Plz check out the Yamaha blog...

[deeaa*]

Posting here too, feels like people don't much pay attention to blogs...final stages done!

Finished!!!

Just some more fine tuning to do; intonation that is is a tad off. But, other than that, plays just like it used to, or actually a little better. Very light, balance is perfect, action can be set lower than I'd ever want it to be. Not yet tested with a good amp but initial tests show a very nice sound and lots of sustain.

[deeaa*]

[Rockermann]

I like it a lot! Looks like some piece of NASA gear that fell back to earth and got some burn marks on it going through the atmosphere. I'd love to have it when you're done with it.

[deeaa*]

It's a great addition to the fleet; it's quite different from my other axes. Very much like the Davette in all other respects, but Gibson scale instead of Fender (or actually it may be somewhere in between, the tension seems a little less lax than on the Prophecy SG)...and the biggest difference is the fretboard is VERY wide in comparison. Also this has an extra preamp for really crazy solo gain.

I really may have to install a neck single-coil at some point, though.

I think I'll be playing the trio of this, Davette and the SG over the others quite a lot for a while now. They are all somewhat more compact and light players compared to my strats.

The SG is great for leads, very bendable, and focused, tight sound, 24 frets, thin neck...but the neck is too narrow for for instance picking with fingers, strings are too close together simply. It has an 81 bridge pup so I tend to play it more in both pickups on format, it can be a bit too driven and heavy-sounding.

The Davette is a superb all-rounder, very big & presency sound, extra playable thin V neck, strat scale making it perfect for ballads and where you need also cleaner sounds. 85 bridge is way less driven and much raunchier and bigger sounding, and the construction makes it presency / clear-sounding overall.

This newcomer...remains to be seen what role it will play, but it feels like it could do great leads w/24 frets and lighter than strat scale and the wide fretboard makes it a good one for picking w/wingers too; will have to play with the band to see where it fits exactly. The pickup is an 85, but I think the aluminum top will make it less presency than the Davette.

[Ch0jin]

I'm not sure I like the finish, but the overall look is fantastic!

The single active pick up and 24 frets says "I didn't come here to mess about, I came here to deliver screaming solos"

[Katastrophe]

Now THAT'S a guitar that I would own! Fantastic work, Dee.

[Duffy]

I really like that simulated white marble with the dark streak look, along with the wide neck and the amp pointer knobs. Really nice guitar.

Did you do the marble finish?

[deeaa*]

Yeah...it was originally all aluminum-colored, but it turned out the edge of the aluminum, where it was hammered and filed to fit the rest of the body flush, was impossible to get perfectly even without using loads of filler, and/or painting over the actual aluminum. So I did the best I could without excessive filling, and used a dry brush and black paint to do the 'streaks' all over, and they perfectly hide the imperfections on the line where the two materials meet in the body.

It's a really resonant guitar btw...the difference between this and the Prophecy SG is staggering unplugged; the SG is dark and dead in comparison, and this rings like a bell in comparison, but still the lows have lots of sustain. Kinda more like a very bright strat. It's funny, you can actually hear those trem springs hidden inside too, although they won't affect the amplified sound I'm sure...I'd guess they will sound very similar amplified, probably the SG will have a more focused, gibson-like midrange and this a bit wider-sounding. We'll see soon, been so busy I haven't had a chance to go play it live yet.

[Duffy]

Looked at the blog. I wonder how you smoothed out the outside edges of the aluminum. The cut perimeter had to be fairly sharp and possibly jagged, plus the edge probably did not glue perfectly down on to the wood body of the guitar everywhere along the perimeter. There must have been some gaps where the glue didn't hold the aluminum down to the body perfectly and there must have been some jagged spots or bent areas. How did you blend in all of these possible disconformities? Or is it still a little rough around the perimeter? I imagine two part epoxy filler or glue could be used to make a nice interface between the aluminum top and the wood body where any obvious gaps and rough spots appear.

Also, the aluminum control plates on the back look as if the sharp points, especially on the trem cover plate, might catch on things or possibly scratch or cut you. The original covers were recessed into the body but the aluminum ones rest on top of the body, evidentally.

Definitely a nice looking guitar. It looks like it was a lot of work.

Why didn't you just block the body, like you did, including the single coil openings, fill the gaps with wood filler, finish with sealer, and sand the top smooth; and then spray the body with aluminum colored paint? I mean, do what you like, it's yours - that goes without saying, to each their own; but I'm just wondering why you put on the aluminum top instead of just painting it?

Maybe it's a tactile, feel of the metal type thing, or a visual thing. I read somewhere that the more metal you put on your guitar, the more it will change the tone of the guitar - whether this is true or not I don't know. It will be interesting to see how much different this guitar sounds, amplified, than it originally did.

[deeaa*]

I sawed the aluminum first roughly with a jigsaw, and before I sawed it any further, I glued it on with a special epoxy and as many vices as I could find. But first I bent it to shape a little where it needed to be bent.

In most of the guitar there was no need for much else, but at the very front this particular body has these cuts contouring the shape, and those I left initially without any glue, so the aluminum just went straight over. When the body was overall dry, I then first hammered those areas with a plastic-point hammer to fit the curves exactly and glued them. The only issue was the aluminum edge contorted unevenly.

Then I used a series of 3-4 different files, flat and curved, and simply filed off all the excess, starting with a very coarse rasp that ripped out like 2mm with every push. When it was nearly flush, I also hammered all the edges lightly rounded, and then finally filed / sanded the edges very smooth.

I had originally thought I'd leave the back wood-colored, but soon it was apparent that the aluminum stretched differently in different areas, and thus the transition was not a smooth line but wavy at best and in some places quite uneven, with the aluminum 'melting' onto the wood unevenly where it had to have been hammered more etc. Smooth to touch, but clearly seen uneven.

So I painted the rest, and came up with the black FX paint to hide the imperfections in the paint job, rather than go the route of lacquering it all over several times, as I wanted to use as thin a layer of paint & lacquer as possible on the body.

The trem cavity cover wasn't recessed to start with, but the control cover one was, and it still is, despite how it seems in the pic. But it's not sharp-edged, I filed and sanded those edges as well so they don't catch onto anything.

The whole idea was to use some material to instantly cover the front...originally I was looking for a nice maple top to use, but then the idea of aluminum came to mind. I didn't want to use paint because the body had way too many cavities and such on it already, and I had done it with paint before with Davette. On this one, I would have had to smooth out the new bridge's support block flush with the surface and also come up with some ways to fill in the two single-coil pickup cavities, unnecessary mic switch holes, and also use quite heavy filler anyway because the front had been de-painted with a heavy sander at some point and was quite worn. So I wanted to use some new, flat slab on the front anyway....aluminum was just a sudden idea I got.

Hard to say about the sound yet amplified, but I suppose the aluminum gives it a little extra 'ring' and liveliness at least amplified.

Acoustically it sounds much like Davette; what governs the overall sound is the light but hard woods & thin neck, which likely are what give the both a light style sound as well, clearly brighter than heavier guitars, and the very sturdy construction (really tightly seated necks and hardwood bridge insert blocks and bridge studs very tightly jammed in place) give them a solid sustain and a ringing low end as well. One might say that they sound naturally 'scooped' when compared with the SG or even Strats, much more low and high end than any of them. Only the 1-piece all maple-neck Squier comes close to similar top end, but the tilted headstock and bridge give these guitars a special tightness to the sound, while the Squier retains some of the lax 'twang' of a strat.

The scale; Fender on Davette and Gibson on this one, seems to have surprisingly little effect on sound unamplified. Other than scale, string width and the aluminum instead of paint the two are rather identical in weight, structures and hardware now.

The Fender scale does give a bit snappier feel and sound to picking ballade passages etc. but the difference is not as big as I expected, maybe because the wider string spacing makes picking even with fingers easier.

But, I'm expecting that has more impact on amplified sound...very interested to hear if I can detect any differences I'd guess come from the aluminum top. My guess is, there will be none.

[deeaa*]

OH MAN

I really like how this sounds.

Basically, it sounds just like any of my guitars, BUT there is this incredible sustain to it, and it's accompanied by a very very good clarity of chords. Hard or impossible to describe, but the guitar really does both scream like a mutha and also provides very very clear chords at nicely gainy sounds too. You know, you can hit a 6-string chord and pick individual sounds over that and everything is clear despite plenty of gain. It's very similar to the 'Davette' I built years back with the exact same princples but without the aluminum top, which may be the source of that crazy sustain, I'm not sure. But the Davette is similarly very clear-sounding even with plenty of gain.

I wish I had recorded this with something better than the cam's crappy mic---but anyway here's a clip of it in the action.

[Duffy]

Very nice guitar and no slouch of an amp either. That sustain is great and the tone is great. I imagine you will be tearing the place up with that guitar. Congratulations on a real nice hot rod project.