Muzz

This is looking fantastic, love the concept of doing so much with muscle power, timber colours are really working together, and the lines are flowing. Site foreman Max looks chilled about it all

Yep this will be a fun project, I too have an mdf body

My prediction is yours will sound great with a good pickup and amp.

It is very simple to hear the tone contribution of the wood in an electric guitar. Just get a pick up the same as the one in your guitar, but don't put it in the guitar, wire it up to a bit of ply with the same vol, tone pot set up, then clamp the pick up to the back of your guitar. The pickup will only gather vibrations passed through the wood, plug it in to your amp and you can hear your tone wood isolated. I would guestimate it contributes to about 3-5% of the sound coming out of your guitar. I think that small amount can add some nice individuality to a guitars sound. Are you going to make recordings of timber versus mdf?

Big Red

Named after my favourite tomato sauce, this is my third body, second neck and first fretboard construction.

Specifications

Neck - one piece Queensland Maple

Fretboard - Rosewood

Body - 2 piece Queensland Maple

Machine Heads - Ibanez 6 a side

Frets - 23 medium

Nut - 43mm polycarbonate

Scale – 25 ½ inch

Radius – 12 inch

Pickups - GFS Crunchy Pat, 10K Neck, 14K Bridge

Tremolo - Dr. Parts vintage style

Pots – Alpha brand long shaft 500K

Switch – 3 way on, on, on

Stain - Stew Mac red, over Feast Watson Black

Finish - Rustins Plastic Coating

The colour changes a lot depending the light, inside during the day it is the same colour as a Line 6 POD.

More photos on

Page 17 http://projectguitar...ic=46278&st=240

Page 18 http://projectguitar...ic=46278&st=255

of the build thread, there is also a video of the guitar playing Sweet Child O Mine on page 18.

The 50% cap is a good idea, carves look so much better when they don't reveal the base. The top grain looks wild.

Really entertaining build thread, loved every minute of it, and it made me stop lurking around here and actually post lol

Glad that you stopped by =o)

Great tone therrr Muzz ! I dig the guitar completely.

Heya Mike, isn't always the way, you are making a guitar and all the way through you wonder what it is going to sound like when it is finished

I still have a Crunchy Pat sitting loose I need to put into something.I was thinking of a Charvel Model One tribute

That sounds like an excellent reason to me to make that guitar, should be cool

haha very cool man! sounds terrific!

I know, I am playing a song banned in every guitar shop in the world

Very nice guitar. I'm digging the GFS pickups. I have a bunch of their junk bodies & necks from the warehouse clearance sale I'm trying to resurrect, so I might be loading them with those.

Cheers Plinky, yep give them a go, unbelievable for the price

The bottom looks curved to me, which is often a good thing

... and medium frets

a few last pics

but it's not over until someone sings, so here is the guitar singing Sweet Child O Mine

Looks fantastic, how are the fret ends? they look a bit sharp

Looking great, fret ends nicely rounded

Nice job,Muzz

Cheers Wes, it came out very close to what I envisioned about 2 months in,

I noticed this pic of my plan today,

expectations

reality

Here it is at about 10 o'clock last night

Hey another thing I like about the GFS pups, they don't feed back on high gain when you stop playing, heaven. I also tried out a fat pat in another guitar, that thing nails the AC/DC sound.

So I can finally list the specifications with approx costs

Neck - one piece Queensland Maple $0 gift

Fretboard - Rosewood $0 gift

Body - 2 piece Queensland Maple $80

Machine Heads - Ibanez $0 from the parts box

Nut - 43mm $2.50

Pickups - GFS Crunchy Pat, 10K Neck, 14K Bridge $46 pair plus postage

Tremelo - Dr. Parts $25

Stain - Stew Mac red - $13, over Feast Watson Black $7.50

Finish - Rustins Plastic Coating $26

curtisa - Deep Earth; Very sleek, great construction, I would have liked to see a decal on the headstock, curves really compliment the natural timber.

ScottR - B.B. Red; In a sea of superstrats, Les Pauls, Explorers, Vs and teles, this is so original and so beautifully carved. If it had a whammy bar on it I would be dying of guitar envy right now. Killer top.

demonix - Celon Blue Quilt top; Skillful and clean construction, great colour, the design would be improved by having at least 22 frets and the machine heads and logo moved down a few mm on the headstock. Chrome hardware is really working with the azure blue, it's rock.

shad peters - Buckeye Carved top Vixen; Gorgeous construction and finish, the been lying on the forest floor for a month finish is going to restrict its appeal for some and I think it needs pickup covers to match the rest of the hardware. The headstock and logo are really great.

4 fantastic guitars this month.

Beautiful blond timber, lovely carve, this is art deco and coolness

My very first build was finished with rattle can acrylic lacquer sold in auto parts stores....Duplo, I beleive. I don't know if it was the "acrylic" or the fact that it was intended to be sprayed onto automotive paint, but it exhibited the same symptoms your deft does. Guitar stands left marks. My teeshirts left impressions just from playing. It's been four years now and that is still happening. Like yours it polished up great, but never got rock hard. Your deft is nitro, so it may ultimately get as hard as it should....let's hope so.

Sorry about that downer....the build looks stunning! And your attention to detail should serve as an example to us all. RAD once told me that the details are what set a luthier apart from a backyard builder......even if he builds in his backyard.

Very well done. I'm looking forward to your next creation.

SR

Very kind words Scott. I've gone through all your builds and love the work you do so your comments are well received. I absolutely love the F-hole project you just finished.

I'm hoping as more time goes by it will harden up more than it currently is. Maybe now that its been broken open again it will continue to harden as it should have already. I have a feeling it wont and I'm seriously considering stripping the second one down to bare wood and shooting a different brand of lacquer.

Despite the issues with Deft, I think you are reaping the benefits of your patient approach on these. That silly putty idea is typical Luther genius. My hat is off to you, sir.

Thanks!

usualy you get those soft finish problems if it has not cured properly yet. Id say Let it sit for a while to see if it will harden up, but your comment about your other build has me wondering about if it would make any difference.

Has anybody else had this problem with this finish ? maby there is someone on here who can advise on a cure ?

I done found many posts on the major builder forums about the same problem. By the time I found it all it was too late. It is what it is at this point.

I don't suppose UV or other accelerating method will work with this unless it was designed to, will it? UV will no doubt bleach sensitive parts also. I am just thinking that the solvents may be suspended with no way out.

I dont know if exposing it to uv would do any good. It could be trapped solvents but I dont think so. I just think that deft is a sub par product. I just broke out the finish samples I did 6 months ago and its about as soft as the guitar I finished 2 years go.

Tonight I wired up the pickups using the Seymour duncan diagrams. All seems well and I have a solid signal. I ended up putting a push pull on the tone knob to split the pickups. Its now fully assembled and waiting for a proper setup. With full tension the neck is dead flat and needs a little forward bow. I tweaked the truss rod a little bit but didnt want to torque it too much too quickly. That plus its getting late. sI'm going to let it sit for 24 hour and see how it settles in. I'm probably getting ahead of myself because I still need to remove the neck and level the frets.

I was going to post some pics but photobucket seems to not want to play nice tonight.

The guitar is looking fantastic, there is a fix for the soft finish, it's called citrus strip, http://www.wmbarr.com/citristrip/default.aspx

get that soft sticky deft crap off your beautiful guitar it wont take that long, then put a good finish on that goes hard, there are lots to choose from.

Why do you want a forward bow on your guitar neck? the only reason you would want a slight forward bow is to make sure there is not a back bow. There is no other advantage to 'relief' it's a an old wives tale that relief is a good thing. If your neck is absolutely flat you can get the lowest possible action. If you like to shred, there is no such thing as an action that is too low

Glad to have you along for the construction, I think it has been about half a year, the last few weeks I felt like I was on the down hill run.

Looks awesome!

I must take some pictures in day light soon

groovey man. lookin real good. So now you have a red one to go with the blue one, you need a green one next

A green guitar with gold hardware does sound very Aussie

Looks faaan-tastic!

I used it at band practice last night, all OK

This turned out to be a right classy looking guitar Muzz. I like the close up shots of the QL maple cleared and buffed. There's more to it than originally meets the eye.

Well done and cheers.

SR

The QLD maple does have some nice subtle patterns in the grain, I will post some shots soon, I think it is a good alternative to mahogany in a few ways,

Sweet guitar....classy

Gotta say the day that you finally put together a guitar that has taken a while to build feels good.

That's a really nice guitar. I'm really glad I followed this build.

The crunchy pat is a decent pickup...sort of like an old school overwound...think Van Halen..

But for full blown metal I like those rails they make

http://www.guitarfet...lack-_c_89.html

Be careful when wiring those...they use super thin wire

You were absolutely right about the pickups, they sound great, yes that nice VH style warm distortion, I won't be replacing them, and the thing I really like, they are so buzz and hum free, unbelievably quite when the amp is on high gain ( and I am not hitting the strings )

Just finished this guitar, it's dusk so I will take photos in better light soon, here is a quick shot

Stewey, you were also right, Queensland maple is smoooth and buttery.

Thanks everyone for keeping me company along the way

you're gonna <3 love <3 that AANJ. You did a great job on it too. cheers and beers on that one.

Right back to you, it was your suggestion that put it there a theme of this guitar was to incorporate some of the suggestions that I didn't use last time

Wiring so far

Ta OSi, won't be long till the tuners go on, just put the bridge in =o)

I cut two screws down for the front of the neck

and screwed the neck on

putting the pickups in now

Cheers Stewey, yep, the colour turned out just as imagined it. Hoping the QLD maple supplies the tone voodoo if everything goes well, I should find out today.

I am still undecided about the final logo, black or silver and I will be painting the headstock black but until I get that sorted out I have done a quick job on the headstock, so I can get the guitar together, finally, I am not a speedy guitar builder, just got to polish and buff it.

Slathered with cut and paste and starting the buff

First pass on the back

I wonder what Queensland maple is going to sound like

Without any doubt Jenny McCarthy is smart, funny and HOTTTTTTT

Sand flat, glue on strips of veneer, build it up to the point where you can shape it, good luck with it

Whenever I use rustins as a candy like this, I always put 3 coats of clear over the tinted stuff & buff that. Comes up realy sweet

That is the technique exactly Paulie, you only want to see white residue when you wet sand and polish. Was it Fender that used to do colour all the way to the surface with no clear? So I hope mine comes up sweet, find out tomorrow