fretman_2

Here's my entry for March..  This is a guitar that I designed that's inspired by a September 1959 article in Mechanix Illustrated entitled 'How to Make an Electric Guitar'.  I call it the MI59DC for double cut.  I did a little modification of the basic body shape, and designed my own snake head inspired 21 fret 25" scale neck.  The top is an interesting piece of flame maple chosen more for it's uniqueness than the mirror quality of the pattern.  The finish is nitrocellulos lacquer tinted with ColorTone Vintage Amber.  Both body and neck are maple.  I used my CNC machine to do the 2D machining on both body and neck, then shaped the neck profile by hand.  Neckplate, control plate, and pickup rings are CNC'd 6061 aluminum with my own engraving designs.  The engraving is a sun, moon and stars theme.

Other details...GFS Alnico Pro humbuckers, 6061 aluminum nut, Ernie Ball #10 strings, hardtail bridge, open back Wilkinson style tuners, heel adjust truss rod (you can tell I cut my teeth building Tele's).  I built this guitar for myself.

Close up of the engraving on the control plate...

Closeup of the engraving on the pickup rings...

Closeup of the engraving on the neck plate...

Shot of the entire guitar...

Closer up view of the body...

Thanks and hope you enjoy the pics of the guitar.  

This is the MI59 and is based based on a September 1959 article from Mechanix Illustrated entitled "How To Make An Electric Guitar."   To get the outline of the guitar ready for CNC, I brought a JPG of the outline into Inkscape and used the Trace Bitmap feature to turn the photo into a vector drawing.  From there I scaled up the drawings to the dimensions I wanted, and cleaned up the few errors from the trace.

This is the first build using my home built CNC machine.  I produced two body templates, one for the outline and one for neck, control and pickup pockets. I also directly CNC'd the outline of the neck and peck drilled the tuner holes.  Everything else was done by hand.

The guitar body is red oak and black walnut and the two piece neck is red oak.  Body and neck finish is satin wipe-on poly.

Some particulars...

• 25" scale neck with medium jumbo frets
• Side position markers only
• Bison bone nut
• Open back tuners
• Tele type controls
• Guitar Fetish humbucker sized P90's

I have a double cut version of this guitar in the works.

Here's a short video of the new owner trying out a well know riff...

MI59 Demo.mp4

My entry in January's contest is a custom black walnut semi hollow T style guitar...with a bit of a special story.  This guitar was crafted for a young man, a youth minister, with black walnut from a tree that had been felled in his grandfathers back yard.  This stash of black walnut had been sitting in a barn for at least 30 years...maybe more and I was approached about building a guitar from it.  I was allowed to keep the rest of the wood for any future builds.

My aim was to show off as much of the grain of this beautiful wood as possible,..so there would be no pick guard.  Also, because it's a semi hollow, I could book match the top for extra beauty.  I had recently gotten into CNC and I wanted to try my hand at doing some engraving.  I set about designing patterns for the control and neck plates and settled on the designs you see in the photos.  The neck plate design is especially meaningful to him.  I also used the CNC machine to cut the templates used to build this guitar.

Most of this guitar is the standard T style flavor with the exception of the dual rail humbucker in the bridge.  I added that to give him a broader choice of tones in the music he creates.

I know that when he plays this in church, it carry so much extra meaning into the music he's making.  It was very satisfying to hand the guitar off to him..

Some features of this guitar...

• Neck
  • 25.5" scale, 21 medium-jumbo frets
  • Maple neck blank
  • Rosewood fretboard
  • Polymer clay position markers
  • Heel adjust two way trussrod
  • Aluminum nut
  • Finish satin wipe-on poly
• Body
  • Black walnut
  • Semi hollow 
  • Book matched top
  • Finish satin wipe-on poly
• Aluminum control and neck plates
• Custom designed "f' hole
• Wilkinson compenstated Tele bridge
• Guitar Fetish Lil Puncher humbucker bridge pup, Guitar Fetish single coil neck pup

"SatinSapele"

I've probably built about 5 or 6 guitars...mostly Tele's...mostly for friends and family members. This one's for myself and represents my take on one of my favorite guitars. It's a little bit of this and that. My garage is my workshop and I have to do a lot of the fabricating outside. I'd like to advance to the point where I can sell one or two every now and then. Otherwise I'd keep them all!!

This guitar was built to be a rocking workhorse. Simple slab sided body and bolt on snake head style neck. It's heavy at nearly 10 pounds but I couldn't bring myself to carve into this beautiful piece of wood to do any weight reduction. The finish on the neck and body is Minwax wipe-on satin polyurethane with no grain fill. I wanted to keep the character of the wood intact.

Here are some specs...

• Body - Sapele
• Neck - Oak/Rosewood
• Pickguard - Frosted ABS plastic
• Tuners - Wilkinson open back Waverly style
• Scale - 25", 21 jumbo frets
• Strings - Ernie Ball 10's
• Bridge - LPJR Style Intonated Wrap Around
• Volume - 250K Audio
• Tone - 500K Log
• Nut - Corian
• Pickup - GFS Classic II Humbucker

...and the pictures...

Thanks for the constructive criticism...the glue line was a concern...LOL. The finish is a very mirror glossy though...i was at a loss as how to capture it. All of the other entries are fantastic guitars. I'm just happy to be amongst you!

demonx - WARBIRD #1 - Excellent work as always. I particularly like the warplane theme. This is a full blown 80's rock machine. The fact it is a lefty makes me respect it more. I always panic when building lefties worried that I am going to not route something on the correct side... Got my vote.

FernandoEsteves - Evil Tele - We all needed better pics of this. I think this could have won if we could have seen it all.

Our Souls inc. - Patience - Best execution from you yet. Very clean. Not a fan of the breadwinner look but still nice. Only thing I might change are the headstock wings. I would make them match the main part of the headstock.

gpcustomguitars - bass for a friend - Love the bridge! This is a great looking bass. I bet it is awesome in person. The photos do not do it justice.

verhoevenc - OMarlin - Painting a perfectly great acoustic blue to try and win GOTM is just ridiculous.This would have gotten my vote if not for the hideous blue burst. Also why the light colored bridge? With the Blue burst as it gets lost in the top... All complaints about silly things I could fix with a little paint stripper the rest of the guitar is gorgeous and innovative. I love everything about it except the silly color bits. Chris please build one in natural for me.

fretman_2 - Black Snake - This was hard not to vote for. I have a spot in my heart for teles and the snakehead makes this guitar. Love it. The glue line near the headstock is a bit telling though and the black looks a bit flat. I would look to work on joints and execution in the future. Give me a knotty pine bodied snakehead with a nice vintage lacquer and you get my vote. Nice work.

Menapia - BLUE VELVET - Nice PRS. Looks great. I am just not a fan of PRS style guitars.

Hello everyone! This is "Black Snake"...

A few of the specs...

• Two piece 21 fret red oak snakehead neck
  
• D neck profile
  
• Bone nut
  
• Dunlop 6100 frets
  
• Custom snakeskin pickguard
  
• Black nitro lacquer finish
  
• Wilkinson compensated three saddle bridge
  
• Guitar Fetish Lil Puncher Hot Lead dual rail pups
  

Body construction is composite MDF/pine. She sounds and plays like a dream...drives an amp hard, but cuts through the mix. This is not your fathers T!

Thanks David!!!!!

Here are some shots of my newly finished Pinecaster.

This is my first scratch built Tele style guitar. It's my second scratch built 6 string.

Here are the specs:

- Poplar neck with red oak fretboard, finished in Tru Oil

- GFS Lil Puncher Modern Vintage dual rail pups

- Les Paul selector switch

- Pine 2X4 and Lowes round pine table top

- All black hardware (excepting the white selector switch tip)

- RIT transparent scarlet dye, finished with shellac, then lacquer

- Aluminum nut

- Dunlop Jumbo frets

Pretty standard otherwise.

The neck is very chunky, but the action is superb. It plays and sounds fantastic.

My last two Tele style necks have been poplar blanks with red oak fretboards finished with Tru Oil. They're real players and beautiful. The red oak compliments the poplar nicely.

Wow...what's the scale???

wow...thanks very much!!!

The guitar is a win !! I dig the sound of the track and even moreso the playing !! Great unorthodox build.

Thank you!!

Sweet...like it alot!!

This guitar has been in progress for a long time. I put it on hold for a while and worked on other projects until I felt comfortable with where it was headed. I'm thrilled with how it came out.

I took a torch to the wood. My original intention was to just make a sunburst style design, but I decided to go all out and really have at it, causing the wood to check and burn deeply. Interestingly, there was a noticeable difference in tone when tapping on the wood after I burnt it. It sounded much more clear and warm.

The overall tone is amazing. This is undoubtably my favorite sounding guitar yet. I'm going to have a hard time giving it up.

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Here is the info from the website:

Info:

This isn't a relic or a theme guitar. I believe things don't need to be shiny and pretty to be aesthetically pleasing and I wanted this guitar to emphasize the "other side" of beauty. Everything on this guitar is heavily and thoroughly distressed. The wood was burnt with a torch before being finished and even the finish was distressed. All the hardware has been aged and worn, even the frets.

It may look haphazard, but actually takes me significantly longer to make a great guitar look this decrepit than it does to make something shiny.

Sound & Playability:

I wanted the tone of this guitar to match the visual style and I think it sounds as smokey and organic as it looks. The overall tone is woody and buttery warm, yet surprisingly snappy for a semi-hollow guitar. It's very dynamic and capable of many unique tones. The pickups can be split into single coils by pulling the tone knob for even more variety.

Like all of my guitars, I want this instrument to inspire the player. I tried to make every aspect look, feel, and sound as natural as possible

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Photo gallery is HERE.

Webpage is HERE.

Thank you!!

Nice!

SR

Here's a link to a short original tune done with the guitar...

Don't remember which pup I used...probably the bridge pup. Recorded with a Boss BR-600.

http://bcharbour.home.comcast.net/~bcharbour/Music/tBo.mp3

Awesome, glad your happy with it. If you could get a sound clip of it in the future that would be really cool, Im sure im not the only one interested in hearing it in action

It sounds very, very good. The GFS pups are strong, but still have some bite to them. They are hands down my favorite pickup.

Thanks,

Very cool! Green is my favorite color so I really like the burst you chose. How does it sound?

-Tyler

Just wanted to post some pics of my recent build. The body started out as a wine box top. The neck is scratch built out of poplar and red oak. Here are the main specs...

• Carribean burst stain using childs water color set from Wally World
  
• Minwax Polyurethane finish
  
• Solid pine 2X4 center
  
• Telecaster pup and control routes
  
• 25.5" scale, 21 frets and bone nut
  
• Zero radius (flat) red oak fretboard
  
• Poplar neck blank
  
• Non-adjustable 1/4" square steel truss rod
  
• Water based poly satin finish on the neck
  
• Gotoh style sealed tuners
  
• GFS Lil Puncher Modern Vintage dual rail pups (8K neck, 10K bridge)
  
• 500K volumne and tone pots
  
• Les Paul three way switch
  
• Vintage three saddle tele bridge 33 1/3 vinyl LP input jack plate
  

Here are the pics...