Your favorite geetars?

[small fish]

.....(aka "backyard research facilities" or "male panic shelter" depending on situation).

[/quote]

[jtn191]

+1 I call mine my man cave

[JeffdaMaori]

Here's another one I love dearly... polygamy is fairly accepted and widespread when it's about guitars and gear in general.
Ain't that right guys....?!?

It actually seems to be 'the norm' judging by everyone's previous posts...

She's born in the backyard too (it's a fertile place, even though things are taking time to come together), bodyshape and size is close to a Les Paul, half-acoustic construction similar to a ES 335 with solid maple core, birdseye maple top, sides mahagony, back brazilian rosewood, neck is padouk with barzilian rosewood fretboard.
Pickups are a mini humbucker taken from a Les Paul on neck (I got the cover goldplated... costly...) and a DiMarzio PAF pro on bridge.

No other around like her... and she's called 'Jazzica'.



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[small fish]

@JeffdaMaori

Man, these are nice builds! Where do you get your wood / skills from?
Any special workshop equipment (especially the plexiglas templates)?

I like these "one-piece" constructions!
thumbs-up

carsten

[night-B]

+1
I love your guitars Jeff! Can you share a little bit of your knowledge on guitar building? The big steps, tools, supplier... Thanks
Anyone here with a warmoth build?

Julien

[slimtriggers]

I've done a Warmoth build.  The guitar in my avatar is a Warmoth.  Went together without a hitch.  Plays nice, sounds awesome!

Korina body, Wenge neck, Macassar ebony fretboard.  Dimarzio Humbucker From Hell in the bridge, Chopper in the neck.  (it has GFS single coils in it right now, though)  Sperzel tuners, Wilkinson trem, stainless frets.  Love it!

http://soundcloud.com/slimtriggers/stratsolo

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[night-B]

My DIY mania will sure lead to a warmoth some day. They have lots of great necks and bodies. It will be hard to order only one 

[JakeFuzz]

Ive got a couple of builds with Warmoth necks. They're great quality. The compound radius takes a while to get used to. I had maple fretboards on both of them and sanding between frets is a nightmare, also removing the lacquer from the frets can be a PITA. I got stainless steel frets for both of them and there is no sign of wear at all (on vintage/thin frets). I did a lot of work on my buddies strat a few days ago and he had a mighty mite neck which was surprisingly level (more so than both of my Warmoth necks), he said he bought it for $90! I have to get me one of those.   

[small fish]

Ive got a couple of builds with Warmoth necks. They're great quality. The compound radius takes a while to get used to. I had maple fretboards on both of them and sanding between frets is a nightmare, also removing the lacquer from the frets can be a PITA. I got stainless steel frets for both of them and there is no sign of wear at all (on vintage/thin frets). I did a lot of work on my buddies strat a few days ago and he had a mighty mite neck which was surprisingly level (more so than both of my Warmoth necks), he said he bought it for $90! I have to get me one of those.   

Laquer on the frets???

You mean, they install the frets first...and then spray some paint on the neck?? 
That´s quite shitty for the money they take, isn´t it?
I hope, I got it right 

[JakeFuzz]

Ive got a couple of builds with Warmoth necks. They're great quality. The compound radius takes a while to get used to. I had maple fretboards on both of them and sanding between frets is a nightmare, also removing the lacquer from the frets can be a PITA. I got stainless steel frets for both of them and there is no sign of wear at all (on vintage/thin frets). I did a lot of work on my buddies strat a few days ago and he had a mighty mite neck which was surprisingly level (more so than both of my Warmoth necks), he said he bought it for $90! I have to get me one of those.   

Laquer on the frets???

You mean, they install the frets first...and then spray some paint on the neck?? 
That´s quite shitty for the money they take, isn´t it?
I hope, I got it right 

I didn't order it finished. I am pretty sure if they finish it for you there wont be an issue just because they can finish it before they install the frets.

[JeffdaMaori]

@JeffdaMaori

Man, these are nice builds! Where do you get your wood / skills from?
Any special workshop equipment (especially the plexiglas templates)?

I like these "one-piece" constructions!
thumbs-up

carsten

Cheers Carsten, there's an amazing amount of skill and cleverness all over this forum.

I'm just doing stuff myself, not trained in any wood or electronics trade.

Apparently I have been mucking around with things all my life, my parents said that I was hammering nails into tree huts before I could walk and figured out nasty contraptions to make them "predator proof" (as in keeping the neighbouring gang out....).

The tools that I've used to build guitars are often stupefying simple and not specialized; the 'fanciest' machine being my trusty cheapy 'Ryobi' router.
The plexiglas template is just that: a piece of plexiglass that I cut out to guide the router to create cavities for the pickups.
If you have a router it will have a guide, template will need to be 3mm or so bigger than cut you wanna make and away you go. Takes a bit of trial cutting on off-cuts to determine the fit (photo is of trialing and fine tuning a strat template), but you definitly don't need to buy something like that.

Scratch your brain and you can figure out how it works, throw a bit of number eight wire (very NZ saying....) technology in and think about everything twice and trial it out before you do that stuff.

The wood for the half-acoustic (which by the way has a bolt-on neck because I wanted to try different necks on it to settle for this) I got from a violin maker, took a bit of arm-twisting to convince him to let go.

The mahagony sides I bent into shape after dampening them over a chunky piece of round scrap metal pipe that I got from the dump, heated it up with a camping stove... there goes your bending iron.... cost about $3 for the scrap metal.

If you buy all those specialized shiny looking tools from places like 'stewmac' (goggle them) you'll be spending US $ 5000 + before you even start... that's goofy....!!!

The only specialized tool I ever bought was a fret slot saw and a soft blow hammer to fit in frets.

Everything else I have in my shed as normal run off the mill handyman tools (jigsaw, router, cordless drill, files, sandparer etc...).
It takes a lot of elbow grease (sanding etc...) but it saves going to the gym.

The one piece guitar was an extremely unusual / fortunate find as the slab of wood really asked for it... I've been always thinking about trying to do that but it definitly needs the right big piece of wood and there's a lot of offcut.
Maintenance wise a bolt on neck is the more sensible way (that's why Leo did that in the first place...) but we don't always have to be sensible...





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[small fish]

Hi JeffdaMaori,
I know what you´re talking about:
I lately used my Dremel, to make some routing stuff, because the delivered neck was a little bit "bigger" than the promised Fender standard

It was just, I read so much about these routing templates, bought some books, while on vacation n the US (well, never expect to find these books in germany....come on....no, you won´t find them!), but I never was tough enough to built some templates. Which tools do you use, to route the templates?

u see, I´m building guitars, while just putting things together, but I never built a guitar from scratch. Although StewMac is quite expensive, they are very helpful and reliable (that has to be said).

Enough said, I think I will give it a try 

Back in the cellar...

[JeffdaMaori]

I lately used my Dremel, to make some routing stuff, because the delivered neck was a little bit "bigger" than the promised Fender standard


Which tools do you use, to route the templates?

Hi Carsten,
I use a Dremel to cut and shape the plexiglass templates, but for the actual routing in guitar body I use a Ryobi router, a bit more grunty and the weight of the machine steadies it a bit more than the Dremel which is good for intricate smaller stuff like inlays.

Photo is of routing cavity for trussrod with router.

Stewmac is good and I'm happy that they're there, don't get me wrong.
I've ordered some stuff from them before like fretwire, slot saw etc. and it worked all well, the ideas they give are great.
I just think they overspin the salespitch that you need all those fancy gadgets that they come up with otherwise your build is not professional or doomed or doesn't have enough Dan Erlwine mojo or so...
And some of their stuff is incredibly overpriced (check out their price for 3PDT stompswitch....) whereas some other stuff is reasonable.

Back to the shed....


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[Haberdasher]

Wow, some of you guys have some sick collections!
Here are the 3 main guitars that I play most often.

Parker single cut, made overseas.  This has one of the limited finishes I think they called it honey maple burl or something.  Reminds me of an sg, and the coil taps can get a reasonable tele sound, so it is pretty versatile.  I put Sperzels and a Graphtech Resomax bridge on it a while back.  It's pretty good.



Hamer USA Daytona, handmade in '94 I think.  Nice axe, but the southern ash body weighs.  You can't see the transparent blue finish in this pic, but it's a looker.



Breedlove Jumbo.  Got a good deal on it.  It's not bad, but I could do without all the abalone. 

[cjkbug]

Ive got a couple of builds with Warmoth necks. They're great quality. The compound radius takes a while to get used to. I had maple fretboards on both of them and sanding between frets is a nightmare, also removing the lacquer from the frets can be a PITA. I got stainless steel frets for both of them and there is no sign of wear at all (on vintage/thin frets). I did a lot of work on my buddies strat a few days ago and he had a mighty mite neck which was surprisingly level (more so than both of my Warmoth necks), he said he bought it for $90! I have to get me one of those.   

Laquer on the frets???

You mean, they install the frets first...and then spray some paint on the neck?? 
That´s quite shitty for the money they take, isn´t it?
I hope, I got it right 

I didn't order it finished. I am pretty sure if they finish it for you there wont be an issue just because they can finish it before they install the frets.

I'm afraid they do come with the frets laquered. that is just how it's done. you have to spray them after fretting or you'll fill the fret slots with laquer. and you'l crack the finish when you press the frets in.