Geoff St. Germaine

Nice guitar!  I also love padauk...too bad the dust is such a PITA.

BTW, I really dug your 8-string bass, you do nice work!

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Thanks, that bass is a lot of fun to play and was tons of fun to build.

Yeah, the dust from padauk is a PITA. I probably won't use it again on such a large scale for that reason. Even when I was doing so planing, the shreds of wood just disintegrated into dust. It was weird. Also, being bright orange, the minute any gets on your clothes it is really obvious and makes a huge mess.

First thing I was going to post was that it had a hint of Davids guitar on it, but you post it there! great guitar! I liked it before the pickguard too, the carve flows very nice on both sides!

One note though. I see you on the progress pics, carvin with out a dust mask! Padauk and wenge dust is very bad!!! If you plan on making guitars for a while (and by the looks of that one you sure are!) think safety too! Very nice face shied, but your lungs need protection too!

Now get more pics of that thing and post them ASAP! We all ned some eye candy here!

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On the mask thing, the guy in the photo is actually wearing a mask. Also, the guy isn't me doing the carving, but the guy I build with who owns the shop. We are quite aware of wood toxicity and he has one of the toxicity charts up on the wall in fact.

Thanks for the compliments.

Hahahahaha, I LOVE how SO many of the semi-hollows we see come through here, my current project included, say "yeah, alot of my influence came from Myka"! Seems he's really started one hell of a fad with his Dragonflys.

But yeah, LOVE this guitar! I have a screen-saver I've made where I take my favourite guitars and it cycles through the pictures of them. Yours was just added, so take that as a HUGE complement, cause there's only like 30 or so on there out of ALL the guitars I EVER seen.

Chris

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Thanks a lot for the kind words and the compliment.

I definitely can see why David Myka's guitars inspire so many people!

Thanks everyone, I learn a lot on this forum just lurking so I figured I'd post up what I'd done. I have a couple of basses on the go that I'll post up sometime soon.

CHEERS!!!

Wow.    That's really nice!

I like the fact that its an original design and it actually looks good. The shapes are well balanced and I like the top. It looks like a pretty thick body... How much does it weigh?

What kind of finish did you use on it?

Is the neck a bolt on or a set neck?

Why is the bridge pickup so far away from the bridge? 

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Well, I won't take any credit for originality on the design. I really used David Myka's guitars as a very strong influence on the body shape. I saw his stuff at MIMF and I just loved it.

The body is quite thick at 2.5".

It is a set neck, I'll get a rear shot up of it. Again, the rear joint is somewhat influenced by David Myka over the Gibson style blocky neck joint. It's not quite as shaped as David's are, but it is more like that than a Gibson.

The bridge is so far away for a couple of reasons. One of them is that I am not a guitar player, but a bass player and I really haven't paid much attention to guitars. I have generally preferred a fairly fat and thick tone so I had the bridge pickup positioned further from the bridge than what I'd seen on other guitars. I brought the guitar to a jam with my band and the guitar player loved it except he said that he'd want to move the bridge pickup closer to the bridge because it gets such a different tone than then neck pickup. So, on later versions of this guitar it will be moved forward about an inch.

That guitar is so beautiful I photoshopped it so everyone could see that pic a little better, I hope you don't mind.

Gorgeous job.     

Hey thanks, that looks better.

I was trying to get proper lighting inside without using the flash as I was getting hotspots off of the finish. If it were still summer I'd snap some outside but there's snow on the ground now so outdoors isn't really an option.

Well, I've finished up my first guitar. It's for my fiance. She plays a bunch of instruments but has never played the guitar. I normally build basses (I'm starting on my 4th) but I really enjoyed building this guitar and playing it is pretty fun, so I figure I'll build some more. Anyway, here are some pics.

Pic 2

A couple of progress shots

Progress 1

Progress 2

Progress 3

Specs are:

Padauk/Wenge Top

Mahogany Body

Lightly flamed maple neck

Ebony fretboard

TOM Bridge

Grover Tuners

SD SH-1 '59 Neck and Bridge Pickups

Wenge Pickup Rings and Jack Plate

Padauk Scratchplate

Ziricote Tophat knobs

Dunlop Straplocks

Graphtech Nut

I would leave it alone..... I'm working on a Padauk Tele, It gums up sand paper quick. eats blades like I eat M&Ms, tears out easy, and you will be digging orange crap out your nose for days. and yes I was wearing a mask...... The Orange dust makes your sinuses go wild. My Daughter cant go around it without getting ill. Its pretty but I wont use it again.

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i have sinus problems myself. what do mean by ill when u reffer to your daughter. what kind mask were ya using. i plan on carving the padauk for an arctop guitar top.

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I've used it extensively and with a proper respirator (which I suggest using for any wood) it is no problem. I also can't see how you would get the dust in your nose using a proper mask, but if it's one of the paper ones I guess that'd happen (but those are mostly useless anyway).

I agree that it gums up sandpaper easily, but I disagree on it eating up blades. I've not had any problems with it easing up blades. Tearout sometimes happens on endgrain, but it is no worse than the bubinga I've used and it certainly better than wenge.

That looks outstanding. Thanks for sharing all the detail!

There are Smith strings with 38" winding length. Dingwall B strings are for 37" scale. There are long DRs like erik said.