letsgocoyote

Welp, it has been completed! The Tele-rite (until I ever think of a better name) Wilkinson Deluxe Kluson Style Tuners Tusq Nut Flame Maple Neck w/ Rosewood Fretboard f/ Stewmac GFS Lipstick Tube Pickup (4.6k winding) GFS Toplaod hardtail bridge Gold Hardware Poplar/Pine/Poplar sandwich semihollow flattop body (1.5" thick) Ivory white satin finish

thanks man. i never thought of it in a carve top, i dont have the skill to do that, but if you do, you totally should! i bet it would be really cool! if you want to know how I arrived at the body shape, I basically copied the shape of this sorta strat knock off, in reverse, adjusted slighty and made the upper nonhorn like a tele http://www.rondomusic.net/si13.html let me know if you end up making it, i bet it would be awesome

Solid. the transparent white would have looked awesome in retrospect, but there were some things in the wood I had to patch up... so it wouldnt have worked anyways here is a progress pic: all the parts layed out, but I jsut need to let the nitro cure for however long... before i assemble...

well I have the body made and I am starting to do the finish. it isnt lookn pretty yet but hopefully ill get it there

has anyone seen the newer gibson satin finishes being used on some models? particullar I have seen it ona Les Paul Vixen, and the new 59 melody maker reissue, and I think some new SG they have out, that was worn white w/ 3 pickups. anyways its like they arent using any grain filler, so that the grain is kind of raised through the finish. some may not like it, but I kind of do, and for my current project I think I want to replicate it. it seems like it should be easy, but somehow I foresee soem trouble. i am going to use krylon for my color coat, and then deft satin nitro for the clear. seems like i should jsut be able to spray on a coat of the krylon, which should raise the grain, and while normally id sand back the raised grain, im guess for the best effect I would jsut keep spraying subsequent coats of color, and then clear with no sanding in between. and perhaps I should not even sand it at all when I am done, or else the effect would be ruined. do you guys think this would work, or am I going to run into problems (namely, if I have any errors that I would need to sand out and respray, the effect would be ruined)

excellent points. i agree with all you have said.

Sorry if this is not the correct forum to post this in, but it seemed like the best fit to me. Feel free to move. Just a couple questions for those luthiers and builders who build guitars for money. 1) Did you always plan to build guitars to sell, or did you start strictly as a hobby and it happened from there? 2) How did you start selling guitars and/or what was your first sale? 3) How long have you been doing it? 4) What style of guitars do you build in? Do you build completely custom guitars to a clients wishes, or customized versions of your own models to clients specs? Do you sell guitars with no client in mind? 5) How much do you sell your guitars for, and why? I'd appreciate a variety of responses. I'm just curious mostly. I'm building my 2nd guitar now, after building the first was pretty fun, and I wanted to make it much better. I think if I can develop enough skill (particular I want to get better at finishing, which is half the reason I am building a second!) I could maybe want to do this kind of thing for a career (or on the side).

Progress picture Hardware and pickups from GFS, and a neck from stewmac will arrive monday. i decided on an ivory white for the finish, with satin nitro.

i have no qualms about using pine... the early fenders were pine, and this theres niche market for pine telecasters ive seen. i like to use the economy wood just to see that cheap wood can sound fine. plus id hate to ruin a 50 or 75 dollar alder blank. anyways my first guitar had a 1 inch thick pine core similar to above, with a 3/8" top and back. it was hollow in the center though, here is a pic of the core of my first project: that guitar sounds pretty good in my opinion... although for my first project I used extremely cheap parts, so the pickups are really microphonic and not the best sounding. but unplugged, the body is very resonant. not so much an acoustic/volume resonance, but tha tyou can jsut really feel the vibration of the strings through the whole body. i think using the pine which isnt dense compared to hardwood, as well as the hollow construction contributed well to the warm resonance of the body. this guitar I plane to use jsut 1/4" top and back for a final thickness of 1.5", which is part of the reason i chose a solid center block, just to keep some extra weight in the body (im afraid to make ti too light). i think it will still maintain a similar quality of resonance since the top and back will be thinner than the previous guitar. it will be interesting to see how it turns out, although i am confident it shoudl eb rpetty good. when im all done with this one, ill record some sound clips

Just started my second build today, the body shape is basically a Telecaster + Mosrite. I originally drew it up with a melody maker style pickgaurd and 2 pickups, but now I have decided I am going to go sans pickgaurd and use rear routed control cavity. I plan on using a maple/rosewood neck, and I am going to get all gold hardware and 1 gold lipstick pickup from Guitar Fetish. Haven't decided on a color yet, perhaps white (either a stark white, or a vintage white/cream) or a light blue. Body is a pine core and will have a poplar top and back like my first build.

love the zebrawood! i got an ibanez acoustic with zebrawood recently, i love the caramely/chocolatey grain

ive never played slide really. just out of curiousisty that you mention it, i grabbed an old glass pop bottle to see haha. i suspect if i had a higher nut it would be pretty cool for slide actually thanks, i really like the idea of using the pine and poplar. they are readily available, and inexpensive. the body is made from abotu $20 in wood, whereas an alder blank is anywhere from $50-100. I'm the kind of person who likes to do things in a simpler and frugal style. Additionally I figured since poplar isn't unheard of in guitar bodies, and even people make pine telecasters, I thought it would work well. And since it is also hollowed out, when I am playing it unplugged I can feel how resonant the body is, you can really feel the strings through the whole body. This is my idea for my second build: Telecaster style body thrown off kilter and skewed out a la Mosrite, with a Melody Maker style pickgaurd, and lipstick pickups.

Well I finished up the guitar today. Here's some pictures: I'm happy with how it turned out. I think it looks very cool and retro. It took me awhile to get it setup to play okay without fret buzz and bad intonation, but its not too shabby now. I used really inexepensvie ebay components... Most everything seems fine, but the pickups (which were $14 for the pair) are severely microphonic, so I think I will be upgrading those with seymour duncans or GFS sometime soon. i make upgrade the tuners then too, maybe a new nut as well. otherwise its pretty good, and if im not jamming full blast, the pickups actually do have a good tone, i really like the middle position with a little tone rolled back, it gives a good mellow chime. I call this guitar Mellowtone, or well thats my moniker that I used for the decal on the headstock. I'm already designing my 2nd build! Which is going to be a Tele meets Mosrite meets Gibson Melody Maker

I don't understand how it was happening... the bearing was following the template, but somehow the bit or something slipped and started eating up the template... so I ended up going free hand on it. It's not pretty which is a bummer, but it is goign to be covered by the pickgaurd so I can live with it.

Here is a progress pic: Now I am just waiting for hardware in the mail.

thanks. its going to have two covered single coil pickups, a 3 way toggle, volume, and tone like a Duo Sonic Im just finishing the lacquering today, and waiting for the hardware to arrive int he mail

Hey guys, I've learned some valuable info on the Project Guitar site. I recently fixed up a beat pawnshop Squier into an Esquire (I've since sold it).... but now I am tackling my first real build from scratch. Although I don't know if it's a 'for real' build, I did buy a premade neck. Anyways I have been blogging the construction of it and hopefully will be done soon! It's most heavily inspired by the Danelectro Pro model... with some Fender touches. http://letsgocoyote.blogspot.com/ I think I've done a pretty good job so far, except for some really rough pickup and control cavities (but they will be covered bythe pickgaurd). Interested to hear what you guys think.