Dee's guitar-making/modding projects blog

I got bored with the Floyd on my Yamaha...and the guitar needs a complete work-over anyway...so I ordered a Gibson-style wraparound-bridge and I'll do the Davette thing on the axe...rip out the Floyd, carve a large opening in its place and glue in a big block of new wood...plane it nice and install a fixed bridge. Sand down and slightly V-shapify the neck, re-shape the headstock, sand and re-finish the entire body. Actually cover the front entirely with aluminum.

Heres' what happens: ...

Here:



It's Ok, not a bad player at all, but even though only slightly, still the neck heaviness bothers me.

Furthermore, it still needs a little fret work, at the minumum a re-crown as after leveling some spots are far too wide.

Remains to be seen if it after that 'wakes up' better in upper registers, now it doesn't really sing and have a great sustain to speak of in the upmost registers. Same thing that's noticeable on my ...

OK here's the first pic from the back...it's all done now:



S*tty finishing job, but what can I say, I'm really impatient :-)

OK,

It's about done. Just the electrics to add for now, once the lacquer dries some.

The lacquer is far from great, I really should do a whole lot more sanding and whatnot, but I'm just tired with it so I think I'll finish the build for now. It's just cosmetic anyway now, and looks good from a few metres anyway.

If it turns out to be a great player and I'll spend much time on it, I can always strip the parts and give it a better finish then.
...

Lots of issues to deal with still. LOTS. Not to mention the neck still being hugely thick, there's a gazillion little details to worry about, fret ends etc. and there's a couple of high frets as well still. Can't seem to get them properly seated, I'll have to remove and make sure there's nothing in the groove, probably there is something.

Then it's a lot of sanding and such as well, the saddle and whatnot. Drilling some holes for controls etc. etc... ...

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_6...0/IMAG0710.jpg

Ready for fine sanding and such...lots and lots of sanding to do now. The neck has a shape as well but it's too thick as of now.

Curious thing BTW...I have all the parts like pickups in a box, and the box weigh just about the same as the guitar with just the wood parts. This is going to be a rather light one!

Can't tell from the photo but the top is slightly ...

The shape is still rough; there will be a deeper/rounder cut at the back and of course every edge will be trimmed nice, the body is about 1/4 too big almost everywhere right now, quite rough sawn as it is. I wanted to leave plenty of wood for sanding it down nice.

Ditched the tu-tone color scheme; took a while to get the mid section colored the same as the ...

OK, here's the whole thing from another angle.

Clearly shown the body wood and the overlaying veneer...there will be another veneer for the back, but not with maple showing, all intact from the back. I'll contour the edges some and they will be black, thinking of some kind of sunburst. Although white binding would be super cool too..only, that might be a bit much to try to learn how to do.

The body wood also has all cavities done, plus most of the wire routes...now ...

I'm going to leave it 2-tone all the way...so much like it is now.

Here's a guitar-size slab of veneer done with the markers:

Alright; seems I've settled with the star shape. Here's the fretboard glued in place and radiused and the neck part laid over the bottom veneer with the shape marking. Also the headstock shape now visible; the same knife shape repeats in the body.

The body will be built much like an acoustic, but with ~1" thick maple sides and the neck-thru, but anyway ...

While the glue is still drying, I made this radius sanding tool to keep me busy. I screwed a slab of metal onto a chunk of acrylic or similar quite hard/resilient plastic of some sort (used to be a MinuteMaid chopping board) , dipped it in boiling water and used screws and a few washers to force it into a nice curve; it was easy to adjust it by turning the screws in various locations. ...

Alright, now making good progress!




...

Here's how I thought I'd shape the 'wings'.



It's shaped so that the neck will sit the same as in strat both sitting and standing, i.e. the strap buttons are in the same positions over the fretboard & as far back.
It looks smaller than it is because at this point the neck is way wider than it'll be when done...same size as a strat, really.

Got the old Dremel out and now the truss rod is installed nice and tight.

There sure isn't much wood left under the truss adjust opening, and it was VERY hard to drill the hole from the said opening to the actual truss cavity, so that the 'bridge' of wood under the saddle holds the rod end securely yet the adjustment screw has just enough room to squeeze thru under the saddle and be, well, adjustable.

I had pre-cut the rod slot with a large machine, just used the dremel ...

Got the neck rough shaped, still far too wide (as wide as headstock) but much closer to how it's gonna be.

Also got the truss rod channel routed. The measurements turned out OK and it's so designed that when you lay it on the floor etc. the body will rest flat on the floor and the headstock will also just touch the floor but not bend the neck at all like on Gibsons etc. which are tilted also at the body/neck joint.

Also pictured the Grovers I bought for it as well as ...

Got the truss rod in the mail along with a bridge - I'll use a black tele-type bridge sans the 'edges' and w/bucker hole. Here's what's I've been up to with the woods:



Working with like 1/3 inch safety margin so far, so as to not make mistakes...will have plenty of wood to work with for a while still.

Also, been pondering about making it sort of ...

This is a crude drawing of how I'm thinking of making the guitar. I'll try to leave the maple wide at the actual body part to house all hardware well and support mics and all. Just add flanges on either side. The green dotted line means I'll have the body cavity open from the back rather than front (if I can use a router carefully enough) for easy access to swap mics and such. ...

I've now raw-cut the maple, and I'm going to make the neck with two pieces, the main part will be a neck-thru single maple slab, quartersawn, near the very center of the tree, so the growth circles will nearly match the shape of the neck. I will make the headstock from the same wood but I've cut a slab that I'll set to the neck at roughly 10-15% angle so that the join will take place under the 2nd fret approximately - from there on the grain of wood will then be lateral to the headstock.
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Moving this to blogs...never written one but might be better this way, especially when I get photos.

I had this big log of maple in the basement, been drying there for at least 7-8 years now. It's about 3-4 inches thick and 1,5 foot wide, long as an electric guitar (over a yard). It's curved and twisted a little over the years as it's dried, and I'm hoping it won't 'live' no more.

I'm going to build me an electric guitar of _some_ sort, perhaps out of that block. It ...