another doug

Do you mean these?

That is a great looking guitar. I vote for leaving the Jarrah truss rod cover.

no, because you are starting from the acoustic shape which would be the zero-cut, then the cutaway was added to those before the creation of the les paul which was a single cut design based on the acoustic single cuts that came before

all of which is totally pointless

Oh, I agree completely (especially about the pointlessness!). However, Prostheta's point (unless I totally misunderstood), was that a strat is not a doublecut because there was no original singlecut strat. He wasn't starting from a generic "zero-cut" shape. I was just having a bit of fun extending that idea.

I guess my point is that "doublecut" infers a subtractive design structured off an original singlecut design, ie. an LP doublecut derived from the traditional LP shape.

Sorry to jump out of nowhere for a pedantic comment, but following this logic, wouldn't "singlecut" also infer a subtractive design? Since the original LP design had one cutaway, shouldn't the "doublecut" be called a "singlecut," since only one cutaway has been subtracted from the original?

(This is where I was going to make a joke about how many cutaways a corvus has, but I'd rather not think about it)

From Brian: Universal Jems

That neck is a 34" scale length. Moving the bridge farther from the nut will only make it impossible to intonate.

You would only be able to change the scale length by moving the bridge if you had a fretless neck (preferably with no lines or dots).

In my limited experience, a warped board sent through a planer will come out the other end a uniform thickness, but still warped. Since I don't have a jointer and I need a lot more practice with hand planes, my solution was to hold one edge flat against my tablesaw table, and glue a strip of hardwood onto the other edge so that it fed through the planer properly. I don't know if it's a good solution or if there's any reason I shouldn't have done it, but it worked for me, so I figured I'd throw it out there.

Thanks for the kind words.

and the back again.

I haven't had a chance to take it outside for a photoshoot yet, so I'm stuck with pictures taken inside with the flash on for now.

The only part I'm not entirely satisfied with is the circle on the back. Other than that it came out better than I had anticipated (I wasn't expecting much from my painting skills).

I'm no artist, and I'm a bit of a hack at the guitar-building game, but I figured I'd share my most recent project. I've always liked the look of Clapton's psychedelic sg, so I figured I'd pick up a cheapish sg and give it a whirl. Armed with a couple crappy computer-screen-resolution pics, a B-stock Epiphone G-400, a cheap set of acrylics, and a couple rattlecans of satin poly, here's what I ended up with:

and the back:

For anyone interested, here's what I did:

1-remove hardware and scuff the paint with 320 grit

2-mask and prime the body with artists gesso

3-trace the body and scan it into the computer

4-blow up pics found on the internet and size them to fit the scanned image

5-print it out in reverse and trace all the lines with pencil

6-place the drawing pencil side down on the body and rub the clean side, transfering the pencil marks to the primed body

7-paint (I used a cheap set of artists brushes).

8-mask and clear coat. I used Varathane water-based satin poly in rattlecans. We'll see how it holds up.

9-replace hardware and start playing! (I had to christen it with NSU, but then it was back to my usual blues licks)

There was a bit of a learning curve, since I have never painted before, but I'm satisfied with the way it turned out.

If there's anything better than a good play on words, it's TWO good plays on words. Nicely done!

OOH! I love it! Great attention to detail, and I love the name ("Less Tall" Ha!).

What does it say in place of "Gibson?" I'm having trouble reading it.

I'm no expert, but from what I've read here you can usually just scuff up the existing finish and shoot your new color and clears over that. Of course, that's assuming you're going for a solid color.

I assume we're just talking about the fretboard? From the second pic it looks like the dye went on kinda splotchy, so my guess is that the board was not raw wood. If it had any kind of finish on it, the dye would not penetrate properly. I'm thinking that it was at least partly sealed by natural oils (sweat) from playing, so the dye just sat on top of the sealed bits, coming off on your fingers.

To answer your question, though, it will stop eventually. I have used the dye on freshly sanded fretboards and got a bit of black-finger, but not as bad as what you have. As for fixing what you have (assuming that the splotchiness is real and not just on the picture), I'm not sure what would be best. You might want to think about wiping it down with fretboard finishing oil. That may help seal in the dye/wipe off the excess. It seemed to work for me. Or I guess you could try sanding the board and re-applying the dye so that it penetrates better, but that might be difficult to do without defretting.

Just my 2 cents.

I would suggest requiring a GOTM entry to post a separate discussion thread. Some recent entries have not had build threads or discussion threads, and it would help in the voting if we were able to ask questions (and I completely agree that the GOTM thread is not the place to do it). I think any amount of guitar modding should be allowed, even if it's just a design that was built by someone else, but in those cases we need to be able to ask questions to determine how much of the end result was due to their influence. If it turns out that someone just slapped a store-bought pickguard on a store-bought strat, they should be able to enter, but there should also be somewhere for them to be ripped a new one.

Also, I'm with Daniel on the name thing. As you can tell by my login name, that is not where my creativity shines. If I ever get around to finishing a guitar that I would want to enter (having a toddler has seriously cut down on my tinkering time), I would prefer to not have to think up some dumb name (not saying the names are dumb, just that one that I think up would be).

As for blowing up a picture, here is the formula I use (may be obvious to some, but hopefully it will help someone out):

(desired dimension * 100)/(original dimension) = (% you need to blow the pic up)

original dimension = measured from the picture printed at 100%

desired dimension = what you want it to be after blowing up

For example, if you print out a small picture and measure the scale length as 4 inches, but you know the scale length should be 24 inches (keeping the math easy for this example), the formula would be:

(24*100)/4=600%

Then you can print out your picture at 600% and it should be pretty close. You can then use the formula again to fine-tune your measurements.

I hope this is useful to someone!

thanks do they carry ebony

Yup, but I've always ordered fingerboards from LMI and StewMac, for the reasons that Rich and Mattia* mentioned (plus you can get them pre-slotted and radiused). At Owl, the ends of the boards are usually very rough sawn, or even sealed, so it can be difficult to get an idea of the grain orientation. Plus, last time I was there the ebony was not as consistently dark as what I have bought on-line (but I haven't been there in a while). As I said, give them a call and I'm sure they'll help guide you toward what you are looking for.

*Trust their opinions and expertise. They are some of the most knowledgable and helpful folks around here. I, on the other hand, am just a hack sharing where I get my wood!

I usually get my wood from Owl hardwood lumber in Lombard. They are not specifically geared toward guitar tonewoods, so you may have to search a bit for quartersawn lumber, and highly figured pieces are pretty rare, but they do carry a lot of interesting woods. They also offer cutting and planing services.

I have heard that at least one of the guys there has built guitars, so you may want to give them a call and see if someone can guide you toward good tonewoods.

I have bought mahogany, maple, bloodwood, purpleheart, zebra wood, cherry, and padauk from them, and they usually carry teak, wenge, bubinga, cocobolo, lacewood, poplar, ash, and many more. Sometimes they also have some nice veneers as well.

Good luck!

I've only done it a couple of times, but:

When I did it I glued the inlay together with CA, then attached to the fretboard with a tiny drop of regular old Elmers glue. After scribing, it popped off no problem, with no solvents needed.

Just passing on the info that I found when I was in your shoes.

Good luck with your build, and post lots of pics!

According to the diagram on Warmoth's website, that 28.58mm measurement is actually 23.5, and the string hole appears to be about 6mm less than that. This diagram is Stewmac's Schaller mini M6 diagram, not the one for the Schaller mini m6's from Warmoth. I don't know why they're different, but apparently they are.

edit: I just noticed that the Warmoth tuners are "locking" mini M6's.

I'm no wiring guru, but I think this may work:

1-Find a diagram of the 2 p90 + pickup selector + volume + tone setup.

2-Find a diagram of a 1 humbucker + volume + tone setup

3-Instead of sending the final signals to the output, send them to a three way pickup selector switch, and send the signal of that switch to the output

That way, the final switch positions would be (p90 circuit)/(both circuits)/(humbucker alone).

Could someone confirm that this would work? If so, it sounds like what the OP was asking for.

I don't know about white plastic, but i found this neck which has mother of pearl dots. Hope that helps!

Hey Greg, I thought the same thing at first. Real cloudy looking. But if you look at the third link, it looks pretty good. Then I realized that the reason it looked cloudy was because I was looking at a reflection of clouds!

This is the toughest vote I can remember! Mikevirok, thegarehanman, jammy, and ben all made guitars that I would LOVE to own, and all deserve to win! Those are some of the most impressive guitars I've ever seen here, and all in the same month! The rest don't really suit my taste, but could easily get my vote in a normal month. In the end I had to go with the rising sun tank top. That thing just blew me away!