I've been building guitars and basses for few years now, I think this is the 5th guitar on roll. Have to try and get decent photos of the previous ones too when I happen to have my camera with me at our rehearsal place.
But about this thing named Mongrel. I study machine design at a local UNI and we had a course about sheetmetal design and we were given free hands to do what we want as course work. I've been toying with the idea to do a guitar body out of sheet metal for few years now and thought this would be perfect time to execute that idea as I could use laser cutter to cut the plates and have lathe and all the normal machine shop tools round to do little parts.
So this is the end result of few months work. Danelectro inspired offset body with 25 inch scale, baltic birch neck with celluloid binding and inlays, strat pickups with 4 way switching and a wilkinson wraparound bridge. Finish on the body is brushed metal with acrylic clear coat on top and truoil treated neck.
The name Mongrel seems kind of obvious as this guitar has elements from loads of different guitars. The main idea was to get a kind of jaguar sounding guitar with a bit longer scale length. It has some of the same sparkle and brightness and I'm really impressed of the sound plugged in. Acoustically it has a long sustain and it is a bit on the loud side but it sounds surprisingly close to wood bodied guitars I've made. To me it seems the sheet metal body makes more difference to the sound plugged in.
But without further ado, pictures:
I did take some pictures along the project so if people are interested I could try to make a brief overview of the process.
