ShatnersBassoon

Yes lots of things going on in that piece of wood! Going to really pop when I put the epoxy on it! The inlay is old leaf with epoxy poured over it.

So lots of things have changed since my last post on this thread! After a series of mishaps I was left rather deflated and so I made different plans for this neck...quite an ambituous (or risky depending on ones point of view). Basically I have a load of carbon fibre panels in the house that I got for free (from a friend of my fathers). For quite some time I have played around with the idea of laminating it all together with some epoxy and making a solid carbon fibre neck (as apposed to the normal way of doing it which is wrapping it round a wooden core). Ofcourse, this means no truss rod! I figured hey, if its possible to make a glass neck like I have seen someone do, then this should be doable. So I went ahead, when it was all glued together I ran some sandpaper on a straight edge across it and it looked like what you see here. I loved the wave affect! Slapped on a Stripey Ebony board, inlayed some gold leaf in there and covered it with epoxy. Installed some Evo Gold fretwire. The frets aren’t angled by the way, it’s just how the photo came out. Shaped the back of the neck with an angle grinder. I didnt have quite enough (width wise) to cover the headstock wings, so I used some scrap wood I had laying around (no idea what it is!) Got to work on the body, single piece of English Sycamore with the Poplar Burl top.

This entry was simply off the scale brilliant, especially that inlay! Congratulations!

Spectacular guitar, outstanding work. Bravo

I love all of them, but the blue one is a wondrous looking creation

What can I say? Stunning work! True mastery on display Scott! Congrats

That is indeed the plan

Decided on a ‘double binding’ of aluminium and walnut. So far so good. I got the metal from a friends old caravan Hard to make out the fact it’s metal from the photo, but when it’s all radiused and polished up it should look pretty nice

Not a bad weight either, 4.5 lbs before any routing. Pretty good considering it’s 37 mm thick.

So spent ages yesterday on the guitar refining minutiae such we getting the area where the nut goes nice and snug, nothing worthy of photos. I have however decided on a nice fret inlay, which I will be doing with the same aluminium as what’s on the headstock cap. It’s a Phoenix...that mythological bird. I think it looks damn cool

Awesome bass in the current GOTM comp I’m toying with the idea of putting an aluminium inlay on the fretboard to match with the headstock cap theme. Do you think there would be any drawbacks? I’m thinking of when it comes to me putting the 12 inch radius in it, would the metal get in the way too much and inhibit the sanding? Also I’ve heard it might scratch too easily?

So a friend of mine, noticing a couple of my builds has decided to buy a bespoke guitar off me . He doesn’t have hugely exacting requirements, he told me he likes the feel of both his Epiphone Les Paul and his Vantage Strat, and that he loves the look of the PRS guitars. I therefore figured why not combine elements of all of these guitars, Fender scale length of 25.5, Gibson/Epiphone fretboard radius of 12 and PRS shape....so that’s exactly what I am doing. Got some nice woods for this build, Limba neck, English Sycamore body, Stripey Ebony fretboard and Poplar Burl top. At the moment the combined woods don’t quite add up to the right body thickness so I’m either going to shave off a bit of the neck at the heel end or I’m going to get a bit of contrasting ‘sandwich’ wood. I got some Ziricote for the headstock cap and inlayed my logo in there with some 2mm aluminium...took ages Probably finishing the Poplar Burl in Z Poxy and oiling the rest of it. Put a bit of mineral spirits on there and it really pops! So looking forward to this.

Congratulations Andy! A gorgeous guitar for sure! I really must get some Yew some time

What a gorgeous selection of woods! Will be watching this one for sure

Great stuff everyone, and good luck!

As you can enter again with the same guitar, I may as well So I’ve been building a headless recently and now it is complete. It’s neck through design...was so close to a one piece in terms of the thickness of the Wenge blank! Oh well. This gradually evolved in to a Strandberg inspired build. One unusual is the scale length of 23.4 and the deliberate lack of a fretboard radius. Combined with the jumbo frets and skinny neck (almost Ibanez Wizard profile) its ended up quite an interesting guitar. First time using Glu boost as a finish, I like it! Although the poplar burl top was very ‘thirsty’ for want of a better word. ‘Dark Ember’ Frets- 21 Radius- Flat Pickups- EMG 57/66 Frets- Jumbo stainless steel Body- Wenge Top- Poplar burl Weight - 5.2 lbs Pickguard- Carbon fibre Finish- Glue boost Build thread-

Congratulations Mike! You always enter something beautiful and this one was no exception. Definitely well deserved

So I’ve been building a headless recently and now it is complete. It’s neck through design...was so close to a one piece in terms of the thickness of the Wenge blank! Oh well. This gradually evolved in to a Strandberg inspired build. One unusual is the scale length of 23.4 and the deliberate lack of a fretboard radius. Combined with the jumbo frets and skinny neck (almost Ibanez Wizard profile) its ended up quite an interesting guitar. First time using Glu boost as a finish, I like it! Although the poplar burl top was very ‘thirsty’ for want of a better word. I don't know why, but some of the images need to be clicked on in order to get the best quality, so worth bearing in mind Build thread - Dark Ember Frets- 21 Radius- Flat Pickups- EMG 57/66 Frets- Jumbo stainless steel Body- Wenge Top- Poplar burl Weight - 5.2 lbs Pickguard- Carbon fibre Finish- Glue boost

All strung up with the glu boost on. Just making a panel for the back now...ofcourse me routing for a trem left an annoying hole...I changed the bridge plate for a spare piece of Ziricote, looked classier to me and gave me chance to add a little logo. Hope everyone is well!

I think you are downplaying this build a bit by calling it a kit build, you made all the parts after all. Looks fabulous and kudos for revisiting such a neglected design.

Thanks everyone! Ended up redoing it a bit

So far so good! I tried staining it black and it reacted with the wood and turned it purple...so sanded it back and experimented with different colours. Black to highlight the grain, then some yellow and some brown. I’m liking this effect. Turned out that the bridge was too wide for the neck, so to cut a long story short I modified it and it is now a hardtail. The plus side of this is that it saved quite a bit of weight, that brass block was heavy! Some modifying of the scratch plate is now needed, so that it folllows the curves better.

Yes I was scratching my head trying to figure the thing out. I did get a Chinese bridge recently on Ebay which seems to be OK, although it was too wide for my neck so had to do some modifying. To be honest my experience is that most of the bridges I have found have been Chinese... It seems that the ones that aren't are prohibitively expensive, the Hipshots being an example. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of options out there.

So I come across this handsome looking thing, what's the deal with the tuners though? I'm guessing you buy them separately and attach them on there? Or do you use an Allen key or something crazy like that? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000516277252.html

Yes, it's hard enough getting a piece that's large enough for a Telecaster. That's one of the things I like about Headless designs, generally a lot smaller.