Hydrogeoman

Just beautiful! Being a huge Carl Thompson / Les Claypool fan, I appreciate the "tribute" aspect of your design, but you throw in just enough of your own enhancements/ideas to make the basses truly "yours." Great work!

Erebus Escobar - built for Pyedawg keeper of the beat, Pablo C Body - black walnut, beechwood, padauk Neck - curly maple, padauk. Fretboard -birds eye maple Pickup - GFS MM Pro Plus Bridge - Hipshot KickAss Tuners - Gotoh Cheers - Hydrogeoman

Erebus #7 Hello All, I build mostly for fun and for friends in my home shop. This one is my 7th effort, based on the 1957 Les Paul Jr. I did document this build and will be starting up a thread with all the gory details in the near future. Sorry for the less than professional pics. These were taken literally at the moment of birth on my work bench Cheers! Specs: - Korina neck and one-piece body - Birdseye maple fret board - 2-way truss rod - Gabon ebony headstock veneer, neck heel, and a "screwless" control cavity cover - Bone nut - Kent Armstrong "hot" P-90 pickup. Set up with a coil tap to have outputs of 10K ohms and 14K ohms - Vitamin Q 0.022 microfarad tone capacitor - CTC volume 500k potentiometer and an Alpha 500k push/pull tone pot for the coil tap selection - copper foil shielded control cavity - Tone Pros locking wrap tail bridge - Wilkinson "Waverly" style open-geared tuning machines - 5-ply "snakeskin" pickguard and truss rod cover - nitro lacquer finish

Thanks for the feedback. I forgot about the shellac being a great base for just about any finish. Plus, I love what it does to bring out the beauty of most wood species. - Cheers

Hello All, Been a long time since I last posted here. I am looking for opinions / advice about finishing a tele top (curly maple drop top) with gloss nitro lacquer but finishing the back and sides (padauk) with a wiping varnish. I recently tried an oil based urethane wiping varnish (General Finishes Arm-R-Seal) for the first time on a bass made of walnut, padauk, and maple and was really happy with the outcome. I did not grain fill and the padauk just looks amazing (to me anyway) finished this way. Here is a head shot of the bass with four coats of the wiping varnish: I want to keep that same open grain look of the padauk on this current tele build, but would like to have the curly maple top like glass, thus going with the nitro spray. Here is the subject tele body with an aged white mother of toilet seat binding. I guess a few questions I have are: 1) Would having the two types of finish (lacquer and varnish) insult your senses? 2) Do you foresee any problems where the two finishes meet each other at the edge of the binding? 3) Have any of you tried something similar? I know some like to Tru-Oil necks and lacquer the bodies, but I have never seen a body with both types of finishes used. Thanks for your thoughts / wisdom

If you're gonna ask, I'll give up my thoughts. But you give up the right to be mad about them.... Yeah! that's what I am talking about! I am here to learn, and anybody who thinks and cares about this stuff enough to post over 4K times has my ear. Avenger, your comments are spot on. Thanks for the thoughtful review!

Very nice work! After you rough cut the body with your band saw, what method did you use to do the final shaping, e.g., template and pattern router bit, drum sander, etc?

Bosch jigsaw - 1590 EVS (corded) outstanding Makita drill - LxT (18v lithium-ion cordless) outstanding Ryobi router - RL180 2-hp plunge router. Gets the job done for the price, but I will probably go with a higher end brand next time.

My congrats to anybody on this site who is willing to put their work out to a community with so much talent. Whether you are a professional builder or hobbiest, this endeavor is fraught with the "workmanship of risk" vs. the "workmanship of certainty" (Pye,1995). Thanks to those providing feedback (come on Avenger, your critiques don't ruffle that many feathers - do they?!). Wez and Swede, your points are well taken. This was my very 1st build, done some years ago, and was as complex a build (laminations, body carving, etc.) as my skills allowed at that time. I will, however, be taking that advice and incorporating it in the next bass build. This month I was torn between Swede's and Scatter Lee's. For me though, the simplicity of Scatter Lee's build got the upper hand. I have a soft spot for Jr's/Specials and it would be the guitar I would reach for more often. Cheers - Greg

Erebus AJ Bass Carl Thompson inspired scroll Rosewood top with rosewood headstock veneer Mahogany back Maple neck with ebony fretboard Lane Poor soap bar pickup Leo Quan Bad Ass bridge Carvin tuners Cheers - Hydrogeoman a few more pics: Front Front 2 Back

This is "The Pete." Built for a dear friend and inspired by the Giffin/Schecter telecasters Pete Townshend used to play back in the 80s. Pure rock and roll. The Specs: Alder body Curly maple neck with purpleheart center/accents and birdseye maple fretboard Hand wound Kent Armstrong Z-Plus humbuckers. These are exact copies of the pups Kent used to wind for Pete. Mr. Armstrong was kind enough to wind this set for me. Sperzel tuners Mighty Mite hardtail Graphtec nut Nitrocellulose finish Cheers, Greg and a few more clickies....... Top Back of neck Fretboard Back Roll the dice Another angle of the top/neck join Another angle of the back One more look at the neck

Just thought I would throw this out here for any of you folks who are interested in the Stewmac luthier vise, actually known as a pattern makers vise. SM sells these for $136 US - you can get almost the identical vise here at a shooters supply house for 1/3 the price. Great deal. Merry Christmas - GPP $42.44 pattern makers vise on closeout

Thanks for all the good input guys. I think for this effort, I will probably go with what I know best - nitro. I will definately be shooting a nice thick base "just in case." Scrap pieces will be getting a good workout before any finish hits the real deal. Now if I only had a booth with heat! Maybe play with some waterbased dyes until temps warm up around here. Cheers GPP

Thanks again for the info. My CAT gun worked great for a while but got "leaky" in a short period of time. I bought a rebuild kit for it and it fixed one of the leaks for only about 4 spraying sessions. But the biggest problem is the gun drips from the nozzle tip. Only a new needle will fix that. The needle had become deformed just from the pressure of the spring pushing it into the nozzle when the gun is "at rest.". The needles on these things must be very soft as it has done this to all 3 needles that came with the gun. Needless to say I was pissed and expected more from $150 gun. My $10 Harbor Freight gun has held up better than the CAT. The HF gun does not produce as good of spray pattern as the CAT but at least I can spray bodies horizontal and not have to worry about paint dripping on to the guitar. Sorry for the off topic rant - I will check out the Iwata. I want to stay with a mini HVLP rather than a "big boy" gun for the very reason you stated.

syxxstring - thanks for the brief tutorial. That is very helpful! I have never sprayed anything but nitro, but I am intrigued by the idea of trying the HOK poly. I have a CAT mini HVLP gun with 3 different tip sizes (not very happy with it BTW - kicking myself for not going with a SATA or other high end gun, but that is another story) so that would probably suffice for applying the finish. In terms of final finishing effort, i.e., wet sanding and buffing, how does the HOK poly compare to nitro? Can you suggest any good suppliers of the HOK finishes to check out? Thanks again.