mikhailgtrski

You won't find many blanks large enough to give you a one-piece V or explorer - it's hard enough to find them for "normal" size guitars. Instead of gluing on wings, you'll want to glue two blanks together, with the joint running down the center line of the guitar. It's common practice.

Check out Myka Guitars. David builds some very fine archtops... don't know if they're in your price range, but it's worth a look.

Mike

The cool thing about the guitar I made is the fact that it is in the hands of Richie Sambora of BON JOVI. Flew to anehiem CA last Feb. to deliver the guitar. Very cool time.

Congratulations, that's pretty cool. Now, when you get Alex Lifeson to play one of your guitars, well, then I will definitely have to vote for it.

The armrest is putting up a fight with the lacquer though and refuses to let it stay on top of the wood and just sucks it in. I reckon I should've grainfilled the guitar even though it's basswood

No need to grainfill... but a couple of washcoats of shellac or lacquer to seal it might have helped.

FYI - from the Warmoth site:

Basswood (Tilia americana): This is a lighter weight wood normally producing Strat® bodies under 4 lbs. The color is white, but often has nasty green mineral streaks in it. This is a closed-grain wood, but it can absorb a lot of finish. This is not a good wood for clear finishes; It is quite soft, and does not take abuse well. Soundwise, Basswood has a nice, warm tone.

No offense, Matt, but Megan is a much better guitar model.

Oh, and sorry about labelling Derek's tele as 'Green'. I'm red-green colourblind, and it looks minty-fresh to me!

Looks minty-green to me also... of course I've got the same slight colo(u)rblind thing going on.

I love that LP! Cerb's bass is very nice too. Another month of fine entries all around - congratulations to all!

Mike

Wheres the thingy that goes into the routed channel at the string-through holes?

On the to-do list.

Turns out I didn't really need it to go string-through... the Warmoth sales guy seemed to think I couldn't do a normal string-through with a tune-o-matic. When I checked the angles, it seemed like the strings would most likely hit the back of the bridge unless I put the ferrules way too far toward the end of the body. Plus, would have had to sand out the index marks that I had Warmoth place for a regular stop bar. My measurements were a bit off, though, since it works just fine as-is without the stop bar thingy. Oh well, too late to put the wood back, so I'll still put a rosewood bar in that slot. They do look nice on Myka's guitars.

When leveling shell extra care has to be taken not to thin the surrounding wood.

+1

The shell is usually much harder than the wood, so it's very easy to sand a depression in the wood around the inlay. There are files made for leveling fingerboards and inlays that will level the shell and leave the wood relatively untouched. I'm going to give one of them a try on my next inlay project.

Oh, and before you say, yes i have noticed that i've strung the bottom three one way and the top three the other way

I string my reverse explorer headstock that way, except I do the top four normally and the bottom two reversed - gives a straighter string path through the nut. Otherwise the extreme angle on the treble strings causes them to go a bit sharp when I clamp the nut.

Forgot to say, very nice professional-looking pics!

Mike

Is it just me or does it look there is a knob or two missing though, are you leaving it like that?

An LP-style toggle switch (for switching between magnetics/both/piezo) will fill that empty position. There's a gold mini-toggle (coil split) between the volume knobs, hard to see in that pic.

I'm toying with the idea of a 5-position rotary switch to give me a parallel humbucker option. But I'll stick with the current setup for awhile to see how I like it. The humbuckers sound so good, I might not use the single-coil modes that much.

Wow - excellent work! I've kinda weaned myself off the superstrats, but I really like this one. Nice color.

Mike

I would have left out the single coil, but thats just me.

I agree, it would look a little cleaner, but for what I do, I like to have the strat 2/4 position options without having to switch guitars. The next project will have just the 2 humbuckers.

So my bass luthier friend (a regular at talkbass.com) chastised me for giving him descriptions without pics...

Obviously not quite finished yet... I just received the toggle switch, and I need to do the shielding and permanent wiring, plus a few lacquer touchups.

I decided to ditch the rosewood p/u rings, as I don't think they'll feature well against the darker tortoise shell. I'll stick with the traditional Gibson/PRS cream... my stewmac order should arrive in a few days.

Mike

I just finished one of these and it "seems to me" that the chambering gives it a little more resonance, pretty much as advertised. Exactly how much effect it has on the tone I can't say without a similar solidbody to compare it with, but it does sound very, very good.

Mike

I took this bad boy (although my wife sometimes refers to it as "the other woman" ) out for its public debut yesterday... I wired it up temporarily and didn't have the bridge ground in yet, so it was a bit noisy. But it sounds really, really nice and sustains for days.

There are a few things left to finish up - I'll post another pic when it's done.

Mike

Nice!

It must be the day for stringing up the new guitars - I assembled and played mine last night - a little more work left to do but it's almost there...

Mike

Bummer... between you and Godin it's been quite a bad day to be a guitar neck.

The neck on the mahogany maple broke

Bummer. Before or after delivery?

Reader's Digest version :

LR Baggs makes a Strat replacement (X-Bridge) and a TOM (T-Bridge).

Fishman also makes a Tele replacement bridge (VT model).

Graphtech makes piezo-equipped replacement saddles for strat and TOM bridges.

For Rodney... here's how it turned out:

side view

Thanks again for all your help.

Mike

That's cool. I've used it a couple of times to flow out spot repairs.

Just wanted to throw out the caution in case somebody read the post and decided to go crazy with the blush eraser, not realizing what it is.

Mike

From now on I'm using a coat of that as my finale in finishing because i have a feeling it's really gunna cut down my wet sanding and buffing time!

Yes, it does a nice job of re-flowing and leveling the finish. Be careful, though. It is basically thinner plus retarder, so if you use too much it could adversely affect your cure time, just like using too much retarder when spraying with a gun. You might run into problems if you use it after every coat when you get a blush, plus leveling the final coat.

Spraying it on too heavy can also cause runs or sags.

Mike

It's kinda disconcerting the first time, if you don't know what's happening. If you let it go on, eventually the tube will die and you'll blow the HT fuse (assuming someone didn't replace it with too high a value ).

Does it stop if you put the amp on standby?

replaced all of the tubes one at a time with known good ones to no avail.

Sounds like a power tube starting to fail, except now you've gone and ruled that out.