Canuck Brian

Hey guys! Thanks for the kind words. There's some nicks and dings in it all over the place from being moved between school, home, buses, cars, home shop and everything else though. I'm really happy how it turned out and I'm hoping that the next one isn't the recipient of said numerous dings and scratches.

I feel kinda dumb not posting stats on this thing though!

Scale - 25.5 (same as my Ibanezes)

Body - 1 solid piece mahogany 1 1/2 inches thick

Neck - solid purpleheart with carbon reinforcement rods

Pickup - EMG 45

Headstock cap - birdseye maple - i'll get a pic because it looks amazing

Fretboard - birdseye maple

Inlays - Paua Abalone pre cut dots

Nut - It's actually a Tusq acousitic bridge saddle...i couldn't find a nut big enough

Tuners - Grover mini locking tuners - i ditched the spezels because they were too heavy. The Grovers are really lightweight and totally rock solid.

Truss Cover - Spalted maple (soaked in CA)

I've also put recessed Dunlop straplocks on the guitar as well.

I've also got to say one of the best tools i've ever purchased for doing this was the Stew Mac String Spacing rule. It's SOO easy to use.

I really dig it! Nice work!

Well guys, here she is. I couldn't wait to put the strings on her. I need to crown the frets and that's it, but i'm still waiting for my crowning tools from stewmac. I hope you guys like it!!

Drool......

However from the cavity shot the inner recessed ring is not alighned with the outline. But who cares right, no one will see.

I unfortunately had the template slip. If you look in the upper left corner of that cavity, there's about a 2mm gouge where the router went a wee bit too far. A learning experience I guess.....

While I am happy on where the guitar has gone, there's a lot of things that I would definitely do differently.

Yet again more progress and definitely more pics. Here's a shot of the back and you can check out the rest of the pics in the links below the picture.

Front Shot

Side / Front Shot

Pickup Route

Control Cavity

Inlay / Fretboard

The 9 volt will be mounted on the side of the control cavity. I have to continue sanding in a lot of places and clean up some uglyness, but all in all, I'm pretty happy with it. The wood shown isn't wet down at all and it's currently sanded to 180 grit.

I'm a big fan of the Parallel Axis Distortion Trembucker. It keeps everything so clean when you've got crazy gain happening.

RIP BP....

Straight up OAK=CRAP ..... It splits and is open grained, Id take the poplar over it any day.

the neck angle for the tune-a-matics is 1.5 to 3 degrees. Warmoth uses 1.5. i asked them. simply slant your neck pocket jig up at the back with some shims. you'll have to do a bit of match to figure out the right height to get the 1.5 degree angle.

Can't you recess the TOM? I've seen the Godin LGX's and other LG series guitars have a recessed TOM and there is no neck angle....

The lighting everywhere in the house was causing a brutal glare and the can had the only good lighting available...

The extra low string is going to be a Low F#. I have to dremel out the hole in the tuner to accept the thicker gauge string.

I basically ripped off the Myung bass inlay. I saw the Yamaha Myung model at the local store down here and thought it was really cool looking. I wanted something neat on the fretboard and I wasn't too confident about doing inlays as this was my first, so I did the dot pattern. Ive got another guitar in the works now as well and I'm going to be doing something a little more complex.

I have a Reb Beach RB-100 (i think) that has the solid oil finish mahogany body with gold hardware. I dig the way it looks so I thought i'd go for the gold hardware on this.

finally some progress on this thing! I've redone the neck pocket, done the inlays and radiused the fretboard. I mounted the bridge at the proper intonation spot and drilled the holes for the strings. Next weekend i'm hoping to get the pickup routed out and the control cavity finished

The gold neck ferrules look pretty swag too....couldn't get a photo of that though, had to jet back downtown.

I've got the guitar tilted in the photo to avoid glare, so the neck looks gargantuan...

absolutely amazing....

I can't listen to more than a couple of Soulfly songs.... Max just sounds like he's trying to be nu-metal.

Out of all the things Max has ever done vocals on, Arise is my favorite. I love Sepultura...

Brian, did you ever finish this up?  I have a couple questions.  First, how do you like the bridge?  Does is intonate correctly at your scale length?  Would you recommend it?  And how does this bad boy sound with that EMG in it?  Thanks.

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I haven't finished this guy yet. It was annoying because I was about to attend class again (complete with a big big wood shop) and they cancelled the course indefinitely because it wasn't "financially viable" to have a course where students buy their supplies from places other than the school.

That in mind, my dad and I went pretty nuts buying tools. I currently have a 16 inch bandsaw, 6 inch Delta joiner, a nice tablesaw, spindle sander, a large drill press and I have to pick up the planer this weekend. My dad snagged me a nice Makita router complete with 10 brand new carbide tipped bits which were the exact ones I needed. We did all of this in the past month. The bad part about all of this is that the shop is located far enough away from me that I can only do this on the weekends.

I'm hoping to get the guitar done before the end of February.

As for the bridge, I had a 7 string fixed bridge Ibanez that I swapped the bridge on. I put one of the hipshot bridges on there and I didn't really notice a sound difference. It was easy as pie to intonate though. I'm not sure how the low F# is going to be on the 8 string, but I'm chomping at the bit waiting to find out.

Can't wait to see this done Matt! That cap looks phenomenal.

Hey everyone,

I've recently been able to pick up Zebrawood at a pretty decent price but what I can't locate is a single picture of anything but natural zebrawood. Is there a reason I haven't seen any stained or dyed zebrawood? Is zebrawood a true pain in the butt like ash to stain? I was considering doing a guitar with zebrawood with a deep green stain, but I don't want to pick up the wood if i can't use it the way that I want.

I already searched around the site and found nada.

I would definitely say yes, it is worth it. I'm a complete noob at making guitars but the feedback that the really experieced guys like Perry, Maiden and other give is invaluable.

I was reaaaaally intimidated by building a neck, but i couldn't really get anyone locally to build me an 8 string neck.

Once my teacher actually laid out what I needed to do and showed me on a piece of scrap wood, i wasn't initimidated anymore. I actually can't wait to start the next one!

My only thing when people don't build their own is that I get kinda let down. Most of the people build these amazing guitars here and I would love to see them bulid their own necks only because I think they would make great necks! No snobbery here, just high hopes!

I think Matt's looks better. The Moser headstock looks anorexic.

I highly doubt Matt copied this design. Of course, Tom Anderson obviously copied the Fender headstock. From what I can see, so did ESP with their old Fendery headstocks. What can you really do with a headstock? Correlations for almost every design can be traced to somewhere else.

The headstock on the guitar I have in progress is heavily influenced by the Yamaha TRB headstocks, but I altered it to my tastes.

I also checked out Neal Moser's website. He seems to be slightly influenced by BC Rich. It says that he created the design for the Beast body, but he even uses BC Rich's almost signature inlay design on 4 of the guitars he's built as well as using or combining a lot of BC Rich's signature shapes.

I did the weird thing at the back because I play with guitars between my legs like a classical player would. My Ibanez always slides out of position. I played a Reb Beach model and a Steinberger GS model for a bit and the little cut out of the back really stabalized the guitar for me. I guess it's more of a functionality thing....

and the neck joint w/ volute..

Okie dokie, here's a series of 2 pics...

the first is a mock up of the guitar with teh bridge and pickup...

Hey guys,

I was really keen on doing a neckthru for my next geetur, but i wanted to take a crack at doing a nice figured top as well. I searched on the site for a link, but I couldn't find anything. I was hoping to have the bookmatch meet in the middle instead of on the wings, but i'm not sure how to properly fit the top to the guitar....

Ditto.  About a year ago, there were 3 or 4 threads on 8-stringers.  But Jeremey is the only one so far to make good on it.

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It's been a while since I had a working digital camera or the proper tools to work on this project....

I've got the fretboard mounted and slotted (nice birdseye maple), the back of the neck roughly contoured, a bookmatched birdseye headstock cap, the taper, holes drilled for the tuners.... I'll try to get a pic tonight of it.

I've recently been unable to access any tools such as a drill press, drum sander etc... as i'm not in school until January. Big downer because i'm dying to finish this bad boy. I'll make good on this sucker, just you wait!

I had to vote for Phil's bass. It just jumped out at me.

Looks awesome Matt!!

I love the grain on the fretboard.