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...

Nearly There...

I couldn't resist a quick mock up of the electric. Here it is, finish buffed but not perfect yet:

Ah, The Gretsch...

A new website detailing the introduction and metamorphosis of the iconic Gretsch 6120. Many of the photos are credited to Chris Guido, a fella I met while working at Rudy's Music. Heck of a nice guy with a drool inducing collection of Gretsch guitars.

Inlays & Heels

Big push to finish to work on the acoustics this week. We have to put the electrics on the back burner (though mine is cured and ready to be buffed and assembled) so we can get the acoustics into the spray booths asap. Today I inlaid my acoustic fingerboard with a simple fret marking theme. Below, a shot of the fingerboard drilled out for the mother of pearl dot inlays:

After drilling these holes, I set the inlays in place, packing some ebony dust and super glue around them. The below photo shows the inlays crudded up with dust and glue. Once the glue dries, a quick zap with some sandpaper levels everything out and erases all the excess garbage, leaving a clean fingerboard.

And the sanded finger board:

The rest of the day was spent carving the neck heel (where the neck meets the body):

View of the heel from the back:

Another mock up of the acoustic:

At this point I have to carve the rest of the neck, finalize the neck fit to the body and finish sand the whole guitar before the lacquer booth. This guitar is looking great!

We're getting there...

Acoustic Shots

Here's a shot of my acousic headstock, inlaid with the G logo and mocked up with Schaller tuners:

A shot of the whole instrument mocked up. This coming week we'll be carving the neck and fitting it to the body.

First thing Monday I'll be pulling the electric off the drying rack, buffing the finish to its final shine and running through the final hardware assembly. This thing is almost done!! Below, Lady Carolyn holds G #1 just before taking off for Thanksgiving:

Acoustic Sprint Week!

We've got a short week to finish a TON of work on the acoustics. Since we're off Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving, we've got two less days to get these guitars ready for the spray booth. As of last Friday afternoon, we've bound and fit the bottom wedge on the body; shaped and inlaid the headstock and are on our way to binding and inlaying the fingerboard. There is much to be done and I'm loving the fast pace of it all. We're being pushed to get a lot done quickly... we only have 8 weeks left! A couple shots:

The acoustic body: binding glued and taped on both top and back:

The back, taped:

The binding went on yesterday and I let it set up overnight, pulling the tape off this morning. It needs a bit of finessing (scraping, sanding and gap filling) before calling it 'done' but all and all everything came out looking pretty sharp. I'll post photos of the final sanded body and bottom wedge tomorrow.

Below, Joe Parker holds my Bigsby/Travis electric which is still hanging in the humidity room while the lacquer cures. Come Monday morning, it will be ready for wet sanding, buffing and final assembly. I should have my first guitar done in about a week... fingers crossed.

Amps n' Acoustic Binding

I finished building my first amplifier yesterday. After a couple misplaced wires and some shoddy components blowing up (it wasn't my fault... honest!) I got this thing going and it sounds killer. For the amp class, all the students (and a few instructors) built the same amplifier from a kit sold by the Weber speaker company. Unfortunately, they stock some fairly cheap-o components with these particular kits, hence the blow ups: I had a filter cap and rectifier tube blow during the initial tests. Luckily, our instructors were ready for this and had better replacement parts on hand. This is pretty much as simple as tube amps get. The straight forward design allows for oodles of tone tweaking once the amp is completed. Swapping components out is a breeze and really opens up the possibility of dialing in a specific sound you're after. I've never really been one for geeking out on the subtle variances of vacuum tubes, swapping them out and comparing them; it just seemed like yet another black hole of endless tweaking in the world of guitar madness. But this simple amp allows for plenty of tinkering so maybe more of that will be in the future. Putting this amp together really makes you appreciate the stellar work of companies like Victoria or Blankenship. Their amps are flawless works of art. Open up the back circuit board of one of their amps and all the wires are immaculately soldered and arranged. The amp class was a lot of fun. I avoided getting electrocuted and now I have a pretty sweet lil' amp:

While the lacquer on my electric guitar cures over the next two weeks, all eyes are on the acoustics. Now that the body is all glued up, we are adding binding and the bottom wedge. The binding and wedge basically serve to hide the joinery between the wooden sides and the top & back. Basically, it cleanly brings the instrument together from an aesthetic point of view. Here's a couple shots of the work in progress: we use vacuum pumps to suspend the bodies of the acoustics while rough sanding the sides, making them smooth and perpendicular to the top & back prior to binding:

Yesterday we routed channels for the binding and purfling on the body. Below, Scotty routes his binding channels as instructor, Don, looks on to ensure a job well done:

Here's a shot of my acoustic body immediately after routing for binding and purfling. Purfling is an ornamental strip of thin material sandwiched below and/or inside the binding and the acoustic body. Besides hiding the joinery between the top, back and sides, the binding/purfling really frame the guitar's curves and gives the instrument a super clean look. Hopefully you can get a sense of the depth of the binding channel when looking at the top left of this image:

And the back:

Here's a shot of the bottom wedge as I fit it up. The wedge is another piece of rosewood (the same wood I'm using for the back and sides) with two thin pieces of maple tucked on either side that will eventually be mitered to match the rosewood/maple binding that will go around the top and back of the guitar... more on that as work progresses. While there are plenty of binding options to choose from, I kept it pretty simple and went with this simple setup so the maple purfling strips will give the guitar a clean pin striped look while the rosewood binding matches the back and sides.

And whadda ya know, I got home tonight and the good folks at Gretsch Discussion Pages/Tru-Arc Bridges mailed me a care package. Apparently they are producing 'official' Chet Atkins strings again and hooked me up with a couple free sets to check out... neato! Thanks Proteus!