I had de-prioritized my gratuitous guitar projects since the start of spring so I could concentrate on outdoor homeowner projects. I have moved many many cubic meters of sandy soil by hand. I'll give a quick recap of that. Feel free to skip ahead to the guitar stuff though.
My back fence was long overdue for replacing, so I decided to knock that out finally. The problem was that my yard sloped down towards my fence and decades of insufficient vegetation to control erosion, in combination with a previous owner installing sheets of aluminum along the base of the fence had created a situation where the old fence was more or less buried. So to start, I had to dig down to get near the level of the soil on the other side of the fence, creating a trench approximately 70 feet long by 2 feet wide by 1-1/2 feet deep. Then, I had to dig down even further to remove the aluminum sheets, going down almost 2 feet more in a narrower trench. All this just to get to the point where I could take the old fence down. This was followed by demolition of the old fence, fine tuning the soil level of my "trench" to match the other side, digging post holes, concrete work, etc. etc. Then, eventually I had a strong and beautiful new fence. Then a I took a few weekends "off" to paint one side of my house. Then it was back to digging - because I still had a two foot cliff in front of my fence. I set to work on regrading the earth leading to the fence, going out 12 feet in preparation to install a retaining wall next spring and working against a mid September deadline that I set for myself, so I could get some evergreens planted in the newly graded area at the perfect time of year. So here it is, the end of August and I have maybe 1 cubic meter left to move and am mentally preparing myself to drop a grand on trees.
With all of that going on, and working overtime at my day job, there was just no time for guitar building. I have been working on a ton of pedal projects though since it is easier to find a few minutes here and there to solder in a few components. Here are a few that I've completed recently:
Cornish G2 Fuzz clone. This was from Aion. They use the name Cygnus for this project, which means swan, so I decided to try out this feather pattern.
Mad Professor Deep Blue Delay clone. I used imagery of Kali, the Hindu goddess of Time, Creation, Destruction and Power
(L) BJFE Honeybee OD clone featuring Cosmo Kramer
(R) Dinosaural OTC-201 Opticompressor clone featuring George Costanza
Big Muff Op-Amp Fuzz clone featuring Elaine Benes
My Jerry Seinfeld pedal is almost done, I'm just missing one pot. There are five other pedals in various states of completion too. Including a few that are giving me exciting new challenges. Clones of the
Spaceman Gemini IV - Dual Fuzz Generator and what I'm most excited about a clone of the
Spaceman Orion Analog Spring Reverb to which I'm adding a few special mods.
As for actual guitars, I didn't have any particular plans for anything in the immediate future. But then a few weeks ago I was filling up on gas and was so pissed off that during the middle of a pandemic they had let the receipt paper run out at the pump and I had to go inside for my receipt and deal with an idiot that couldn't even be bothered to wear a mask correctly, that I ended up snapping off the fuel door of my car. I bought a used replacement off ebay and ordered some matching paint.
So now I am left with 95% of a large spray can of Sage Green Metallic (and I already have a few cans of clear, having used the same company for my pink Jazzcaster a few years back). OSGser adamrobertt
finished a Jazzmster in this same color last year and I think his looked pretty darn good. I have a pair of my custom 3D printed jaguar covers from other projects that I ended up abandoning and some poplar body blanks ready to go, I should just need a few parts and pieces. I'm hoping that I can get this painted before the weather turns shitty for the year.
Here's what I'm thinking, I've always liked the ugly pickguards on Broncos and Musicmasters from the 70s. So this is kind of an upgraded Bronco with a Jaguar vibrato and two bridge pickups wired to a 3-way switch to get Series, Parallel, or Single coil options, similar to the bridge pickups on my orange Jagstang build. It has a bit more going on than a Bronco, but it's still more stripped down than a Mustang or Jaguar. Black plastics and a Pau Ferro neck - because I think it has lovely grain that works well with green. I will do a swimming pool route in case I want to switch up the pickup locations down the road and may use a Mustang control plate instead of one large pickguard.
Since I have a few poplar blanks ready, I would also like to start on my Domino copy this fall
And my wife wants me to build her something short scale. Body style is TBD, we need to find something that will work for her curvy figure while sitting down.