It's alive!

danw

danw

cheap bastard
Just wired up my frankenstein homemade guitar this afternoon. I basically wanted to see if I could make a functional instrument, and I've been happily surprised with the result. It's far from perfect, and many, many mistakes were made, but the next one will be better for it. This thing has been a huge learning experience. And it plays as well as my other guitars.

15-dollar craigslist neck, suspected to be from a Teisco

3-layer body glued up from Lowe's western redcedar. Hollow wings, solid center. The lighter-colored portion is raised a little.

basswood center strips / accents to cover up hideous wood joints. These are partially inlayed but also raised a little.

bocote tailpiece with individual string-benders, and matching pickup rings and knobs with swirly inserts.

2 minwax water-based greens -> shellac -> tru-oil

GFS Dream 180 pickups and roller bridge

2 vol, 2 tone, coil tap, and bypass switch (push/pulls)

It'll be a few days on the sound samples (I start teaching again Wednesday), but I'm really happy with what I'm hearing so far.

Pictures:

finished-front.jpg


back-finished.jpg


I'm open to all criticism, but try and keep it constructive.
 
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I vote: uber kewl! That's an excellent example of a custom build.

Yes, please post some examples! I always felt the Japanese necks are very nice to start with - the body is outstanding. You might be the next Hamer!
 
Thanks all for the kind words. I'll see if I can get a recording of it this weekend.

When I started this project, I didn't see many guitars made entirely of wood this soft, and I was a little worried it would just fold up like a lawn chair -- that's why the 5/16" bolt through the middle. It goes between the neck bolts on one end, between the tailpiece on the other, in an effort to support the string tension. I don't know if it's necessary or not, but it makes for some decent straplocks and keeps it from being too neck-heavy.
 
I don't think you'll have to be worried about someone stealing it and trying to sell it to a pawn shop. ;^)
 
wow, it looks like a disgusting store-made cake. with bob villa accents. :cool:

(doesn't mean the guitar looks disgusting, green cakes=disgusting, green guitars=not).

how do you like dream 180's? I love mine.

since you already have a roller bridge, maybe you should make a wooden bigsby for a complete "forest" look :rolleyes:

i think it's a great example of creative imagination. i've tried several times just drawing an idea of an electric guitar that wouldn't look like a strat or a les paul (or an explorer or a V) and it's not as easy as it seems. I mean you can do an oval or a toilet seat, but it just doesn't have that same appeal.
 
Gear_Junky said:
wow, it looks like a disgusting store-made cake. with bob villa accents. :cool:

(doesn't mean the guitar looks disgusting, green cakes=disgusting, green guitars=not).

how do you like dream 180's? I love mine.

since you already have a roller bridge, maybe you should make a wooden bigsby for a complete "forest" look :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Thanks (I think). So far I'm loving the Dream 180s. Huge variety of sounds out of these things, many of which I didn't have on my other guitars. I love the clean sounds in particular.

My original plan was in fact to make a Bigsby-type tailpiece for this one, but it's a little ways out of my reach technically, I think. In order to make a floating system of any kind, I'd need a source of good springs (didn't know where to find these) and the roller action would need to be very smooth to ensure it always came back to the same place. I think real Bigsbys have needle bearings or some such thing in the roller. In mine, the benders only go up, but it's kind of neat having one for each string. And it's simple; it's just six little wood pieces on a brass rod, no bearings or anything. The tension pulls them back to the stop, so they always come back to pitch. My goal was to get some pedal-steel-like sounds out of it. We'll see if that happens.

And yeah, the "forest" look is what I was going for. This thing has all the colors of my yard in the summer. The knobs were originally designed to look like tiny gnarled trees. While I missed that mark, I still think they look pretty cool.
 
Riffmaster said:
I really like that look. Matching headsock and I would've starting making offers. :D Nice work!
Click to expand...

Thanks. I started to put a matching headstock on this thing, but I was a little worried I'd screw the tuners up somehow. The black's tasteful enough.
 
danw said:
The knobs were originally designed to look like tiny gnarled trees.
Click to expand...

the whole guitar looks like a GNARLY little tree. :p

i'm sure you'll come up with something for the vibrato - you got this far.

I am nowhere near your tech skills, but I notice that even though I feel totally unsure and even apprehensive before each project, if I really know what I want and what I'm doing, I always end up with results I want, without spending more than I wanted.

maybe you could score a used solid-body style bigsby and then just cover it with forestry :D
 
I keep picturing the Ents from the Lord of the Rings playing it - some real slow tempo song, I guess. Nice job!!!
 
wow ........ VERY nice man!

Unique and not in an ugly way. I think I like everything about it.
 
Finally, a clip

of my favorite two sounds from this thing so far.



The clean is both pickups most of the way up, slightly favoring the bridge. The fuzz track is mostly neck. Tones are all the way up. Both through my old solid-state peavey onto a Tascam 424.
 
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