2.5itim

My god man, that looks amazing!!

I also went ahead and drilled the holes for my pots and test fitted them, I don't really care for how close they are together but because I couldn't make my cavity any longer than it is this is the way it has to be. I'm sure it'll be fine for me!

That is a great idea! To just fill the growth rings black, sand back and then clear. It wouldn't be a blue painted color like I really like from the mayones guitar but still make it pop! I think that's what I will do, thank y'all!! I was able to get some work done today since I was off from work, some of it good and some of it that makes me wanna punch myself in the face. I got my riser back from powdercoating and they got the color match just about perfect but then again It is black so I guess that was pretty easy. I got the bridge mounted, string holes drilled ( the part that makes me wanna punch myself), and strung up the e strings so I could figure out how much higher my nut is gonna need to be, I think the best route to go from here would be to make my own nut because it took 3 pieces of .023 veneer to get the nut high enough to get them off the frets. The riser put my action just about perfect by the way, pretty happy about that! So about the string holes, I'm so pissed off at myself!! I don't have a drill press here at the house (have 3 at work and should have just waited till Monday to drill them)! So I decided I could do this with my hand drill, well I could but not very effectively. When I installed my string ferrules some weren't far enough apart and the lips ended up sitting on top of each other, I took my sanding block and leveled them with the body and I will paint them black before clearing the body. While this is purely an aesthetics thing it really bothers me but oh well to late now, live and learn!!

I guess that I couldn't get so lucky on not having to level the frets, I strung it up last night and I have a dead fret on the 17th. Only reason I could see this happening is the frets not being level, all the other frets sound great, and if I raise my bridge up to where the action is way high the dead fret clears up.

Yeah at the time I was living in a small town here in Oklahoma and playing a lot of shows with my band, so a lot of people knew what I had. I had an idea of who stole it the first time and when I found it at guitar center they confirmed that it was him, last I heard was gc took him to court and he didn't show up so ended up getting a warrant for a felony, I still don't know what he did with the others that I wasn't able to find. The second time I have no idea who it would have been. But luckily I don't live in that town anymore and not many people know exactly what I have!

This is the one that started the madness, ibanez s 2075 prestige that I bought almost 15 years ago, this one actually got stolen from me along with 6 other guitars all pristige ibanezs and American fenders. I walked into guitar center about a month after it got stolen and this one and my fender American 50th anniversary strat were hanging on the wall next to each other. Actually had to take guitar center to court to get them back!! Funny thing is I won and 2 years later it was stolen again and never seen again. Ignore the goofy pic!

I originally planned on starting to build my first guitar about 3 years ago but barely even got started on it before I quit. It was gonna be mahogany/ Purple Heart laminate body and saber shaped. Should have finished it!

Oh yeah I know all about ibanezs sealer!!! I've probably refinished about 5 of them, most of them I just took it down to the sealer and then repainted but one of them was an s series that I took all the way to the wood because I wanted a natural finish. Sanding thru the sealer probably took me a good week. Swore I'd never do that again, but the end was worth it it was a Japanese body, dyed green bubinga top that was tru oiled, s1620 prestige neck that I sanded the finish off of and tru oiled it also! I wish I wouldn't have sold that one.

My god!!! I've never seen a s series with a fixed bridge!! That's heaven on earth right there, might possibly be my dream guitar haha! The tremolo on the s series has always been my one turn off. Crap now I may have to tear one of my sabers dawn and get to work lol. I am interested in all the help you could give me on the extended range tele, I've never owned a extended range or 7 string so this is all gonna be new ground for me!

Wow that was a lot of really great info, thank y'all for that! @a2k thanks for that link, I'm gonna read over that thread today while I have some downtime at work.

Do you happen to have a build thread on the Saber? I am a HUGE ibanez s fan, I've probably owned about 20 of them thru my life and always try to keep 3 or 4 in my stable at 1 time. Thank you guys for all of your insight, it looks like I'm gonna need to clear some room in my spare bedroom lol, I have a really hard time doing something and not going all out on it. I personally have a big problem with things not being up to standard and allowing those to be a learning experience vs getting mad at them and just trashing them all together so I need to strive on having as few screw ups as possible that can't be hidden or fixed without being noticeable. My plan is to finish the one im doing now, build the 2 prs copy's for my buddy and then go back to my first guitars design and build it over and over until I figure out exactly where I want to go with that body style, it's a really cool design and feels awesome it just needs some tweaking here and there, then once I get that one how I like move onto another style. I'm also really gasing for a extended range 7 string tele so I'm gonna have to throw one of those in there somewhere.

What kind of dye did you use here? That color is awesome!

@killemall8 I have been following your In progress builds tho and your work is freaking amazing! You should definitely sell them all and let someone be able to enjoy them. That also brings up another question, how do y'all go about getting your name out there and have people wanting your product? Just word of mouth or Facebook or endorsee's? @verhoevenc I'm thinking that is what I am probably going to do but how do you know when they are "up to snuff"? Lol I am my own worst critic and in that case I would probably never be able to sell any of them even tho everyone else would probably be completely happy with the quality, after quite a few under my belt that is.

And that blue looks very opaque so on the rest of the guitar I would probably lose my natural blue and black streaking. I might better just stick to my original plan and try something like that at a later time on another guitar.

That's what got me thinking about this finish is that area on my guitar, only issue is only half the guitar has grain like that, the treble side of the top is very straight grain with no curves so I'm just not sure how it would look on only half the guitar.

I probably should level the back, I'm thinking about it quite a bit because it will probably just eat at me if I don't do something about it. Thank y'all for your suggestions I'm gonna mull it over and see what I can come up with. im starting to rethink my finish for my body, I was originally planning on just clearing it with a nitro lacquer but I've came across this mayoness body and I'm kinda in love with the finish on it. Do y'all think something like this would be achievable with the spalted hackberry? It looks like it's stained black then sanded down and stained blue. I just don't know how it will mix with the spalted hackberry having the black/blue grain in it already.

I'm just wondering what y'all do with all of your built guitars? Do you have a room just for all your guitars or do you sell them? And if you do sell them what did you do with your first ones until you felt they were up to selling standards? I guess the reason I ask I'm just about done with my first one which I will never get rid of and then I'm doing 2 for my good buddy, but after that I plan on going hard at this and just build build build to try and figure out my groove and what suits me and of coarse to get better but I don't want to have a room with 20 or more guitars just sitting that will never get used, should I sell them off for what I have in them or how would you even go about pricing them? Sorry for the rambling, just some questions I've had running thru my mind for a while.

That is one thing I like about wood working is wood can almost always be added back on but in my day job of cutting steel that isn't the case. One screw up there and you just ruined 10's of thousands of dollars in a split second.

@sirspens I know exactly what you mean! I still have so much left to learn, and it's really hard on me lol. I normally don't have to try very hard to be good at something. Not being conceded or anything but I'm often told that I'm usually really good at things without much effort but wood working really hasn't been that way for me! But just gotta practice and practice and think about how to fix screw ups instead of just saying f it!

I decided to use the extra neck I was making for my tele squire, just figured I'd do a few upgrades to there design imo. Its ambrosia maple neck/ ambrosia maple fretboard, 21 fret, stainless steel medium jumbo frets, it'll be 12" radius fretboard, 1/4" nut instead of the usual 1/8", 12* headstock angle by scarf joint in the headstock. I had s few screw ups that I have fixed so I figured I would show those. My first was when cutting the blank down to where it wasn't so wide I cut to far into the headstock and lost the whole top part of my headstock, I cut a new piece and glued it in then just rerouted it using my template. Second when I was routing the headstock my router slipped and took a chunk out of my neck where the nut would sit, I cut a little piece of maple and then sanded the radius of the router bit into it, glued it up and then chiseled/sanded it to where it was level with the neck.

I'm just using a short 4" long 2x4

What size are the screws? #12? And what size drill bit did you use? Only reason I ask is because I usually use 2 different size drill bits for soft or hard wood. On a pilot hole for #12 on hardwood I use a 5/32" bit but if it's soft wood I use a 9/64". Maybe you used the soft pilot hole drill bit for a hardwood?

@Andyjr1515, I will definitely use yalls way to double check myself before installing the bridge. Today I was able to get the back of the body rounded over, I wasn't originally planning on doing this but I started thinking about it and figured I would like to give it a try. this actually turned out to be quite hard on this guitar, for some reason my top of my body is completely flat and level but the back laminate of the body has a slight bow to it and I just found out about this while using the router table. This doesn't particularly bother me because it isn't noticeable just looking at the guitar but it did make today's tasks pretty hard to do. So I ended up setting my router height, cutting a few inches, resetting my router height and so on and so on. All together after cleaning it up with my rasp and sand paper it turned out great. I finish sanded the body today also, in the close up pic of the top I will post the grain is pretty wavy and you can feel it with your hands. No matter how much I sand it I can't get it flat, any ideas?

I really freaking love your builds! I'm really liking the looks of padouk, you've got me drooling over here!!

Because of this I have not and I don't think I plan to use double sided tape, I think that it would just cause problems for me from moving over under pressure. Because of this I think out my templates and make them extra long or wide whichever is needed to be able to clamp it to my part.