Xanthus

In a good way, a very good way. I've been watching this build take shape, but those last few pictures blew my mind in a whole new way. Be proud, man. Be very proud That's beauty, right there.

it matters to the player.the average audience member knows nothing...but players by nature are way more perceptive. Of course it matters I'm a player, haha. RE biliousfrog: Good point on buying a surplus of wood. I wish I'd done it for my build, hahahaha However, even with all my mess ups, the final cost of my build was still around the $800 mark. I think what will cost more, especially with the Razorback, is the build time, rather than the price. RE Conflagration: You might want to check out buying a prebuilt neck, neckthrough in my opinion. With all the parts, equipment, and build time that goes into it, it might be worth springing the extra few bucks and saving yourself a lot of hassle.

Oh sweet Jesus............

We're talking Alexi and Dimebag, here; Bodom and Pantera. With the distortion and volume they play at, the more you turn it up to 11, the less the wood matters. I'm not saying that it's not a factor, especially if you're playing varied styles of music, like flamenco or Bach fugues. Those'd be awesome on a Razorback, but I digress. The amount of wood will play a factor in sound, even more so with how it FEELS when you heft it over your shoulder. I agree with MCH here. Use the wood you like and the body shape you like, but don't forget build difficulty, either. It's your future guitar, make it to your specs only. After all, only you need to be satisfied with the build. I personally would go with a mahogany/maple neckthrough Alexi-style myself, I don't see the appeal in those giant Dean body shapes, but that's just me. Build what makes you happy 10 years down the road, you should still want to be playing the guitar you built.

Wow, I'm surprised to see this thread surface again. Thanks for the kind words, Maxim! I really appreciate it, after what a total B**** this project was. I'm giving my ears a rest; I've been playing the thing for a good 4 hours straight now. Anyways, yeah, the project is done! It's been done since late February, and I haven't gotten around to taking any pictures of it, intonating the bridge, or adjusting the action. I've just been jamming on it as-is. Turns out my dimensions for the bridge route were too small, i.e. they didn't account for paint thickness. So the thumbscrews that hold the bridge up don't fit. What I'll need to do is take those thumbscrews and affix them in some way to a jig that will fit on the lathe, and trim the thickness down enough to fit in the channel. Granted without the knurling they won't be able to twist that easily, but the metal itself seems soft enough to turn on the lathe without much of a problem. Man, EMG pickups + PodXT + Sennheiser headphones = win I'll scrounge up a friend's camera and take some more pics to throw up on my poor neglected Fotki, soon. Funny you mention your Alexi, heh. My next build, starting this summer, is going to be a RR-style flying V, hardtail TOM, with the same Ibanez-ripoff headstock that I put on the explorer aaand.... "Improved Upper Fret Access." You know what that means But sadly, I've thought about carving out a fret access thingie like that for a while, before I even stumbled upon Bodom. Coulda been rich at 15, hahahaha, trademarking something like that For the V I'm going to try and do a neck through with a neck angle. Yep, making my own neck, so why make it easy on myself?

But isn't there a "better" position harmonically? I remember for a neck it's at the 24th fret...but I can't remember for the brige p'up. Rubbish! I'm a firm believer that there is no "proper" pickup placement. So long as your scale length and bridge placement are correct, throw in as many pickups as you can fit! Acousticraft is spot-on, though, the closer to the bridge, the more treble-y the guitar will sound, the closer to the fretboard the warmer and bassier. It's whatever sounds good to you, hell you can make a guitar with one pickup smack dab in the middle, if you wanted to. For spacing with humbuckers, though, I like the neck pickup right up against the fretboard, an the bridge pickup one-humbucker-height away. Theoretically, draw out the plan like you want to fit in 3 hums (with their rings, of course) side by side by side, and just don't route for the middle one. On my 24-fretter, it turns out to be like 3/4" or something like that. Alternative way to find pickup placement. Pick up guitar with bridge pickup sound you enjoy. Measure distance from pickup to bridge. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

dude i wish i had seen that before i started i spent hours on razorback research Seconded, hahaha Oh well, live and learn... and learn... and learn. I did the bevels on my Explorer by hand. They didn't come out fantastic, but now that I know the method I'll be able to do them much better next time. http://public.fotki.com/xanthus/ Check out the pics. For the convex curves I used the flat side of a file, wrapped in some coarse sandpaper. Because my file/rasp/thing really sucked. You'll be able to get a decent amount of work done with one sheet, because the surface area is quite tiny. I used the rounded side of the rasp for the concave curves. I'm trying to envision in my head how a jig/template would work for getting graduated bevels. I imagine that it would have to either follow a different outline than the body outline, or increase/decrease in thickness to compensate for the intended bevel shape. Damn, I don't know nearly enough geometry-type things to work it out in my head Whatever path you take, good luck!

Awesome video, Matt! I'd love to see one of how Perry did the crazy red crackle swirl on his guitar, just because it blows my mind every single time and I can't for the life of me figure out how he did it. I also don't know anything at all about paint

I've basically got the same feeling towards relic'd guitars as I do towards jeans that come made with rips and patches in them, for the same reason as above: they haven't earned it. If a guitar has been with you long enough to get relic'd on its own, then it's part of you. Every ding, scrape, rash on the guitar has a story behind it. Not so with a new guitar that you took a sandblaster and a cheese grater to. Same thing with ripped up old pants. Each tear and patch has a story to tell. It means much more to the person wearing it than someone who went down to Hollister and grabbed a pair off the rack.

Greg, have you thought about cannibalizing a Steinberger and stealing the bridge/nut assembly for your headless? Or would that run into the same problems too, having to get special strings.

And that's the selling point for me, right there. This is just an awesome thread, and it's cool to see end users talking directly to people actually involved in the product more than just the marketing aspect. Doesn't happen nearly enough, in my opinion. Not a hardcore trem user myself, I don't think I'll be contributing much to this thread, though having played many a Floyd setup, I can only support the group's collective effort to "kill off" that beast. Man, do I hate that setup... Ere I build a guitar with a trem (proposed build #3), I'm going Kahler definitely. Greg, when you mentioned building a surrogate neck, the first thing I thought of was just taking a neckthrough blank and slapping a bridge and tuners on it. It could definitely be done. Just a thought RE: heavier gauge strings and clips, if the 7 and 8-string tremolos are built to accommodate heavier-gauge strings, couldn't one buy the required replacement part from the 7-string series and swap them? You'd have one piece left over, yeah, but if people are running into the same problems as Wes is, it would probably be worth it.

Yeah, I'm planning on making a V which is a lot closer to a super strat than an LP is, heh. I'm a big fan of hair metal, 80's rock, shredders, and the like, and I figured a basswood body and Evo's (Vai, anyone?) would be a great combination. The V shape is just an awesome added bonus

Definitely! I think the Triforce/Zelda theme is the way to go!

I saw the purple and the triangle bridge thingie, and Zelda jumped to mind. Maybe a royal blue/purple/gold theme could work, and the Triforce is a simple enough design to be cool and unobtrusive at the same time.

Pretty self-explanatory, methinks Thought this would be the best forum to place the question in. I basically just wanted to hear people's opinions on basswood, since I'm thinking of using it on my next build. I know a lot of people here HATE the wood, so excuse me if I'm opening a can of worms here. Go, post, vote... stuff! ::EDIT:: Warmoth makes basswood sound pretty good, and coupled with my proposed Evo pickups, pretty spot on with the tone I'm looking for: "Sound-wise, Basswood has a nice, growley, warm tone with good mids. A favorite tone wood for shredders in the 80s since its defined sound cuts through a mix well." But then again, I'm an English major. English majors and Army recruitment officers can sell you ANYTHING

Well, one can't rightly gig while sitting down I ain't doubting ya, Wes, I know you know your stuff. Since all the strap buttons need are screw holes anyways, I can try out your method and see what works best for me.

Hmm, if the rear strap button should be as close to the center of the V as possible, why has it always been placed so far away?

I like the idea, and I definitely think you should follow through with it. I'd take a King V outline and start choppin' it from there, just to make sure the dimensions are right and that the guitar doesn't end up absurdly oversized. Seeing as you mention your other builds, you probably knew that already I love the blue flame maple idea, and it would look awesome with the black pinstripes over it. I like how the bass point on the headstock is longer than the treble, just so long as the string pull is ok I'm not so sure about the omega hole in the fretboard, though, I imagine it'd be a b**** to fret, hahaha. Angled, even finned, would work nicely, methinks.

Hmm, as it turns out (research as an afterthought tends not to work as well ) the Sperzels that I ordered weigh 7.09 oz, which is on the light side for locking tuners. the only tuners I found that were lighter were the Gotoh oval knobs, non-locking. I mean, locking tuners aren't necessary on a hardtail, but having to tune up once every 6 songs as opposed to once ever 2 or 3 is kinda nice, heh. I'm thinking, since I'm going to build the neck this summer, will the V balance better if the maple core is larger? I'm going to cut it out of 2-piece maple flatsawn and flipped to be quartered. I'll cut it so that I won't have to glue headstock wings, which will make it about 3" wide. I'll use the maple scraps for various assorted other projects. So having a 3" maple core and attaching the basswood wings will make the body heavier, even if only by a little. Also, with regards to my own question about strap button placement on a V, I did some searching and found that Alexi's signature model has moved the strap button to the top edge of the back. I would direct the curious here and here for comparison. My guess is because of the different body shape and the fact that his model has a type of lower horn hand cutaway. In either case, though, it would probably help most to get the strap button as forward and as upward as possible to help with the balance, no? Man, at this point, I wish I knew ANYTHING about physics, hahaha ::EDIT:: Gotcha, Wez, you posted as I was whittling away at my own post. In that case, would a lower-placed button on the heel be better?

Thanks for the answers, guys Silly me figured that a mahogany explorer-sized body would be heavy enough, hahaha The real reason I asked is because I'm planning a V build and am trying to figure out how to make it balance well. I'm foreseeing the same type of problems as with the Explorer build, due to the similar shape, maybe more because of the lack of body mass and my desire to use a maple through neck and a basswood body :-P Wez, would you think that moving the strap button to the side of the guitar rather than the back of the body would help the balancing, even though the V has no real place to put the button? Not saying I'd do this, I'm envisioning it looking pretty ugly, but just as a hypothetical. My other problem with the explorer might have been the Sperzels. I take it these are comparatively heavy compared to other tuners. Are there any good quality lightweight locking tuners on the market? I don't think I've seen any.

Thanks for the help, Wez.

I was just wondering what strategies people used when balancing guitars without horns, or at least an upper horn. There really aren't any major problems with my Explorer, just that it tends to want to nosedive when I'm standing up playing (I admit I'm a lazy dude and do most of my playing at the computer, sitting down). I've heard about the "12th fret rule" with upper horns and straps and the like, but I didn't know if builders had any strategies for guitar shapes sans upper horn. It's nothing I can change with the build now, I'm assuming, such as denser body woods and stuff, and I'm too broke to upgrade hardware at this point... so just curious for future reference, I suppose

Looks pretty sharp, thus far Keep it up! With the gold hardware, might I suggest a dark type of red? Dakota Red comes to mind, maybe a little darker. And since you mention your first build, I take it you had no problems with the pine core? Some people would get a stern talking-to mentioning softwoods on this forum hahaha. How does the pine sound, being both a softwood and a semihollow? I'm curious.

Good luck with it, Mattia. It must suck to get the feeling that you might have to build something that you might have done differently, perhaps radically so. I guess that's one of the downsides of building for someone else. I've already had people come up to me and say hey, you should build a guitar for a friend of mine. It's such a fun hobby, but I'm NOWHERE near competent enough to try to build for someone else; i don't think I ever will be. Ah, well, it's fun at least. You mentioned the tailpiece, and an idea struck me. I think, if looking to personalize a guitar, why not see if you can take the tailpiece to get laser etched with his name in a scroll-type font. I think it'd look pretty classy and not as obtrusive as the inlays.

I agree here, I'd put the name in only one place, and in my opinion initials would be better anyways. Since the LP is such a simple design, I think that any inlay work should compliment the original design, not tear the eye away from the whole and onto one detail. In short, I think that covering the fretboard in Kanji or whatnot is too "busy." I might go with his initials or name on the headstock, or, if you still want to keep with the East Asian feel, a Chinese character in the middle.