Prostheta

Game on!

Agreed. Those Babicz bridges are definitely obnoxious. Nothing about them screams pleasant.

Difficult to say whether it would be possible or not to be honest. Gibson have lost a LOT of IP on their designs, which I presume includes the Explorer in some respects. Here in Finland it is perfectly legal to describe one's guitar as "a Les Paul" even if it isn't a Gibson, by virtue of the trademark holding zero water. I am glossing over the details, but hey. FMIC are notoriously litigious and protective over IP and have maintained that far better than Gibson. I'd imagine that it would be an uphill struggle trying to get ESP to make one if there's any sort of potential grey area legally. Also, I can't afford it. I am about 98% short of the money it would take to make that happen

Ramble away. One guitar is rarely enough when you can leverage what any individual guitar can do. Even Slash plays Teles from time to time!

No worries, all conversation is good conversation. In between we may or may not build guitars also Profiles are the beginning really. Look at the sum of parts that your hand holds when playing, include stance and even the style of music and you've got a series of factors that make a "one size fits all" look increasingly-difficult to attain. Thin-flat is a very narrow subsection of applicability, as is a U or even a D shape. I've never tried a V or hard profile. String spacing and radius make a difference. My Frankenstrat (still in relicing!) plays fasters than my Ibanez, oddly. I can tap faster and more fluidly, but the wider neck, how the strings fit under my fingers and how that translates to hand stance puts it into a very different place for me. I like it, and I love that it represents a useful variation in my instruments. It's neither the same nor so different that it is unusable. Even the difference in apparent tension is a factor that changes feel and how I respond to the neck. My Explorers are heavy and slow due to the grippier profile and radius that fills out the hand, changing the comfortable angle I can hold down a chord or reach around notes. This will always be different from player to player, and to be honest I don't know whether I could recommend this or that to another person. I still agree that ESP produce many necks that have consistent and broad appeal to players. Thin necks like my Ibanez are an acquired taste, or one that perhaps takes you down a weird dark road that leaves you blinking in the light when you come across a different profile that makes you play outside of your comfort zone!

In a quiet moment where I felt like I needed distraction from daily noise, I put together a final render of the pearl white model:

Man, you know what the worst thing is? It's the fact that I wouldn't ever be able to get ESP to make me a repro of that original Mirage for love nor money thanks to the Jackson type headstock. I'm sure they'd reproduce the warts-and-all details like the square heel, non-recessed tremolo and zero neck angle. Even the bolt-through locking nut. You're right though; the neck profile would be just right. They do nail those religiously.

I don't use anybody else's profiles as a rule, or at least I don't since I don't have a repeatable way of dialling them in simply. This is entirely why I wanted to put together a neck profile jig so that I could develop a set of profile templates that produce profiles reliably. I've made profile templates to check progress before, however I still ended up working from the basics of two profile thicknesses, rough profiling them in, joining them up and finally tuning the thing to comfort. Thin-flat is sort of where my 2001 Ibanez S1540FM's Wizard Prestige neck is. That measures 43mm at the nut, 56mm at 22nd. Thicknesses are 19mm at the first fret and 22mm at the 12th. All this is over a 400mm/15,75" radius. I am aiming for a marginally weightier 20mm through 23mm which is based off those specs. Again, keeping the rough profile with heavy shoulders means I can then dial that back out towards a C as it feels to me. This has always produced the nicest-feeling necks, the best of which have been my 5-string '51 P-bass which is super comfortable, the 5-string Aria Pro II SB, an Explorer many moons back (which ended up being a bit more D-ish; much more Gibson-y). I guess that if I did have a set of profiles from a source, they could be analysed for feel and applicability over the period of many builds. The method I currently use requires sanding from coarse (80 grit Abranet) which involves a lot of the final shaping work in removing rasp marks. A router-based shaping jig would leave me somewhere in the region of 120-150 grit which is medium, and far less in the region of any real shaping. It is a very personal thing. Perhaps a lot of my shaping preferences have been themselves shaped by method. At this stage I still have a distinct flat edge either side of the neck set about 3-4mm away from the binding. This is part of that "erring towards a D profile" that I use, but also a safety net to protect that binding face. I've screwed up necks before by getting a bevel that leads up to the binding that can't be dialled out unless the binding absorbs that transition, which it shouldn't. Method and technique first, dialling in preferences later when the dust has settled.

A bit of an update on neck profiling. I have defined thicknesses that I want to be hitting for both the 1th and the 12st (firfth and twelvst) frets, so in the absence of having a neck profiling jig or time to do this with a CNC I went back to the good ol' hand shaping methods. The first objective was to reduce the thickness of the neck from the line around from the 1th fret towards the 2rd (secird) fret. The profile from 1th increases towards the volute (voluteth) and the same happens from 12st to the heel (heelst). Using the flat face on the back of my trusty cabinet maker's rasp, I created a flat channel slightly wider than the blade until I reached a couple of mm larger than the target. This allows for the increase from 1th towards the 2rd fret position to be sanded in later. The channel at 12st is flat towards the 13rd (thirteenird) fret position. After these were dialled in, I faceted each channel similar to how @asgeirogm worked his Explorer neck. Once in a rough shape, the profile is rounded to remove sharp edges from the facets. The back of the neck is about a mm and a half from the target size, which is about as close as I want to do with my rasp. The teeth cut deeply to the point of it needing maybe a mm of sanding/scraping to remove. It's still pretty close. Once these two profiles are roughed in, I used a spokeshave in full passes to "join the dots". I tie a sock around the volute to prevent the spokeshave knocking up the profile in that location as it exits each cut. After doing this, I took my card scraper and refined the shape where I felt high spots. This can be done by scribbling around the neck with a pencil and lightly block sanding to reveal high spots using a ~10cm piece of plywood. The neck is still in what I would call a U-to-D profile. Still fat feeling with heavier shoulders. Once the rest of the profile and transitioning is completed, this will progressively be scraped/sanded into a D profile and then refined out to a smoother-feeling C by easing the shoulders. This part of the work is all feel, and I will likely take a hair more off the treble side in the "D to C" stage whilst leaving the bass side erring more towards a D profile. Not so much that it is heavily asymmetrical, but smoother feeling with how the hand sites. The headstock has a tiny low spot (marked) where the flat plane meets the transition. I think this came off the spindle sander. The back of the headstock will just be block sanded to take off a fraction of a mm to account for this. The location of the volute and locking nut bolting holes feels weirdly-long, which is consistent with examples of 80s ESP in this configuration. I think that they quickly moved towards the screw-down versions between '87-'88, and I can understand why. It allows for movement of the volute to a more aesthetically-pleasing and practical location under the rod access point. I still have some fine-tuning to do, moving this shape closer to the holes.... ....plus it looks like I could bring the headstock profile itself back a little....in a future build of course....

I think you've rattled out most of the possibilities right there. Time to make it happen!

A lot of manufacturing guitar makers would fill those areas out with black CA or epoxy, so it's an option. I personally feel that it's less "seamless" than using the same material as the inlay. That's purely since they're in the manufacturing game, so you've got your options. Give it a shot, because working such small pieces is a good experience. How about cutting the inlay material from the back (show face down) and leaving say, half a mm of the front face remaining? It makes the pieces easier to handle, and when inlaying then don't drop into pockets that are too deep. In cross section the inlays look like a "T" with a lip of waste material. Does that make sense? Clear CA can contaminate Maple very easily as well, which is a bummer. I've shot my acoustics with flying junk in the shop more than once and repaired it with CA. No bueno. I'd go the epoxy route. At the very least it gives you the excuse to buy some epoxy, then some paper shot glasses, wooden cocktail sticks and a set of <100g precision scales. And some gloves plus some denatured alcohol for cleanup.

It happens a lot when you've got a build with many moving parts that perhaps you've not practiced many times before. I get this a lot, mostly because I never like to re-do old stuff. I always need to take something new onboard, to learn and to gain new knowledge. The price of this is that there always has to be a high failure rate if you're not guided or otherwise instructed "over the shoulder". This is just the way it is, and increases the price of our game, that's all. The real probem is not learning from a mistake made; not being able to take onboard what was done less than correctly and improve oneself. I suppose in that respect I should consider dialling back my own need to push forwards, and perhaps make something that is familiar and known. There seems to be less joy in that though, and that likely says more about me than anything else. Shards are likely a quick fix, but you're risking not getting nice face alignment of the Abalone laminae. Still, it's a minor detail that can easily be overlooked by anybody not looking for it specifically. Is it a major ballache to try and recut a couple of small pieces? Hopefully your CA isn't the sort that is thin enough to wick colour into the Maple and contaminate it....I am presuming that it isn't if that's what you used to attach the big inlay pieces?

Thanks Andy. It's getting there. I'm not too happy with my scraping at the moment, but then against this is the first time I've had to do it with paint, especially with high contrast. Everything is always practice for the next time of course.

Clearly (no joke intended) the final coat of clear went on too heavily. That's not too much of a problem since it will be cut back, but it creates more work. I was half not wanted to post this photo, because it looks terrible. It seems that this paint likes to build up on edges, so I concentrated on knocking those back with a combination of 600 and 800 grit. There's a couple of minor low spots, however I'm going to let this harden up fully. The remaining work on the neck can be completed, and the whole neck shot with clear, including the face.

It's drying in the storeroom at the moment. I'll get you pics tomorrow. I also masked the perimeter of the body and shot the top of that with black. Once that's dry enough, the binding can be scraped and given an initial coat of clear.

The headstock face only needed flatting with 600 grit to remove almost all of the orange peel. The decals are absolutely buried, which is great. I gave it another coat, and that's currently curing....

Thanks Andy! I think that flattening should be relatively easy. The clearcoat has pooled slightly within the decal area. as that was marginally lower than the rest of the surface thanks to being masked from the black layer. Whilst I still don't want to cut through to the level that the decal resides within, the main part is at least lower than everything else. My first plan of action is to cut it back with 600-800 grit paper by block sanding slightly wet. Enough that the waste doesn't corn up on the paper. Once it's adequately flat but not polished through, I'm going to leave it. The rest of the neck needs completing first now this hurdle is out of the way. and at that point the whole neck will get a basic clearcoat. The spray was far from perfect, and it does seem to create more work for flatting back than is necessary compared to paint off a gun. The advantage of the can be usable over several sessions has been the clincher.

Yeah, that clearcoat does seem to be heavy on the product. For the pearly I think I'll see if there's a straight lacquer that can be tinned up in addition to the Deltron.

Alright, so I decided to put on a third coat before the PU starts to cure too far for chemical layer adhesion. I'm leaving this one overnight. Having done a little homework on the paint, it seems that it's moisture curing rather than atmospheric pressure curing. I may have gotten the wrong end of the stick when discussing this with the (Finnish) manufacturers back when this was a new idea. Polyurethane paint in a can is not new though, so I'm wondering what the improvement is. Maybe I should casually read the patent....

I grew up in the 80s as a programmer and hacker, so things like smart bulbs seem like an excellent attack surface to me. Do you know if they're WiFi or Bluetooth? Ohwait, not the subject.... LED bulbs can be difficult to photograph with. Use the camera on your phone to observe them, and quite possibly you'll see them flickering. A lot of LED bulbs illuminate for half the phase of your power, or illuminate half of the elements either half of the phase. The upshot of this is inconsistent lighting. I made a HUGE 10000lm LED panel back when I was pouring time and money into trying to put a small video studio together, and that was somewhat better as it was DC rather than AC. The power supply exploding is another story.... If you are buying bulbs, go somewhere where they have them running in a demo board and do the camera flicker check. Some are terrible, but you can find some bulbs that are surprisingly constant. I've got two LED panels in this workshop room now, and they're not bad. Turning the phone camera on them, you can discern some flicker, but not as much as some cheap LED bulbs.

Well, I'm unsure how we let Dave sneak this one past us. I've personally been bored of butterscotch blonde Teles for so long now that seeing this exorcised that mental blind spot. I'd like to see more Spruce-topped solidbodies even if its just for the textural variation.

You did? This seems such a distant memory....

Well it seems that the clearcoat (Car Rep 2k PU gloss) doesn't like spraying dust coats and comes out designed for thick layers. Attempting a dust coat to seal the decals results in a distribution of droplets rather than a fine mist. This might be user error, so warming up the can and the workpiece might have differing results. Still, a couple of "light" applications in this manner provides sufficient coverage that it isn't swimming in clearcoat and solvents enough to dissolve or damage the decal, which is the main objective. Subsequent coats should level out enough that the final clearcoating is more even. This is about as thick as I dare apply the first coat, and even then I would have chosen to do less. I might shoot a quick second coat so that what's laid down is thick enough to level sand. By tomorrow it'll be too late to apply coats over the top without keying, so I best do a sacrificial layer thick enough so this won't be a problem. Damn, this is thick stuff. At the very least this indicates to me that it isn't chock full of solvents but I can smell the butanone in it. Phew.

This is the key that makes everything fall into place. If one of those three is being a problem, the other two can be modified to compensate. Exposure time is on your side since the target isn't moving, however you need a stable camera. I'd opt for a tripod rather than a monopod, as it allows you to have hands available, say if you want to hold a card reflector out of shot to modify available light. I like the idea of using a torch to artificially blow out certain areas during long exposures. I presume you are meaning what I imagine this to be, illuminating specific areas by waving a light over them?

I think we might need to consult with @Dave Higham how we managed to get to this point. I'm certainly beyond that by now....all I remember was a beautiful Spruce top with multi-ply black-white-tort binding, then waking up here?