Lumberjack

Made a bit more progress on Buddy Build 1.0 Have yet to round over the edges and the heel will get a bit more shaping once the neck is glued on, but other than that the body is nearly done. Do you guys have any tips on how to cut/route/saw the slot for the blade switch? I haven't done one in 10+ years and frankly I don't even remember how I did it back then.

Beautiful work, the matching carve on the back is a treat!

Finished this a few months ago but never got around to submitting it. Pictures, a quick demo, and build thread first, specs and explanation after! Specs: - Quilted maple top and headstock cap, natural quilted maple faux binding - Ribbon mahogany body - Roasted single-piece curly maple set neck with 2x carbon fiber rods - 25.5”-26.25” multiscale with perpendicular fret at 8, 24 stainless steel frets - Ebony fretboard - Locking Sperzel tuners - Hipshot multiscale fixed bridge - Bareknuckle Juggernaut humbuckers

Thanks my friend! This was my initial plan. I don't have a cnc though, and didn't think I could do the kerfing consistently/precisely enough with hand tools to avoid splitting, so I decided to bend it without the kerfing. Yessir! it's African mahogany.

Unclamped everything and roughed in the body today, really happy with the way the bevel joint came out! Nice and crisp. These were taken with the wood wet to show figure/grain, and man is that mahogany red! I pulled the color saturation DOWN on these images and it still looks super red; look how different it looks compared to my bench. Im used to mahogany looking more brown/gray, this is probably the most richly colored bit of mahogany I’ve worked with, glad he’s going to be keeping the back natural.

Thanks fellas, and no @Bizman62 thankfully not - this will have a blue/gray stained top, natural faux binding a la PRS, everything else left natural under a gloss finish with a satin neck. Some planing: Here’s one of the most bizarre tricks I’ve tried: my buddy wanted a flat top with a bevel for the arm, and for the drop top to bend over and cover the entire bevel. I don’t think he realized exactly what he was asking for given the quarter-inch drop top, but I decided not to tell him and tried this technique I saw Padalka using once upon a time. Soaked the wood and slowly bent it over a scrap body, keeping the wood wet for about three hours and slowly turning the screws every so often throughout the process. Let it dry by the wood stove overnight and came back the next day, removing the screws to find it held the curve quite nicely! No splitting or cracking and the top is currently gluing up on the body, which I carved to match the scrap body I bent the top over. Full disclosure, I’m not exactly certain this will work as far as getting a nice clean joint; this is probably the weirdest and most hectic top-gluing I’ve ever done, but I’ll know tomorrow once it’s all dried and the body shape is cut.

Hey gang, I’m getting started on a build for a friend of mine and figured I’d start up another thread. This will be a bit different from my usual stuff: he’s spec’d out a flat top PRS-custom-24-shaped geetar with HSS pickups, 3+3 headstock, and a fixed bridge. More details to follow, but here’s the starting lumber:

The beard is where the shred comes from. Petrucci doesn't have that thing for nothing Ah that makes sense, I was wondering where that Queenish-mid-range was coming from in your demo. Have you ever had a chance to play the EL34 version of the 5150 III? I definitely don't "need" another amp, but the 5150 III's sound so good for modern stuff, and as much as I love the Mesa, it's 30 years old and isn't quite voiced for anything too modern. The 5150 iii is starting to temp me.... can't afford it right now, but....

Is the 5150 III what you used to demo the Black Queen? It sounded awesome! And yeah I've definitely regretted selling some amps/gear over the years. Wish I would have just slowed down and thought things through before letting go of some of those keepers. I know the thumbnail looks spammy in this context, but for anyone curious I tracked a short solo yesterday to see how the guitar would sound in a full mix:

This is just an absolutely stunning build, super happy to see you won GOTM for it! Very well deserved, and full disclosure, you had my vote

Absolutely, that's partly why I got rid of the Axe Fx III; there was soooo much stuff in there I always felt like I was underutilizing it's potential, always wondering if a slight adjustment to the deeper parameters would improve the tone, wondering whether I had blended the IRs "correctly", or was I using the right IRs at all, should I be pre-filtering with an EQ or using a clean boost, and on and on. That's part of the charm of plugging into an amp: turn it on, that's your sound. The end. That's why I'm experimenting with the Captor. I'm really just looking for the easiest and most honest way to get that plug n' play experience recorded, so that I don't have to worry about if my preamps are good enough, if I have the mics placed just right, etc. If I could get a whole set up and sound hooked into a single on-off switch, I would. So far, a live amp with the load box is the closest I've gotten.

Thanks for the kind words! I just started posting "guitar stuff" on there during the covid-19 lockdown as a way to stay sane, thinking I'd stop once life got back to normal. But it's been fun, and well received, so I'll be keeping it up when I can. I enjoy the instructional stuff and writing tabs isn't nearly as torturous as I thought it might be, so there's definitely going to be more of that. I definitely don't have all that gear now! I'm thrilled for everyone that can afford to keep 15k+ in amps and studio gear around, but for now that's not me. I use the Mesa at home and a dinky Pod Go for live gigs cause all my live sounds are super simple. Anyways, all I'm saying is that you don't need a bunch of stuff to record a good sound. You could get a entry level interface, a couple plugins, and whatever headphones you already have and off you go for a couple hundred bucks. I'm still using a stupidly cheap Pre Sonus interface, and I got the Captor for $170 on eBay. I've gotta admit that I've drunk deeply of the Mesa coolaid. I'm notorious amongst my "guitar buddies" for constantly buying and selling used gear. But after so many years of hunting through everything from Marshall to Peavey to Splawn to Orange to Blackstar and on and on, the Mesa Mark series just really does it for me. Absolutely loved the Mark IV I used to have, had a Mark V for a bit, and they were both absolutely stellar. The Axe Fx III honestly did suuuuch a good job with those Mesa models I thought, they were some of my favorites on that unit.

Trust me when I say it doesn't take much encouragement to get me talking about gear This was tracked with a red stripe 1987 Mesa Mark III, recapped and modified at the Mesa factory by Mike Bendinelli with the "III+" mod, which is supposed to get the III sounding more like the IIC+. I used the lead channel with moderate gain, boosted by a Maxon 808, then running into a Torpedo Captor load box which takes the dry signal into my interface, into the DAW, where I used the free York Audio Impulse IR loader to slap an Ownhammer IR on there. It was a Mesa traditional 4x12 cab blended with an Orange 4x12, and reverb/delay were added in the DAW. I've been experimenting with all kinds of recording methods over the last couple years because I don't have the luxury of cranking up a loud amp and micing it properly; this video was actually my first time using the Captor, as I just got it a few days ago. I've tried a bunch of modelers and plugins for at-home recording and have been somewhat disappointed. Neural DSP plugins, Line 6 Helix, and the Fractal Axe Fx III all sounded very good, but never felt or sounded quite as convincing as a real amp to me. So I'm trying out the Captor as of a couple days ago, and am really enjoying it so far; something about playing through a molten hot amp sizzling with 1900's radio technology just feels *awesome*. Like I said I used a 3rd party IR here, but the Two Notes Wall of Sound VST that comes with the Captor seems extremely robust, and just goofing around with it over the last day or two I've already been able to get significantly better sounds than I got here using a 3rd party IR loader. Listening back to this, if I recorded it again I'd back the gain down a bit and try to tame the high end a little more; it sounds a smidge harsh to me. I prefer warmer, darker, chewier sounds for leads; this is close, but a bit too aggressive in the high end for my taste. I like that high end bite for rhythm, but prefer creamy/smooth leads. I'm not a good mixer, but so far playing the live amp, even with a digital IR, is sounding and feeling much more convincing than the modelers/sims/plugins I've tried.

Quick bit of noodlin' to test it out. Cheers!

Finally done! Really enjoying the ultra-matte finish, this is the first time I’ve gone “all in” on matte, as opposed to satin/semigloss. It plays very well and the Bare Knuckles sound great, but I’ll record a little demo soon so you don’t have to take my word for it.

Thanks for noticing! This definitely took quite a bit of experimentation to get right; I think the final mix was a blend of 5 different aniline dyes - a bit of brown, amber, yellow, red, and black.

More progress: neck glued, finish dried.

@Prostheta the dyes I’m using are water-based aniline, so usually they won’t interact with the clear I’m using. I’ve used lacquer to seal the binding in the past, but since I’m using a 2k finish over the whole guitar this time I went with a cheap hardware store acrylic clear since it dries quickly. I shoot 3 or so light coats to seal, and I’m not sure how deep it penetrates exactly, but I find the acrylic clear works just as well as regular lacquer.

Yes I seal it, that’s the only way I’ve ever been able to get clean binding lines on “PRS-style” natural binding; I’ve tried using just tape and it *always* bleeds. I mask off the top and back with pinstripe tape leaving only the binding exposed and then hit it with a couple quick coats of clear (whatever you’re using, lacquer, acrylic, etc) so when I’m dying there’s actually no tape at all, just the clear coat keeping the binding safe. Then, once the dying is done you can easily wipe/scrape off any color that spilled over since the smudges are just floating on top of that thin coat of clear and never actually reached the binding wood. These shots were taken before scraping the binding so hopefully it will be even cleaner in the end.

My absolute favorite step in the build is dying the maple, here’s some shots of the process: First coat of black. Sanded back. Red added. Sanded back. Orange added and sanded back. Yellow added to middle, red added again to sides, both colors blended while wet. This shot was taken after drying out. This is a shot of the headstock when it was still wet, which is close to what it will look like after I add the clear coat finish.

If your big honkin’ volute lasts for 4 or more hours please contact your doctor. I won’t even try to pretend my volutes aren’t inspired by your work, I love your volutes! I decided on inlaying a medal in this one.

Thanks for the input guys! I think I’ll try some of those approaches for my next carves. Got the neck mostly carved, with a big honkin’ volute cause I like big honkin’ volutes.

Major shapes/contours roughed in, next step will likely be carving the neck. All the contours were cut free hand with dragon and shinto style rasps, which is... sort of fun? What do you guys use for your larger carves? I’ve been using rasps for the longest time, but I’ve been thinking of switching to angle grinders with sanding attachments, or maybe some air-powered rotary sanding tools like I’ve seen others use. The sharp angle where the belly carve meets the upper horn was also part of the design for the blue guitar I built a little while ago, but I didn’t have the guts to keep it and I sanded it into a smoother shape because I thought it was a bit too much, sort of BC Rich-esque. I’m still not quite sure about it, but this is obviously a “pointy metal” style guitar so I’ve decided to keep it this time and see how I feel about it once the build is finished.

The inlay was a single piece of wood to start, so those lines are just a single pass with the jeweler’s saw and as little sanding as I could get away with to smooth out the saw marks. The material between them is clear epoxy with a bunch of ebony sanding dust mixed in for color matching purposes, and it was pretty slow-curing so I had plenty of time to smudge it around till the lines looked right.