Blog Comments

Cool deeaa. I want to hear it!
By the way, how is the neck attached? Do you have a bolt in there somewhere?
From the pics it looks as though there's not alot of neck on the body.
Really want to see/hear it in action!

Gotta tell u, can't wait for the lacquer to finish so I can get to wiring this up and play it. It plays well, and fret access is great.

However, there's a few things I'd do differently next time.

1st off, I wish I will have more patience to really sand it down properly and make it smooth and sweet all round.

2nd, I'm very keen on finding a large maple, I mean real large, and cut a part of it that curves *just* right so I could make a guitar out of, literally, a single piece of wood.

BUT also I don't want another build that has the neck parallel with the body; I want the neck, not just the headstock, tilted. It's just better that way. I ended up sanding WAY much off the surface to create at least a LITTLE tilt from the body to the neck...it just feels wrong to have the neck surface parallel with body surface and no clearance over the pickups.

Also, although this seems to withstand the string pull just fine, the next build will have more wood in the neck/body joint. Now that the neck and the fretboard end before the body completely AND there is the cavity for neck humbucker, it just looks plain WAY too little wood there around that area. Next time I'll have the high strings area cleared like on this one but I'll have the body portion start from like 14th fret area or so on the bass side.

And, I'll need to learn to use a top router better for the next project.

What I'm thinking, I'll see if I can find a nice big maple with the right shapes, and cut a portion out of it, and leave it dry for 7-10 years and start working on it.

I dunno if I mentioned it before, but the woods for this build came from a maple and a birch I felled off my own yard 7 years back...they've been drying next to a heater ever since.

Thanks...but, I don't think it's anything you could not do. It's just a matter of starting, learning from your mistakes and pushing onward. I for once believe most anybody can build most anything, it's just a matter of effort invested and available tools and materials.

Here's a new vid...I installed the frets a little better; I worked on them until they were so level it's got a nice action already without any leveling or dressing; saves a lot of work later to set them real carefully.

The neck is pretty much in final shape/thickness, didn't make it superthin, but it's not thick either.
Next step - just a WHOLE lot of sanding and finishing to do...sheesh, my hands are already hurting just from anticipation :-)

Even though there's still much to do, that's impressive nonetheless. Certainly something I couldn't do at this point.

Pic went wrong.

BTW AFAIK Leo Fender chose the original body woods indeed to be the _least_ resonant and musical ones he could find at reasonable cost, because in the early years guitar feedback was a real concern for players. So, making a body out of even pine gets a much more resonant and ringing sound from an electric too, especially if you choose rather porous and light/well dried woods. I've made a body out of pine twice; the problem is it's very soft and it's really hard to get a nice surface by sanding etc problems...but they sounded very resonant indeed.

Thanks! I'm hoping it'll look OK when done, still :-) it may look a touch weird.

Yeah, birch seems to be mostly used in furniture, since it's easily bendable when wet but very resilient once formed and dried and has neutral colour. Quite heavy wood as well...I'd like to use more spruce and birch in guitars, as those are plentiful here...spruce also seems pretty much reserved for acoustic tops for some reason.

I'm surprised birch has been used in boats. I thought birch doesn't hold weather very well, and being so hard doesn't accept tar etc. especially well either. But, it's hard and resilient indeed...I'd like to know how they used to treat the boats to keep them in good condition, or how long were they used. Here it's mostly spruce for wooden boats I believe, and tarred. We have a couple of old wood boats from the 50's which are still somewhat OK to use...they are simple constructions with five planks on each side, spruce keel and reinforcements, tar-treated of course so black. They need to be sunk for a few days in the beginning of the summer so they swell a bit and hold water after that OK...more or less, as by now they're not exactly tarred or even used yearly, might be they're not usable any more.

Many drum mfg's use birch as a preferred, high quality, tone wood in their regular five piece, etc., drum kits. It is surprising that guitar mfg's haven't used birch; at least to my knowledge. Birch is a beautiful wood. I grew up in Northern Minnesota and am very familiar with birch. I used to carve things out of it and it is a beautiful grained building wood. American Indians, as you likely know, made canoes entirely out of birch, using slabs of the laminated papery bark, glued together with pitch from pines. These canoes would hold several people and were used to navigate the Great Lakes of the upper Mid West, as well as many highly turbulent and dangerous rivers and streams. A birch bark top might look cool.

Neat looking project guitar.

Duffy

Black. The sides I'll just level and fill in and sand real nice, and paint 'em black, and the idea is to have some sort of sunburst type effect with the black sides, so the green will only show in the centre, gradually fading to black at the edge. But, I don't know yet how to best achieve that effect without too obvious lines of change. Probably will try to do it with sprayed clearcoat and transparent black spray, we'll see how I can manage...:-)

How are you going to handle the back/sides? More magic marker, or something different?

85 + SA was my first choice, yeah but I scored a Tesla set instead that should sound similar to 85...so I'll test those first. Hopefully they work just as well...at least they were cheap, I paid only 30€ for two used complete with pots! Te cheapest 85 I could find was 45€ used each.

That's looking pretty cool. I'm guessing you'll be putting 2 x EMG 85 in there?

Oops the pic:

Another shot now with 1 layer of clearcoat applied...already reflects nicely.

Thanks! Yes there will be no heel at all really...it's the same all the way to the end of ftretboard. I changed the material today, it will be all birch for the body but fully chambered.

It's gibson scale.

Very cool! I like that body shape a lot. What scale is the fretboard? It looks short to me, and only 22 frets. However, I like the fact that you're going for neck-thru. Are going to try to minimize the heel like most neck-thru guitar makering companies do?

Hm, now that I see the shape from a distance, so to speak, the underside of the upper horn and the topside of the lower back, and also conversely the upper side of lower horn and upper back's lower side _almost_ form straight lines. Would it not be pretty sweet to have the lines continue throughout the body?

Also, I really like the way the front horns are now shaped - exactly the same as the headstock will be, knife end shaped, and sort of like scissors opening - BUT I'm not yet sold on the back end of the axe. Maybe the 'scoop' at the back should be shallower, or maybe even not there at all, just a round back as in a strat. But that'd make it look pretty heavy.

What I'm mostly gearing towards right now is maybe making the back end non-symmetrical with a sloping line exactly like on Explorers. Hmm, yeah that could work...I suppose I'll have to cut out a couple of optional shapes and have a poll here.

Fascinating deeaa. I know you come into this with experience modding and have a strong set-up skills. It will be very interesting to see what you come up with by seeking your own solutions in the process. You always seem to be a very resourceful chap so it will be fun to follow your progress. Hope you keep on with the updates. Good luck!

It should at least resonate very naturally/well, being just one piece from saddle to bridge and pickups screwed directly to wood. Weight might be a little much for the size, we'll see...

Nice lookin' tree parts, there! I like the neck through idea too.