LP, Tele, Jazz Mashup. "the Preacher". FINISHED on page 7.

[Ursa Minor]

Fair enough. If that's your pref. go for it!
Decal design, let alone headstock design is not an easy task. Fender kinda capitalized on their headstocks and now they are engrained in our heads as the defacto. Makes it hard to compete and bring in new designs without folks going....ewwww.....

Either way, looking for to seeing the final product.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

If my logo doesn't at least hearken of the Fender logos used around 1969 (the first year of the paisley models, or there abouts), I'll probably go no logo...

The headstock of my Tele/Gretsch build is CBS-sized & it looked abnormally HUGE until I put a decal on it. You'll definitely want something on there & I'm sure it'll look great, whatever you choose.

[AWSchmit]

I'm still not sold on my weird mashup name, but I'm liking this over all:



I made the Smith part from scratch and draw the flower part and put those both into photoshop with parts from what I posted before. The yellow will be gold.

[AWSchmit]

Possible "model" names:

Le Pelemaster
Les Pelemaster
Jelester
LPTmaster
LPJcaster
Telepaster
Preacher
Pelejaster

What's your favorite? Another suggestions? (It can be not related to a tele, LP, or Jazz.) I don't want it to relate to the finish as I may make more of the body shape in the future that might not be paper covered.

[AWSchmit]

Since none of my mashup names are really growing on me, the name Preacher, that came to me while combining different parts of those mashups started growing on me so maybe:



I treated it similarly to the mustang logo.

[Rockinrob86]

That's a cool name!

[AWSchmit]

That's a cool name!

Thanks bud. So far, it's sticking.

[AWSchmit]

Things are getting real... Started wet sanding the other day. Still have to go through the grits and polish. I did a mockup of the decal:



Now I'm just waiting on my decal paper. My goal is to paint one decal with gold paint and then cover it with another decal to ensure the black lines are crisp. I'm going to attempt to lay the top decal onto the bottom while it;s still on the paper so I can cut the outside perimeter of both decals are the same time... I'm worried though that the top decal will slip when soaking the bottom, but I will have enough to experiment. If that doesn't work I will just do my best to cut them the same before stacking. I've done it before and it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't perfect either.

[AWSchmit]

Another thing... If you do a good bit of guitar work or projects and you would have need for bone nut blanks, I highly recommend this guy: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Handcarfted-Gui ... 1544157290" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



He's based out of Taiwan and sells a great product that just needs fine adjusting, just like every nut blank I've ever used, even ones that were supposed to be ready to use out of the box. The linked auction above is for 20 nut blanks. I didn't need that many so I contacted the seller and asked if I could buy just five. He promptly sent me a ebay offer to sell me 5 blanks for just $2 (plus $8 shipping). I got them very quickly, much faster than he had predicted, and they were great quality. As an added plus, he sent me 6, not 5, and they are long enough to cut two nut blanks from each blank. So essentially, I got 12 fender style bone nut blanks for $10... Can not beat that. I have no affiliation with this seller other than my recent purchase, and I can't swear your experience will be just like mine, but I can't imagine it would be far off.

[AWSchmit]

Welp... I got my decal paper in today... I've gone and gave myself too many fun options.

[AWSchmit]

I don't have any pictures, but I did the west sanding up to 2000 grit this weekend... As soon as I can steal a free 20 minutes I will polish. Those pics should be nice.. Not sure when I'll get to assembly.

Another thing of note too is that the neck pocket is a little too shallow (may have mentioned this before) but I plan to make a spacer for the bridge plate to raise the bridge to a proper spot fr the neck. Even those this is kind of crappy it helps do two things.
1) with the bride higher putting on strings will be easier.
2) no neck shims, so the heel can set firmly against the pocket with no air gaps.

I'm going to try to make the bridge spacer today while I'm killing time at my mom's house where there's a planer. I think I'll make it out of Maple.

[Supa-Stang]

Really looking forward to seeing this completed. The wallpapered finish is outstanding.

[AWSchmit]

I did some polishing last night. I'm happy with the neck, so went ahead and put a decal on it. The body isn't as glossy as I would like, so I think I'm going to have to get a polishing wheel for my drill and give it any other go. So far so good though.


I applied the decal on top of the clear. Normally I would prefer to bury it in the clear, but since I have a bad habit of tearing down projects later on after completing them, I didn't want to have to sand the face of the head stock to reuse the neck on another project or if I would end up selling it.

Really looking forward to seeing this completed. The wallpapered finish is outstanding.

Thanks man. I'm hoping to make some more progress on it this weekend. My wife and kids will be out of town for the weekend so I may be able to get to it some. We'll see..

[AWSchmit]

Last night I learned a new decal trick...

The decal sheets I bought were these ones: http://www.decalpaper.com/product-p/tryc.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not sure how similar these would be to any other sheets you can buy, but I kept having problems with the thinner parts coming free from the back and curly up while the thicker parts where still stuck to the backing. This caused those exposed lifted parts to loose their sticky. So instead of dropping them in a bowl of water I had to lay the decal face down and take my finger and apply warm water to the back where the decal was the biggest, I'd let that set a bit and then move out from there doing the smallest sections last. After that I put water all over the backing a couple more times and before too long the whole decal was ready to release at once and it stayed nice a flat. I ruined two other decals before figuring that out. I have a pretty thick coat of lacquer on these though and that may have contributed to it, I'm not sure, but in any case if you have this same trouble you might try this method and see if it works for you.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

Does one picture have dodgy white balance or is the headtsock & neck now pink?