Official Luthiers Forum!

Well, im failry new here... been lurking a while... built my first last year...
Modified prs shape, black limba / wenge body. Wenge neck with Ziricote fretboard and ebony biding. Stainless steel jumbo frets...


Now it's time for #2.....

This one is going to be
Alder body
Padouk neck
ebony fretboard
pearl dots and pearl side dots
I'll post more images as work is done...

Hi, Jonny! Welcome to the forum! I like your first, and it looks like number 2's gonna be nice as well.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Heya Mike,
Thanks for the welcome...
I followed your TDPRI build and rather enjoyed it...

More progress...
Day before yesterday some goodies came in from LMII.... I freaked out like a kid who just inherited a chain of candy stores.... wasnt pretty.....

That's Stainless fretwire, double acting trussrod, LMII straitedge, macassar ebony fretboard (im a little on the fence about the fretboard... i like it... but it's significantly more..... brown... than i had hoped for... i think it'll clean up nicely and should make a killer fretboard... Im not sure exactly what i was expecting....) + a bunch of little goodies...
I ordered the bass fretboard so i could get the full 24 fret slots + have room for the floyd rose nut + have some extra material to laminate into the scarf joint...
Finished the comfort contours on the body as well....


I feel as though I may have gone a weeeeee bit overboard with the arm contour and made it too deep.... but only time will tell once i string her up and such.....

Lookin' good so far. I like the Macassar Ebony board. I've considered it several times myself, but always end up with Indian Rosewood, lol.
As for your contours, I like the belly cut. Don't worry about the forearm contour. I like them deep. The newer guitars have much shallower contours, but if you look back at a builder like Fender, for example, their contours used to be much deeper. I think this is much more comfortable for the player. I also like the look.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I cut off the end of the fretboard after the 24th fret the other night with my fret saw.......
At first I thought the saw burnt the wood... but I dont remember it getting particularly hot.... and it remained black even after I sanded a little.... the wood on the end grain where the cut is is absolutely PITCH BLACK.... so Im thinking the brown appearance of the face may just be some sort of oxidization from when the wood was rough cut into a fretboard and sat around.... hopefully when I polish her up she'll be BLACK BLACK BLACK... we'll see i spose... perhaps a layer of tung oil would stop it from oxidizing.....
I'll be cutting the fretboard taper on a bandsaw hopefully tonight... so that should hopefully give me a good idea as to what the ebony will look like once processed....

Ah, this is good.....
I took some time to smooth the forarm cut and blend it to the body..... i think i like it a little more now... Comfort is ALWAYS a good thing....


Thank you, at first it was supposed to be an Ibanez Jem ish kinda guitar....
But I HATE the sharp/weird looking lower horn on the jem's + RG's
Wound up spending weeks messing around in CAD trying to get it to look right....

Personally, I like Mac Ebony BECAUSE of the brown streaks and other colors you get. But for the purists out there, I think Taylor and some other companies stain their fretboards black when they're not naturally so. Not sure what product they use for it, but you can probably figure that out with a google search.

Dont get me wrong,
I enjoy the brown streaks / figure of the board....
What i was expeciting was a jet black board with brown streaks....
what i recived was more of a dark brown board with light brown streaks.... something more similar to a brown version of dark east indian rosewood....
Im not suggesting it's bad in any way... just not what I was expecting...(which is likely the result of my skewed expectations) and from the looks of things... once it's sanded smooth... it may be more of what I was expecting anyways.....
So it's all A++
lmii sells stain for fingerboards... but like i said above i was looking for a little figgure anyways...

I like the "racing stripe" on the previous guitar. You got chops man. Keep it up.

Progress has been incredibly slow....
Got the fretboard taper cut and smoothed....
Im working on my scarf joint at the moment....
Cut it with the table saw but it left a terrible mess behind... cleaning up the mess with my limited tools has been..... difficult..... I think im getting tenis elbow from block sanding....
Went to lee valley and bought some tools and such... including a little contraption for sharpening my plane... thinking i may try that approach and see if it works any better for me......
On the up side... the ebony seems to be looking darker and darker every time I work with it....
Not sure what's going down... Perhaps all of the tim hortons coffie I've been drinking lately is giving me brain damage and changing my color perception..... either way... it's all good!!!

Welcome to the forum! AWESOME first build - also looking forward to seeing number 2 - Coincidentally, I started on my #2, whilst waiting on the painter to send back number 1- I am also using Padauk on my second build! (And Cocobolo & Zebrawood) - you picked some really nice woods so far man! Keep them pics coming!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Thanks for the kind words Virgil.
My first really turned out better than I imagined it could....
Learned SOOOO much....
I've been following your dueling dragons build.... epic.... seems like the kinda build where your average joe would bite off more than they can chew and then fail misserably... but you've pulled it off... It looks spectacular....

Yeah, unfortunately, I ain't out of the woods yet - there has been quite a few stressful moments over the past several months, in between getting advice from an old salt at this, reading tons of things online, measuring 33 times, then sleeping on it, then meditating a day or 2 over it THEN cutting lol.... my guess is you really didn't get "lucky" on your first build - looks like you took your time - it certainly LOOKS like you put some thought into it - does it play well? Action/intonation in good?

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Yeah, we've all had those stressfull moments....
It's a pretty epic feeling when you come out ahead tho....
And a pretty terrible feeling when you dont...
But that's the excitement of luthiery....

It plays very well... intonation is good to within a cent or two... action is the lowest out of any of my guitars... (fender strat, gibson les paul, Yamaha something or other)
just recently had an issue with the high E string... was pushing the limits and cut the nut slot just a WEEEE bit too low.. now it buzz's... all part of the learning curve i spose.... now i gotta cut a new nut... or superglue the slot....
Im not real proud of my neck carve...botch'd it a little but you can hardly feel it..., my joinery on the body... had some gap's, or my Ibanez jem style input jack..... twas not pretty....
but they're all mistakes I learned a great deal from... and hopefull I'll get em right on this one.... My body joint is MUCH MUCH better.... so obviously I learned something...
My planing and angle of attack has changed on many items as well...

Here too - I feel I am a little less clueless with the neck stuff on designing Axe #2 ... I had a smaller tenon than I really wanted and it really kicked my butt trying to fit it into the body - I am going without a tenon on number 2 (Still going for set-necks)- I am so anal about stuff and when it comes to things I am learning, that makes it even more difficult. This guitar tops the list of all lifetime endeavors (So far) and as I am nearing the end of an almost year-long process, all I can really think about is the next build LOL - I like the HUGE difference you have in your builds - seems like we go for elements that we really like in guitars and then try to emulate that somehow into our own styling - keep it going man!

_________________
"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Alrighty,
A little bit of progress...
Finally got my scarf joint glue'd up....
the joint's came out epic awsome.... but they're ever sooo slightly mis aligned... so i need to joint about 1/16th off of the whole surface.... problem is i dont have a jointer.... not sure how i'll get around that one.... perhaps i'll try some cabinet shops and see if someone will do it for me for a small fee....
I may just whipp out the hand plane... it's been my go to tool lately..... im glad i bought it....


I went with a laminated scarf joint to match the fretboard.....
I think it's going to look epic awsome... but only time will tell once she's carved......
sadly... that's all the progress for today.....

Nice! That's something I keep meaning to do with a scarf joint, and every time I do one, I'm so focused on not screwing up the alignment that I forget to add a veneer between the two pieces. Did you put a slice of ebony in there? That should look fantastic once it's carved. I've always thought that's a very elegant design. Non-luthiers can never wrap their heads around how that's done.

Yes it's macassar ebony...
I had to order a bass sized fretboard from LMII in order to ensure they're was enough room for the floyd nut + 24 frets.... so I cut off the end of the fretboard and used that for the scarf lamination... the wood should match the fretboard pretty well... so i think it'll add a cool effect where the fretboard meets the scarf joint....
So far im super happy with how it's turning out....

Still contacting cabinet shops to see if someone can help me out....
but in the mean time....
had a little weekend side project.....


It's a homebrew Tim Hortons L-pad Attenuator....
Now I can have my coffee and attenuate with it too....
Odly enough I dont even own a tube amp... Im actually planning to use it with my 80 watt hugh's & kettner solid state head... It's got real grubby sound up untill about 3 on the master volume.....
tinkere'd with it a little but not sure if it worked or not.... starting to think im just not a fan of the h&k at all.....

HA HA!!!! Just got an email from a cabinet shop that can joint my neck blank... epic win!!!!
It's gonna be a good monday....

Hey, what's in dat can?

Just a 200 watt L-pad attenuator. it's a resister network... looks like a pot... it basicly ensures the amp always see's a 16 ohm load... while adjusting the volume to the speaker....
You can buy them on ebay for like 20 bux or so.
goes between the amp output and the speaker... allows you to run the amp very loud, and then turn the volume down before the speaker... so you get that nice phat "pushed hard" amp sound without all the volume.....
Im not entirely convinced it works all that well.. it does attenuate the volume... but it doesnt sound all that more "pushed" or "wide open" to me.....
it could be they're only really usefull on tube amps tho.....
Meh, didnt cost that much... so im not really upset....

Not much progress on #2.. im in the middle of packing for a move so it's been tough to find time + tools....
I did however manage to get out to a cabinet shop that let me run my neck blank thru their jointer....
they're was ALOT more material than i thought that had to be removed... im soooo glad i didnt do it by hand... that woulda been a nightmare....
either way it's straiter than an arrow now and ready to rock....
Just gotta rout the truss rod slot....
In other news.... Im working on a fixing up a jackson to sell and help pay for more parts for #2..... pulled the frets and fretboard markers last night.....
All went pretty well... except for 1 chip i missed....

This bad boy'll get a stainless refret plus some black MOP inlay dots... should be epic....