Guitar #1... Done!!!

Well folks, I'm proud to say that I've finished my first guitar: a solid body electric based on the instrument Paul Bigsby built for Merle Travis in 1948. See previous post for more info on that one. This guitar turned out great, exceeding my expectations in tone and feel. Although it looks pretty close to the Bigsby instrument, the actual construction is more like a Gibson Les Paul. It features a solid 1 1/2" thick mahogany body with a flame maple top and tortoise binding, a mahogany neck with a bound rosewood fingerboard, Gibson scale length, Jason Lollar dog ear P 90 pickups, a Tone Pros locking tune-o-matic bridge and an American made Bigsby vibrato system. It's finished in Lawrence McFadden nitrocellulose lacquer. It weighs a ton! 9.8 lbs... in the ballpark of your average Les Paul Custom. I can't say enough positive things about the building process. I've learned an amazing amount of information and developed some crucial hand skills. The instructors at Roberto-Venn know their stuff and hammer us with info every day, pushing us to craft the best instruments possible. Again, my thanks to R.C. Allen, owner of Bigsby #2, for lending me the headstock template Paul Bigsby himself made and used to craft his iconic guitars. This same template is featured on page 49 of the recent The Story of Paul Bigsby book.

So here's the guitar posing up against the old Ford pickup on the back lot of R-V, minutes after final completion:

Some more glamor shots:







So that's one big step closer to the launch of my own line of hand built, custom guitars. Much much more to come...