Lets look at our guitars thread

Lets look at our guitars thread

Author
Discussion

OldSkoolRS

6,720 posts

178 months

Thursday 15th April 2021
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That looks really nice RSBMW. smile I hope you get to play the socks off it now and get it feeling like it's 'yours'.

I'm way behind you with my next guitar; the body arrived today and I did quick test fit with the neck I already had...nice and snug so that's a good start. Just have to route a hole for the EC mid boost and do a bit of sanding to prep the body for spraying. I doing it in a lightly aged Sonic blue for an early 60s vibe with the Rosewood neck. Already put the pickguard on my other Strat to try out the '65 PV pickups (usefully different to the 50s style Bareknuckle ones that the other Strat normally has fitted).

I'm doing lots of smoothing, polishing frets ends and rolling the fingerboard so it feels as worn in as the Esquire I built last year, which has already aged and bedded in nicely. Hopefully this one won't be far behind as I plan to use it for my main gigging guitar, so I don't risk my 38 year old Squier JV Strat as I'm quite attached to it..

Could almost be the twin of yours. wink



£69 delivered off eBay, plus about £20 worth of paint and thinners from NorthWestGuitars. Everything else is Fender parts bar the pickguard and some screws, but it should come in at less than a new Vintera would have done.

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Thursday 15th April 17:09

JaymzDead

1,216 posts

199 months

Thursday 15th April 2021
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rsbmw said:
Finally got my new build finished, body and neck made to my spec by a friendly luthier;

https://imgur.com/gallery/xyBWIc4





Spec is

  • koa top over roasted ash, all simply tru oiled to a satin - no stain at all
  • Roasted birds eye maple neck with 12" radius ebony board and jumbo frets
  • ASL eruption bridge, Dimarzio Injector in the middle and Dimarzio Heavy Blues 2 in the neck
  • Suhr spec treble bleed circuit
  • NFT Floyd Rose
  • Hipshot open gear locking tuners
Plays beautifully, can do exactly what I was aiming for with an EVH tone on the bridge, flick to position 4-5 and roll back the volume a touch for SRV tones without touching the amp
Oooff! Loving the look of that! I bet it plays as good as it looks!

Don1

15,936 posts

207 months

Thursday 15th April 2021
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Coooooorrrrrrr

Kneedragger95

219 posts

74 months

Sunday 18th April 2021
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This morning I bought my first decent guitar after spending a couple of months learning on a very cheap Stratocaster copy.

I originally went into the shop looking for an Epiphone Les Paul bit unfortunately they didn't have any. One of the salesman suggested I tried the SG posted above and I thought it sounded great, even with my very limited skill biglaugh

I tried out another guitar made by Jackson and it didn't sound quite so good, so I bought the SG

The looks didn't really stand out to me in the dim shop, however after playing around with it in sunny bedroom I have to say the colour looks incredible!

Don1

15,936 posts

207 months

Sunday 18th April 2021
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Ah, good for you, congratulations. An SG of that colour was the first 'proper' guitar I ever tried (it was a mates).

OldSkoolRS

6,720 posts

178 months

Sunday 18th April 2021
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Congratulations, lovely looking SG. I am biased, but at one point I wasn't keen on Cherry, but I love mine. It almost looks like Candy Apple on mine at times when the sun catches it.

Enjoy. smile

OldSkoolRS

6,720 posts

178 months

Sunday 18th April 2021
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I did a lot of work on my Strat project this weekend. It's an eBay bare body, so I had to sand it smooth, round over some edges and also drill the various holes, most importantly I had to get the bridge lined up properly and drill the 6 screw holes. Luckily I have another Strat to pinch the neck from as the new neck isn't sprayed yet, so I can't fit the tuner bushes and tuners...

Watched a few videos to see how other people do this, just fitted top and bottom E strings and line up the bridge so that the strings don't go off the sides of the fingerboard. Seemed to work well and I got all the other holes drilled and routed an extra cavity for the Eric Clapton mid boost PCB.

Going to start spraying it tomorrow as I'm off for the week. smile Primer on the body and clear nitro on the neck to start with, then tinted amber/tobacco brown to give an aged look to it.

I also added a mid boost route and tried the PCB in place, which has plenty of room. I'd put it under the tone/volume knobs on my other Strat, but this is how the EC Strat are routed as I saw some pictures of bare EC Strat bodies, so I copied the idea:


Holes drilled and all parts test fitted with the Squier neck (which looks very orange in this picture, but that's just a nearly 40 year old poly finished neck that has aged):


I took everything off and then drilled for the new neck (the body already had holes in it for the neck and the Squier neck fitted perfectly and was straight, so that saved me more measuring and fiddling about):


Ready for paint, starting tomorrow morning. smile

Edited by OldSkoolRS on Sunday 18th April 22:18

Don1

15,936 posts

207 months

Sunday 18th April 2021
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That's quality.

rsbmw

3,464 posts

104 months

Monday 19th April 2021
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Looking good!

redrabbit

1,367 posts

164 months

Monday 19th April 2021
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Marginally off topic...

I would love to be showing you my Epiphone '59 LP, which I'm assured will be incoming this century, but the supplier (GuitarGuitar) is still waiting for a delivery date from last November.

Anyone else in the same boat / got better info? I'm assured the order will be fulfilled, eventually.

covmutley

3,012 posts

189 months

Tuesday 20th April 2021
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Kneedragger95 said:


This morning I bought my first decent guitar after spending a couple of months learning on a very cheap Stratocaster copy.
Looks great! Are you finding it better or easier to play? I'm at the same sort of stage as you. Played quite a bit when I was 17 ish, but just strumming along to beatles and stereophonic tab books.

Picked up a used pacifica 112 and have been playing every other day for a few months. I'm 40 in September so looking to treat myself. I'm not good enough to justify it really so sound is perhaps slightlyless of a concern, but would like something that encourages me to play it often by being a nice object to feel and look at, and hopefully helps me improve by being 'better' to play.

I'd be interested how you get on.

Edited by covmutley on Tuesday 20th April 07:01


Edited by covmutley on Tuesday 20th April 07:21

Kneedragger95

219 posts

74 months

Tuesday 20th April 2021
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covmutley said:
Kneedragger95 said:


This morning I bought my first decent guitar after spending a couple of months learning on a very cheap Stratocaster copy.
Looks great! Are you finding it better or easier to play? I'm at the same sort of stage as you. Played quite a bit when I was 17 ish, but just strumming along to beatles and stereophonic tab books.

Picked up a used pacifica 112 and have been playing every other day for a few months. I'm 40 in September so looking to treat myself. I'm not good enough to justify it really so sound is perhaps slightlyless of a concern, but would like something that encourages me to play it often by being a nice object to feel and look at, and hopefully helps me improve by being 'better' to play.

I'd be interested how you get on.

Edited by covmutley on Tuesday 20th April 07:01


Edited by covmutley on Tuesday 20th April 07:21
I wouldn't necessarily say it easier to play, at my level you could give me the best guitar in the world and I'd still strum the wrong strings or mute strings by accident biggrin.

One thing I will say though is that it sounds great, especially on overdrive. My first guitar struggles to create that typical distorted rock sound for one reason or another (Single coil pickups perhaps?) whereas this the SG has no issue at all.

JaymzDead

1,216 posts

199 months

Tuesday 20th April 2021
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Kneedragger95 said:
I wouldn't necessarily say it easier to play, at my level you could give me the best guitar in the world and I'd still strum the wrong strings or mute strings by accident biggrin.

One thing I will say though is that it sounds great, especially on overdrive. My first guitar struggles to create that typical distorted rock sound for one reason or another (Single coil pickups perhaps?) whereas this the SG has no issue at all.
If you want to play hard rock or metal then I'd say that a guitar equipped with at least one humbucker is a must! (although there are obvious exceptions such as Hendrix and Iron Maiden!). To illustrate: In my pre/early teen years I had started to learn to play on an accoustic guitar at school but I had got bored learning to strum chords along to '60s pop hits and I really wanted to play electric, unfortuantely my parents were unsympathetic to this and declined to buy me an electric guitar. Fast forward a few years to me by now a metal-obsessed teen with a paper round, my best mate was a couple of years older than me and had Squier HM superstrat and Peavey amp and had started to teach me to play Metallica and Slayer songs. I decided that I wanted to be James Hetfield so with my hard earned money I decided to buy a Squier Strat pack (including what I now know to be a stty practice amp). I could never get the strat to sound much cop and although I got to know that a massive part of the problem was the amp, after some research into the guitars my heroes used I found that the vast majority used Humbucker equipped guitars. By this time I had started my first full time job and I had been eyeing up the ads in the back of Guitar magazine for Percy Priors Music in High Wycombe (now sadly defunct) who I believe were the first UK distributor for ESP guitars, with an early pay check I put in an order for an ESP Grassroots EX200 (basically a Korean made version of Hetfield's pre-lawsuit ESP EX Explorer. Having purchased this I plugged it into my mate's Peavey and thus found the missing tone, total overdriven metal nirvana! I was still average at best back in those formative years but at least I could now get a sound close to my heroes, doubly so when I managed to get a Marshall Valvestate amp!

BuiltnotBrought

24 posts

35 months

Tuesday 20th April 2021
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My birthday present from the missus along with a spark amp, an Epiphone inspired by Gibson ES-335 in gorgeous Blueberry burst.


Ronstein

1,347 posts

36 months

Tuesday 20th April 2021
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Ovation 12-string
Early 70's Arbiter Les Paul copy
Squire Strat copy (my niece's)
Cheapo Stagg nylon string 3/4 acoustic
Ibanez bass
'70's Ovation 6-string

Sporky

6,089 posts

63 months

Tuesday 20th April 2021
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BuiltnotBrought said:
My birthday present from the missus along with a spark amp, an Epiphone inspired by Gibson ES-335 in gorgeous Blueberry burst.

That is a weirdly brilliant colour scheme.

Rod200SX

8,086 posts

175 months

Wednesday 21st April 2021
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Well, no luck with my Schecter so likely going to PX at a local shop. I fancy a foray in to 7 string guitars and they have a few in stock. Will be down monetary wise but hey ho, I'm not wanting to send it to someone for the risk of damage and living in Aberdeen isn't ideal for folk to collect hehe

The plan is to go for a cheap Ibanez/jackson 7 string, one of the £200-300 ones but you know how man maths works... I'll see what I end up with when the store opens next week hehe

WindyCommon

3,356 posts

238 months

Wednesday 21st April 2021
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Sheetmaself said:
I don’t mind spending the money, but I’m going from a large house with just me, to a smaller house with 4 of us so i need a level a practical as well. This is why the fender mustang appealed, and why i am thinking of the thr to replace it. I could go for the thr30 if it is going to be a better proposition. But lets face it im st just happen to have some nice guitars but not much space!

Will mainly be using headphones but would like to keep the capability of playing aloud when possible.
I bought a Tone Master Dual Reverb. After a week I took it back because I didn’t like how it sounded when not loud enough that I may as well have bought a valve Dual Reverb. On impulse I bought a THR30. It is an awesome amp! For home use I find it hard to make a case for anything else. I find it works with all my guitars, it works intuitively like a “proper” amp (specifically the volume / gain controls), and it sounds amazing across a huge range of tones. With the Classic/Boutique/Modern settings working across Clean/Crunch/Lead/HiGain/Specialit’s like having 15 different amps. The Hall reverb is to die for.

If it’s not obvious, I quite like it.

Sorry for going off-topic!

OldSkoolRS

6,720 posts

178 months

Wednesday 21st April 2021
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I just bought one of those little Orange Stamp pedal amps on a whim as it was in the same used section as a speaker I bought for my Champ. I'm really impressed with it and it's small enough to carry as a back up amp if my Marshall fails. I plugged it into my 2x12 Marshall cab for a laugh and it sounded great. smile

So tiny too (on the body of my project Strat):


Speaking of which, I sanded the body back to bare wood as I wasn't happy with the finish. This acted as a grain filler, so I mixed some Sonic Blue/Olympic white with the primer and it is now in a Sonic Blue(ish) satin finish. Will need some full coats of Sonic Blue gloss and then clear lacquer, but I need to order more paint now...



I clear coated the neck, the added some tinted bits top and bottom to give it an older look:



I'll bake it in the sun for a while now, then I can polish it up to a shine, with a satin finish on the main section as I prefer the feel.

HighwayToHull

7,642 posts

177 months

Wednesday 21st April 2021
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Finishing is great fun, it's my favourite part of the process!

Here's a tobacco sunburst Strat I'm currently working on.





Since taking these photos I have reworked the front and completed the sides. Clearcoat next.