So I finally got her done, after a year of making more mistakes than progress it seems I finally got the build portion of my first out of the way. Took her down to Portland Fretworks this morning to get some pickup rings as I had planned to wire it this weekend, (which I was not looking forward to), and ended up asking what it would cost to have them wire it up for me. Since I already had the electronics they quoted me at about $75 which seemed like a more than decent price for the amount of strife it's going to save me. So, I should be picking her back up next week and know that she'll be playing as soon as I plug her in, I can't wait! So, here's what she looks like.
Root Beer burst
shot of the binding
overall
abalone dots (they show up a little brighter in person, it's tough to get on my phone)
little better on this one
think I could do a little better on the nut but it plays fine so I'm not gonna push my luck
headstock inlay of the guitar's namesake La Llorona
back of headstock with my star trek volute and relic'd tuners
So the body is made out of a chambered sapele core capped on top and back with flame maple, banded with flame maple and bound with bocote with fiber purfling on the top. Subtle recarve around the edge and the body is actually a flat top not tapered towards the neck. I angled the heel of the bolt on neck until I achieved a little more than 2 degrees for the neck angle which lined up just fine with the Tune-o-matic that sits very close to the body due to a slight recess in the top a la Carvin. I went with a bolt on because I was terrified I was going to screw up the neck and wanted to be able to swap it out if that happened. So far though the neck seems very stable and is holding a very small relief perfectly which has resulted in a very nice action.
The neck is quarter-sawn hardrock maple with curly maple and walnut laminations with the flame forming a chevron pattern up the back of the neck. Decided to augment the scarf joint with a piece of walnut which I think makes a nice design element. Headstock inlay includes walnut, west african ebony, copper, curly maple, impregnated curly maple, abalone side markers as the rosary beads, a cross from one of my Wife's bracelets, spalted maple and lots and lots of super glue to harden and plasticize it for polishing.
The electronics are an alpha tone pot with a push-pull volume for coil splitting, five way rotary selector switch like a PRS. This way I can select the neck or bridge pickup and coil split each one if I wish, whereas the rotary switch by itself doesn't let you do that. It should result in ten pickup configurations which I'm sure is much more than I'm going to use but hey, why not. I used one of the newer telecaster jack cups that sit flush to the edge of the guitar, electrosockets I think they're called. I'm using a Tom Anderson H1 pickup in the neck position and an H3 in the bridge position which were recommended to me by Tom Anderson. I picked these because my main amp is a Mesa Boogie Mark IIC+, and Mesa uses Tom Anderson pickups as their bench testers. Seemed like a good idea to use these then, and so I wrote Tom and asked a few questions. He wrote me back and asked me a few questions, mainly about construction and the music I like to play and followed my answers with his recommendations. I thought he was very nice and very helpful and I'm looking forward to hearing what they sound like.
I'm already going on number two, it'll be like this one with a few differences mainly cosmetic. I'm toying with the idea of doing a series of deadly women as the headstock inlays and waiting to get a decision from the owner of number two about who he'd like to see up there. After these I have two SG's that I'm planning on, and possibly a tele after that. I'm hoping that number two goes easier than number one which felt like it was going to kill me at times, (I'm sure it'll get easier, lol) and I'm looking forward to being a little less of a pain in the *&# to my wife and my bosses and everybody around here and MIMF and anywhere else I've been a know-it-all know-nothing! Thanks to everybody for the help and the encouragement, I'll post some more pics next week!
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