Thanks for the compliments! Mahogany comes in quite a few varying shades. The wood you see are the natural colors, all I did was darken the grain with the stain (rhymes! <g>). The middle neckthrough piece was a lighter shade of the same wood. I was looking more for fill than color, so the darkening just happened. I ragged on 3 coats of stain over a couple days and then sanded right back down to bare wood again (between the grain). This is my first "from scratch" guitar and the only reason why I sanded it back was because the stain (Minwax - red mahogany) did not get along very well with my polyurethane clearcoat. Good thing anyway, looks much better.
If you plan to leave more stain on you'd best make sure whatever clear you use will stick properly. Polyurethane is acetone base and I think the stain was oil (mineral spirits) base. The poly didn't stick very well.
Heres a few specs:
Grover tuners - tight fit up there and I might replace later with Grover minituners.
Schaller roller bridge (tune-o-matic) - had to cut 4 degree neck angle
Golden Age overwound humbuckers (12 Kohm)
StewMac Bi-flex "Hotrod" truss rod
Stainless steel pickguard - homemade
strat-style plugin - had to fashion a black plastic retaining ring, thats what happens when you cut holes a little too big.
body style is a tracing of the lower half of my 67 Hagstrom III and then mirrored.
Arrow shaped headstock w/ staggered tuners allows for strings running straight thru the nut.
3- 500K pots (2 vol. and 1 tone) .047 ufarad capacitor
Black Ice Overdrive capacitor mounted on 250K pot
Rosewood fretboard - 24 3/4 scale - precut
Medium jumbo frets
One thing I will avoid next time is the position I placed my fingerboard. The result was too much neck which put the guitar a little off balance, ie. heavy toward the headstock. I had to hog out some wood from the sides of the volume/tone pot cavity and poured about 1/2 lb of lead in there, lol. Its almost perfect and those Grovers are real heavy. When I replace with minituners it should be just right. Also, too much neck means less room for pickup placement. As the saying goes, you learn from your mistakes.
I also have some very nice Mexican abalone blanks and am still looking for an easy way to cut out 5-pointed stars for fret markers. My first attempt was a botched job. That stuff sure dulls saw blades fast. I have a friend who carves slate so I might get him to cut my pieces for me.
Anyway, I still have lots of mahogany left. Got it for nothing at a boat building shop I used to work at. I got the carpenter to split a 4" thick X 11" wide X 42" long slab for me. Now I can make a few true "bookmatched" guitar bodies. I tell ya tho, decent hardware can really put a dent in the ol' credit card.
