Cherry Bomb
Body: Queensland Maple 2 piece
Neck: Rock Maple
Fretboard: Rosewood
Scale: 650 mm
Radius: 12 inch
Frets: 23
Bridge pickup: Woosung Chorus (WSC) hexbucker
Neck pickup: Pure-Tone Scorpion
Pots: CTS
Switch: 3 way
Bridge: Harmonica bridge, made in Japan
Backstop: generic tune-o-matic stop
Machine heads: Gotoh
You can see the build thread at
I am a hobby builder and this is my third complete build, I like using hand tools as much as possible, I like the peace and quite of working that way. The plans started out as a tracing of my friends Destroyer body that he bought on ebay. I drew all the plans from there on using a longer scale.
The 80's Destroyers had a harmonica bridge, so I decided to use one on this build. I made my own mitre box to cut the fret slots.
The guitar was built in my basement (for the noisy parts) and in the back garden under a sun shade on a little fold out work table with a piece of mdf on the top.
This was the first lean back headstock that I have made and my first go at a scarf joint. I made a jig to cut the scarf joint at the right angle.
This guitar was built for me to play, I have always loved the 1980's red Destroyers (I am a big Iron Maiden fan) but I wished that they had been made with wood grain showing rather than a solid paint cover, so decided to give that idea a go, with Cherry Red stain from Stew Mac.
The headstock is obviously modelled on the Ibanez design, I drew the modified shape longer and with a slightly different curve and made the template for my first full build and used the template again in this one.
The finish is Rustins Plastic Coating, the same stuff that is on Brian May's Red Special.
I used long neck pots so that I could leave more wood on top of the control cavity, the 3 way switch is counter sunk in.
You can see and hear the guitar getting played in this video