele player. He wants a more Gibson style tone vibe in a Tele package. He's tried several gibbys over the last couple of years but keeps going back to his Teles for playability. I'll do some more wood prep and get some templates whipped up over the next couple of days... I'm gonna try and push myself to get it sprayed in just a couple of weeks. More pics to come.

I was just commissioned to build a custom guitar for a Tele player. I'm going to try to photo document this build as best as I can, I usually get so busy buidling that I forget to take pics. So here are the specs. Bondy - Honduras Mahogany (I was fortunate to find a nice 1 piece body for this build.) Top - Flame Maple Binding - (Undetermined, either natural a'la PRS or Multi ply) Neck - Flame Maple Finger Board - Ebony Fret wire - EVO Gold Pickups - H-x-H Type undetermined at the moment, will probably hit up a boutique winder for a jazzy HB set Tuning machines - Hip Shot Locking Bridge - Hipshot Trem Flame Maple Top Bookmatch Top un-joined Flame Maple Neck Blank resting on the 1 piece Honduras Mahogany Body blank.

Thanks! It just spent a few hours at the local music stores to good reviews. Building cases is not too hard. The problem is cost as well as making them light enough and strong enough. I can make a great strong light case. It will cost me more in parts and labor than a full custom from a custom case shop. I can make a strong case that will cost more to ship than a full custom from a custom case shop. Right now the plan is to modify a Bass Flight case. Moving forward I am going to be more conscious of the size of the guitar relative to standard cases. I was looking last night and I think I can take a few mm out of the headstock without changing the actual look. Kinda like what Ibanez did in the 80s... when they went from the huge headstock to the smaller one we know now. There is no functional need for a large headstock... I just liked the way these look when I was designing them. Guitar building is about attention to detail. Building a product is about attention to all the details. How about a Baritone case? or A Mustang bass sized case? Or maybe even a Coffin case would work...

Lookin flamey...

I like it... looks fabulous...

SwedishLuthier - The NothStar Speedster / That's a solid build, the open grain works on this one with the satiny finish. The Pickup covers look great. The Tuner installation is nasty tho... big strike on design there. I'd have used a different tuner rather than cram those on since they didn't fit, doesn't look intentional. Still the overall is a high score build. RestorationAD - Helios / Looks Good... your builds are always clean... this one for some reason is a bit unexciting as some of the simialr builds you do. I like the "almost a carved top" look on this RG-ish body. Ready for you to do something crazy original though. High score build here to for the high level of execution... headstock is way cool... Still it gets my vote this month being such a solid good looking build. 3DogNate - / Great looking guitar... what the hell is thing on it? Dear God man! Get it off before it's assimilated!!! avengers63 - / I'm a sucker for a Mockingbird I like what you have going on overall... not the inlay so much... and the finish falls a bit short. Now that you are spraying... I look forward to you stepping your finishing skills up to the next level. It's a long expensive road to get high level finishes that are factory glossy and hard... Build more. jessejames - / Like the build, the woods... hate the el-cheapo bridge, and hate the control cover even more... knobs aren't doing much for me. Not convinced that the set neck and squre heel work for me either. crow - PRS copy / Good overall job... finish looks to fall short of what your usually see on the PRS and Copies. orgmorg - Barnstormer SC... / I like "EVERYthing" about this guitar except for that Baby Grand Bridge. It might be that I just hate that bridge on a whole range of levels on all guitars.. not just this one If that guitar had a basic wraparound... it would be worlds better to my little eye. madhattr88 - Rinker Guitars - "R5" That's a really good looking build Solid and cleanly executed.

I do have a bunch of build photos of the Ghost equipped guitar but never posted it as a build thread anywhere... I didn't think the forum would consider it very cool to post a build thread for a guitar I did a year ago. If everyone is OK I'll can make a build thread. (Can it go as a GOTM entry too?)

I built a Ghost equipped guitar for myself last year... And honestly I think I like the GK better for Both Synth and V-Guitar modeling. I'm so completely over the looks part of the GK... It doesn't bug me in the least, but I agree that it's un-pretty. But this is to be a functional workhorse.

French Polished Shellac, It's actually quite glossy. But not draggy on the hand. I couldn't get a good shot of the bird's Eye and the gloss at the same time. It's an easy finish that looks and feels great for necks.

Thanks... Yep here are a couple of close ups of the neck, and a couple of more of the body. The neck finish BTW is French Polish...

Here's my latest build for myself. I posted it in GOTM for April. I'm an avid guitar synth user with my cover band. I just upgraded to the new Roland GR-55 synth, and it came with another GK-3 Pickup. I needed another guitar to mount it on. I'm keeping several of my guitars without a hex pickup, so a new build was in order, I actually built and finished this body a while back but never decided what to do with the neck pickup. So I ended up whipping out a BE Maple neck for it and by the time I was finished with the neck I decided to go with a P-90 in the neck. I've always loved P-90 tone but currently had no guitars equipped with a P-90. I'm an old school hot-rodded Strat player at heart so I wanted to keep this as more of a Old School Charvel style hard tail, with a good bit of tonal character. I may still add a series/parallel pull pot for the humbucker to add another tonal option, as I have this on all my other guitars. Here are the specs. Neck: Bird's Eye Maple Honduras Rosewood Skunk stripe Ebony Fingerboard 12" radius Stainless steel fret wire 22 frets Bone Nut Grover Mini Rotomatic machines Body: Honduras Mahogany (2pc) Nitrocellulose Lacquer Finish Hand wound P-90(A5, 42awg, 9.5k) Hand wound Humbucker (A5, 43awg, 13.5k) 250k Volume Pot 3 way pickup selector Roland GK-3 Hex Pickup Gotoh hard tail bridge Schaller strap locks

Here's my latest build for myself. I'm an avid guitar synth user with my cover band. I just upgraded to the new Roland GR-55 synth. It came with another GK-3 Pickup. I needed another guitar to mount it on. I'm keeping several of mine without a hex pickup. I'm an old school hot rodded strat player at heart so I wanted to keep this as more of a Old School Charvel style hard tail. With a good bit of tonal character. Here are the specs. Neck: Bird's Eye Maple Honduras Rosewood Skunk stripe Ebony Fingerboard 12" radius Stainless steel fret wire 22 frets Bone Nut Grover Mini Rotomatic machines Body: Honduras Mahogany (2pc) Nitrocellulose Lacquer Finish Hand wound P-90(A5, 42awg, 9.5k) Hand wound Humbucker (A5, 43awg, 13.5k) 250k Volume Pot 3 way pickup selector Roland GK-3 Hex Pickup Gotoh hard tail bridge Schaller strap locks BTW I Refer to this guitar as "The Hog" due to it's Mahogany body...

Email Sheldon and ask.. personally I'd seal it and shoot a regluar old sunburst and shoot a satin nitro or satin 2k finish and be done with it.

Not much more work has been done I mostly been busy with other stuff the last couple of weeks. But I've got all the pore filling done now. Just finished porefilling the neck a little while ago.. here's a pic.

I'd score the finish at the heel and strip it down with a card scraper... should not take very long at all.

I'm selling off my Soldano 4x12 cabinet. (A buddy of mine owns a Pawn Shop and is letting me consign it since he can handle selling large items like this.) Here's a good chance to score a monster cab with road case for way less than they'd be at GC. Link to ebay auction