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OK I'm posting it at last. It has a Sitka top and Jacaranda back and sides with slightly curly maple bindings with wood purfling and rosette lines and Ablam top purfling and rosette ring. It also has a Mike Doolin adjustable neck joint along with a pinless bridge. Thanks Mike for answering my emails and the tips. It also has a Grit Laskin style Armrest and Ribrest. The neck is walnut and the tuners have ebony beans. If you have been watching my youtubes then this is what all the tutorials and jigs have been about. My first from scratch practice guitar.

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Very nice Chris!!

Love the pinless bridge too!

The strap button unscrews to gain access to the neck angle adjusting bolt. You would have thought I'd blew off the polishing compound.

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Thanks Hesh, it turned out nicer then I thought it would have.

Nice work Chris! How 'bout some sound clips?

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Bill Hodge


One does not simply, own enough guitars!

I'm waiting to put a pup in as soon as it arrives and then I'll probably get around to doing a short YouTube for the sound. The reason there isn't a end graft pic is there isn't an end pin/jack on it yet. Nothing special about the end graft just some maple. This was just a practice build to try out some things new and have all the fun of building jig and tools.

great guitar Chris

and you've gone that extra mile(or 10) with adding all those features.
i can see myself trying out an armrest on a future build and that pinless bridge does look appealing.

you really should pace yourself with all the new things you're trying out at once, where's the fun in building the next one if all the jigs are already made....

looking forward to hearing how it sounds.

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Frank

Fantastic job, Chris !!! Looks like you got a workout on this one. It looks great and I love all the adjustable neck angle idea. How does that work? Is there an sound advantage to a pinless bridge? Are you happy with the sound?

Great job on the whole thing !!!!

Nice goin', Chris! Yeah, you did jump into the deep end of the pool wearing a weight belt on this one. Congratulations!

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Looks real good Chris. Can you tell a lot of difference in comfort when you play with the ribrest and armrest?

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Randolph,
For the opperation on how the neck works you will have to search the archives it's all there. And as to the bridge, I really can't tell any differance at this point.
Steve,
I'd say yeah, it's like going from a bench seat in the car to a bucket seat. Your arm just feels more confortable without the corner and the same for the ribrest. Although on the next one I'll try and make it with the smooth transition as I think it's a much nicer look. And it would make the binding easier to install. It was a bear trying to get the binding to bend. I ended up soarking the maple ends in SSII so they wouldn't snap. Putting the rest in is easy enough but binding them is the hard part. You want nice smooth curves. But you should go for it, I think you will like the feel. I'm thinking when some players start to try them they will like them also especially if they do a lot playing.
Dennis,
I don't feel like that. Actually I think I did a pretty good job of holding back some. There was quite a bit of things I was thinking about doing but decided to try later since I wanted to finish this within a year.
It sounds pretty responsive and pretty good but I'm not sure it's quit what I'm after and I'm going to try some other strings and see what that does. I'm tweaking it some as I live with it.
Thanks for the compliments.

Nice work Chris. It is good to finally see it together. I can’t wait to hear it.

John

Nice job Chris! How did you tackle the binding channels on the arm and rib rests?

Rick

Chris - wonderful - I'm looking forward to hearing it!!!

I'd also really love a simply tutorial on the armrest process - just because I know you're so fantastic at making it all look simple!

Thanks again for all the time you put in to those Youtub tutorials - I learn a lot from them.

You should really check out the thread on photography, and turn off your flash. Other than that, it's not bad for your first one.

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

That really looks great, Chris. You did a fine job on it. Congratulations!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Hey Paulick...bout time dude! It's funny how you enjoy making the jigs. I really disliked having to stop building to make a jig. Nearly finished with my 3rd and have discovered that this jig making thing may NEVER STOP.

Congrats dude....What's next?

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

Mike,
I did check out the discussion on photograpy. But I don't have a place to setup for photography and the time to go looking for locations at dusk so the screen porch with a sleeping bag background is going to have to do. Some of the pictures aren't with a flash and some are. The ones with the flash actually have less reflection in them then the ones with out and are truer in color then the ones with out which had to be color corrected to compensate for the light loss and I think the camera didn't white balance because it had the blue cast to it . I wasn't in the mood to read through the manual to figure out how to do the white balance. I don't know if you have a newer camera but with all that mine does it would take a while to learn it all. So these pics will have to do. Right now I'm interested in perfecting my building skills other then my photography skills which I think really aren't that bad I just need to get a grasp on the camera controls and get some lighting and screens but that's just another distraction for now. Believe me Mike ,you haven't said anything I don't know, I'm a bit short on time and money for now and am just doing the best I can with what I got.
Corky,
When I have the process down to where I'm happy with it then I'll do one. But I'm not happy with it yet.
Rick,
I actually used my binding machine to do part of the top and side and then used a dremel to return the curve to the edge channel free hand following a line. But I'm not happy with that either. I need to make a template of somekind. I've been told that some cut the channel before bending the side and gluing on the top and then just carve the bevel to it.
Chris,
More P-45s and I want to do a classical soon too. I want to get into learning to do block and plane Rosettes. I like the Rosettes Alan Curruth is doing and I also want to start to do some simple carving maybe at the heels and head for starters and possibly at the rosettes and purflings. But that's always secondary to finding my sound. It may have seemed like a long time(to me too at times) in getting this one out but you have to consider that I pretty much got around to building my little shop single handily and all the jigs and tooling while making 20 some videos and posting 15 pages here(Thanks to Todd Stock for pointing that out ) and on other forums about a year ago. But I will say I'm going to build a spray booth. I just hate not having an area for that since it's half the battle and I think you need to have a proper setup for this. Or pay Joe to finish it but I like to have the control over it and I think it's another part of the building process to learn. What happens if God forbid Joe dies. Point is I don't like to rely on others for a whole lot. And I need to close in my porch for an area to do setup and inlay and stuff where I don't want a finished guitar around things that can put dings into it. So much to do so little time.

She looks great Chris ! Congrats on getting her finished and making
music. I can't wait to hear and play it at the next FGMA meeting in June.
Way to go buddy !!

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

Thanks Dave,
The one thing that doesn't show up in the pictures or maybe it does is the color of the top. It's the first time I used siam seedlac as the sealer coat and to tone the top. But it sure gives it what I think is a nice rich look. Seems more towards a brown tone as to a golden tone. I'll be interested in seeing what you think about it.