Muttley's Custom LP Guitar Build

So, I finally found a spare hour to buff out the finish and cut the nut on this thing and just now I stuck a set of D'addario chrome 11's on it.

Loving it so far.

More pics tomorrow when I can get a decent camera on it. The camera on this phone sucks at shiny guitar pics... Pretty much job done now though... Thanks for following and yes, you can do this too..;)

lp1.jpg
 
Last edited:
I've been hanging out for the money shot.
WOW, love your work young man!
I'm particularly impressed with the tremlessness of the beast - it look so much more a "classic" in lines etc, (though a big fat Bigsby can look good on a guitar).
 
Nice job, Mutt. That's beautiful. It's an interesting mongrel with your feature choices: '52 trapeze and P90s w/a '56 Tune-o-matic. I like it.
 
nice work ..... not surprising but still ............ very nice.
I really like the burst being so light.

The trapeze tailpiece gives it a whole different vibe ........ surely it's gonna impact the sound too.
Curious how that turns out and since you wound your own p'ups I'm gonna want to hear a clip.
 
muttley said:
More pics tomorrow when I can get a decent camera on it
Click to expand...
It looks fantastic. I can't wait to see them. What was the final recipe for the pickups? How do they sound?
 
Hey mutt, i really like what the zpoxy does for the grain - bringing out the natural brilliance. How much of the bottle do you go through for the build, was it three coats and sand before the sealer?

Absolutely Brill Smashing.
 
Lt. Bob said:
nice work ..... not surprising but still ............ very nice.
I really like the burst being so light.

The trapeze tailpiece gives it a whole different vibe ........ surely it's gonna impact the sound too.
Curious how that turns out and since you wound your own p'ups I'm gonna want to hear a clip.
Click to expand...

There is no real way to asses how it may impact or alter the sound as apposed to a stop bar. To my mind when you have a trapeze tailpiece you seem to get a bit more "wood" in the sound. That may just be a bit of hang up from my archtop building which I do mostly, who knows. To my ears you also get a little less sustain but a more complex all round sound. I put that down to there being more going on behind the bridge rather than the vibration just bouncing back up the string after a a short trip to the stop bar.

The pickups have turned out good. The bridge may needed to have been a bit more over wound as the balance isn't quite right yet. I'm going to move it up closer to the strings first see what I get. If that don't work I'm gonna wind another with about 15% over wind and try that. The neck pickup is my own Charlie Christian design for want of a better description. I experimented with them on the HR build and came up with a pickup that really does have that mellow punch that the blue note players had. Thats pretty much my favorite sound right now and what I use the most as I'm doing a lot of gigs that need that sort of sound. If I add in the bridge it gets enough extra bite that I'm hoping I can use that for the jump blues stuff I do quite a bit of where I need to cut through the horns and bigger sound.

I have a few gigs this weekend and I shall put this thing through it's paces... Maybe try and get a few soundclips up. What sort of thing do you want to hear?
 
JCH said:
It looks fantastic. I can't wait to see them. What was the final recipe for the pickups? How do they sound?
Click to expand...

Just posted back to LT boob with some detail. TBH I want to give it a proper run out before judging them. I cant wind it up too loud here aty home of in the workshop.

I'm not too happy with the vol/tone pots either. The ones I used seem to suck out more capacitance than usual. I shall experiment with those too. I wired it old school with the tone after the vol as per early gibson spec and used 25OK pots... Not convinced that was the best choice for these p90 styles pups..
 
blaumph2cool said:
Hey mutt, i really like what the zpoxy does for the grain - bringing out the natural brilliance. How much of the bottle do you go through for the build, was it three coats and sand before the sealer?

Absolutely Brill Smashing.
Click to expand...

I only grain filled the mahogany on the body. The top is maple and doesn't need grain filling and the neck I wanted open grain with a tru oil finish which is my favorite feel right now. More "organic" and warmer to my mind. YMMV, everyone has a favorite feel for the neck. The back of the headstock wqas filled as a test for the zpoxy.

I suppose in all I used about half an egg cup full. You don't need a lot. I got a litre in total and I would think that would be good for at least 15 or 20 builds as long as the shelf life holds..
 
Sky Blue Lou said:
Nice job, Mutt. That's beautiful. It's an interesting mongrel with your feature choices: '52 trapeze and P90s w/a '56 Tune-o-matic. I like it.
Click to expand...

Yeh it kind of is, If you read through the rationale in the first post behind what I hoped to achieve a lot of that is in there. I wanted a trapeze for the reasons outlined above. I wanted p90's to my spec. I wanted different frets and no binding nibs. I was going to put a floating bridge on there as well but in the end I went with a Nashville style. It was starting to get away from me at that point. I dont like to change too much on a clone build because it is hard to tell what effect each aspect may have.

All in all it was a fun build done in the spare time I have in the workshop with a few extra hours here and there. I'm actually surprised I got it together so quick as usually my projects get put on the back burner so I can do the paying stuff. It's nice to actually build one for me. I haven't done that in a long time. I'm gonna do some more but don't tell the wife... Next is gonna be an ES 175 and a strat cos I have a lump of Figured Ash crying out Strat to me... I have never actually owned a proper strat apart from a Japanese one I got given when a customer went tits up. It's still in the case....
 
rayc said:
I've been hanging out for the money shot.
WOW, love your work young man!
I'm particularly impressed with the tremlessness of the beast - it look so much more a "classic" in lines etc, (though a big fat Bigsby can look good on a guitar).
Click to expand...

Vibrato is the work of the devil...:cursing:

;)
 
Not convinced that was the best choice for these p90 styles pups..
Click to expand...
Yeah, but experiment before you rewind. For a bridge P-90 in my Junior I ended up with a 500k volume pot, a 1 meg tone pot, and a .033 cap. Play with the pickup height vs. the pole height. It can really change things too. P-90's are really powerful. There's a lot of wire and magnets there. 15% is a huge overwind and would darken the tone considerably. Again, It looks wonderful.
 
muttley600 said:
I have a few gigs this weekend and I shall put this thing through it's paces... Maybe try and get a few soundclips up. What sort of thing do you want to hear?
Click to expand...
I'm always mostly interested in clean sounds ( I end up doing a lot of faux pedal steel ) but anything you put up would be fine.
And a few details on whatever amp the clips are from.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top