This one started a year ago and ended up on the back burner once I realized there were too many issues with its original neck, which was my first humble attempt at making my own.
Five or six guitars later, I decided the body would be a good ground for a few experiments. It was originally a rescue from the bins at my buddy's workshop (the same friend who gave me all that gold laminate I used on that little bass! He's getting a gift guitar next year.) I used the same body template for my douglas fir rescue of the Lungs neck and it proved to be comfortable enough a shape.
As per usual, here's my lame Photoshop rendering:
The bridge is yet another butchering of a Chinese Mustang-type thing. I ordered three or four of them a while back just to get the thimbles that went with them. They turned out to be quite nice in spite of costing 3 dollars a pop. Contrary to popular belief (and advertisement on the seller's page), they are made of steel rather than zinc alloy, and a lot sturdier than they look. I would have been OK using them as is hadn't it been for the 55mm string spacing. Using the same kind of jig I'd made for the saddles on the bass, I made a couple of brass threaded saddles. The thinking behind it is that the two triads of wound and unwound strings would more or less follow a straight line for intonation, and that I could approximate the radius of the neck with two saddles only. One of the outer strings would be out by 0.3mm with a 7.25" radius, which is easily corrected with a file. I located the height adjustment screws so they wouldn't interfere with a 52mm string spread and used four of the original six saddle holes for the intonation screws. Here's what it looks like in the flesh:
It's not the easiest bridge to adjust since it was not designed for this particular screw arrangement, but working with the screw threads tolerance, it is quite flexible and locks nicely into position, making the whole unit rock solid. The good news is that the Chinese bridge uses a standard post spacing, so if I end up not liking it I'll just swap it with a Staytrem.
Next experiment is the neck itself. I wanted to give the 'no truss-rod' approach a try. Some people swear by the organic quality of the sound you get from a truss-less guitar. I was more interested in the building process itself - it's a lot more work than simply using a truss rod. The shaft is a piece of service tree/rowan/sorb/mountain ash (this one has a few names!), which is the hardest/stiffest native lumber we have in Europe. And boy oh boy is it hard. Looks like a pinking version of maple, but this particular piece feels twice as hard to work. I routed out as much as I could from the back and let it sit for a month or so so the internal stresses would do what they had to do, before planing it again. The chechen fretboard went on, and I let that sit for another three weeks before sanding it flat again. Both times, there was a bit of movement and I was glad I'd waited. I then sanded some relief in the fretboard at the same time I was radiusing it to counteract the back bow induced by the fretting. In my previous builds, that back bow always ended up winning the fight against string tension, so I figured it would be the way to go here. It turned out straight as an arrow once the frets were on.
Anyway, here's the body & neck prior to fretting:
(21 frets, 24" scale, 7.25 radius, 8mm burgundy Kydex fret markers)
Finally, I wanted to go a bit weird with the pickups. Thanks again to ShadowEclipse for vetting the electronics!
Bridge is a twelve-slug, low wind, asymmetrical humbucker. Neck is typical Alnico 2 Mustang/Strat type. And between them will be wedged a very low wind ceramic bar thing, with the wire wound directly onto the magnet. I will only be used in series with the other two, it would be too tinny to use by itself. It's a reproduction of my primitive first-ever pickup, which was built that way and only sounded good when coupled with another pickup. Those have a nasty, sizzling attack that really cuts through the mix (and people's ears when used on its own). Maybe I should rename it 'The Black Crow King', on account of its beak and wing-ish pickguard?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPWamnWE498
(and of course...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSl4KX7zBTQ
