Staining the guitar body. Ooops.

Not my most successful weekend in the workshop. I decided to try to stain the newly shaped body. I'd sanded all the surface oil away, and used some wire wool and white spirit to try to penetrate a bit further into the body ... but judging by the splotchy staining effect, I didn't get all of the oil out of the wood.

So, out with the sandpaper again and remove the stain. A few hours and a bit of sweat later, and a not-unattractive (in my eyes) "dirty grain" effect is revealed. So, add a couple of coats of oil, and this is what I got ..

Staining the back of the body actually worked quite well - a good even effect, and the colour that I wanted. So I left that alone!

My next task is to work out what to use as the cavity cover, and whether to use a scratchplate ...

But I learned a few things ... like stain before oil ...

Quite a lot of guitar building in the workshop

Having done the work on the guitar neck (see previous post), I decided to do some work on the body too.


The original guitar body was standard Tele - slab sided with no shaping/carving. Plus the cavity cover looked "like something you did in your shed" according to one on-line critic. As I pointed out, it was not created in my shed at all.


I did it in my workshop. But his point was right. This was the starting point ...




It was OK. It played OK, it sounded OK (BKPs!!), it looked OK. Ish. What's the point of making an OK guitar? So, time for some re-work.


The first task was to add a small belly carve. I the only person likely to ever play this guitar, so it obviously only needs a small carve to accommodate a small belly.




And then for something a little more dramatic ... some edge carving to the top ...
I used a router - freehand - to take about 3mm off the top of the body, in a curve more-or-less (I did say that it was freehand) matching the outline of the body. I then replaced the round-over, and spent a lot of time - a LOT of time - hand-sanding the ledge formed by the router to blend it into the rest of the body top.
That left a body with quite a thin waist ...
And something looking fairly different to the original Tele body.

Next - how to finish it?

A new neck

A few weeks ago, I built a "quick Tele". It was quick partly because I used a pre-built (Warmoth) neck that I'd bought second hand. It's a great little neck. Or rather, a great *huge* neck. It was a monster, and became uncomfortable to play pretty quickly.


Notice the lack of any shaping between the heel and the head of the neck.

Warmoth necks are not cheap, and this was a particularly not-cheap Warmoth neck. A nice (and large) chunk of birdseye maple with a rosewood board. But, being not-cheap didn't make it any more comfortable, so I decided to attack it with the rasps ...


I'm always just a little "conscious" that there's a truss rod channel somewhere in there, and if I cut through to it, then the neck is ruined.
But I took 3.5mm off the thickness, reducing it from 25mm to 21.5mm along the length of the neck. and carving the transition between neck and headstock to give it some more feel.
The fret-rocker came in useful for making sure that the back of the neck was straight, and that my rasping didn't leave any bumps or dents in the profile. Got that right, and then out with the sandpaper, followed by some more sandpaper, and finishing off with some more sandpaper.
It actually needs quite a bit more time of sanding, oiling and sanding and oiling (etc), but it's starting to look - and feel - a whole lot better ...
I'm qQuite pleased with that for a morning's work

Build you own guitar fret bender

Apparently, if you try to fit fretwire into frets without bending it first, the ends have a tendency to pop out of the frets. Even when you hammer it in really hard. And then add some superglue too.

The wonderful StewMac sell a fretwire bender, to bend the straight fretwire that they also sell. But they want $90 for it. Add shipping, and then ParcelFarce and the UK customs will add their bit, so it would probably cost the best part of £100 by the time it arrived. £100 seemed like a lot for a fretbender ... but the straight fretwire really didn't work so well.

So I made one.

With a little help from a design published a projectguitar.com ...
And now I can transform straight fretwire into nicely bent fretwire.

One of the wheels is adjustable, which changes the degree of bend ... the first one was a little too tight, but the next lot should fit nicely into the fret slots, without too much hammering and superglue.

This is the first neck that I made, now de-fretted. As you can see, the frets are still pretty straight, more or less as they went in. All the hammering, clamping and supergluing didn't make a whole lot of difference. At least it was easy taking the frets out.

I'm now going to clean up the fretboard, re-profile the neck (it was a bit chunky) and then re-fret it ...

The cost of the bits came to a few ££s, so I just saved myself about £95.

And in future, my frets should stay there they need to stay without quite as much superglue.

Completion

This one didn't take long ...

... but still a bit longer than I'd hoped. I'd aimed to get this done over a long weekend, but good weather and a barbecue (=beer) intervened and caused a bit of a delay. I need to get some better natural light photos because the wood (bi-colour Ash) is nowhere near as brown/orange as these photos show it. It's much lighter.

I made the body to house some BareKnuckle "The Boss" pickups and a Warmoth birds-eye neck - I wanted a Tele as I've dismantled both of my previous home-build Teles (1 permanently, and 1 temporarily for a neck re-shape). The pickups are as good as you'd expect from near-£200 BKPs. The neck is quite chunky. I think I might leave this in open G tuning and use it as a chunky rhythm guitar for all those Stones tracks. Which I'd have to learn properly.

I also need to track down a chrome switch tip, 'cos the big black one is horrible!

Guitar building - progress

Another Tele build.

Using a piece of bi-coloured Ash. The grain pattern of this seems to be getting more distinct - and more attractive - the more that I work it. As you can see, all the routing is now done, and there's a strange (for a Tele!) shaped control cavity that's appeared ...


... I thought I might put some active electronics in this one, so I needed a bit more space in the control cavity than a standard Tele.


That's a piece of Purpleheart that I'm using as the cavity cover. It looks quite good (in natural light, not in the photo!) as a contrast against the Ash body. I'm hoping that once it's all been oiled, the constrast will be even better.

It's all sanded to 400 grit, so I should be able to get a coat of oil on it later today. Then tomorrow can be spent putting the hardware on it, soldering, and setting-up.

Another Tele

It's time for some more guitar building, although this one will be a slight cheat.

I recently bought some BareKnuckle pickups (not cheating yet) and a Warmoth pre-made birds-eye maple neck (oops, maybe a slight cheat with that one?). I got them both second hand for a price that just meant that I had to buy them. As the BKPs are a set of "The Boss" p'ups, I've now got to build a Tele to house them. Which is useful, because I've just dissassembled the other 2 Teles that I've built, one for reshapting (the neck), and the other for recycling (the fire).

For the new build, my original plan was to use some Swamp Ash that I also recently bought. But once I'd planed it and looked at the grain pattern, I decided that it was a little too plain.

So that will be capped with something, probably some maple) and used for something else in due course. I do have some fretboard-sized purpleheart which will certainly add a little colour to the ash/maple combination.

Plan (b) for the Tele build is to use some other Ash - this is bi-coloured Ash - for the Tele body. The photo below doesn't do justice to the wood as it's just been planed and routed. Once it's had a little shaping and some finishing, I'm hoping that the full colour of the wood will become more obvious.

I'm happy with that join line though!

The Kawai collection is complete?

The question mark at the end of the post title is deliberate ... just in case I stumble across another one somewhere, sometime.
From the left ...
KS-11-XL in violin sunburst.
KS-12-XL in natural (mine from new in c1979)
KS-10-Junior
KS-12-XL in black
KS-11-XL in natural - now fitted with a pair of PRS Dragon pickups.

Looks are deceptive!

If you look at the previous post, you'll notice that the Kawai appears to be a little less than fully original.

The bridge is certainly a replacement (although I did also manage to get the original unit, but the screws for the individual saddles have been stripped of thread) and I thought that one or other of the pickups was also non-original. All my other Kawais use the ivory-coloured open coil humbuckers, so my betting was that the black p'up was a replacement.

So, as it's non-original already, I thought I'd replace the Kawai's p'ups with a set of PRS Dragon p'up that I've got sat here, unused.

I carefully unsoldered the existing wiring, carefully unscrewed the existing p'ups, and took them both out. Turned them over to see what the black one actually was ... and it was stamped "Mighty Mite Inc" - exactly the same as the ivory p'up, and a standard fitment on those Kawai guitars.

So, for some reason, this guitar shipped with 2 different colour pick-ups.

Think I'll still replace them though. I prefer things to look balanced!

Kawai Guitars

I'm thinking about setting up a separate informational website just for the Kawai guitars. There is absolutely no information available on them on the www, and Kawai in Japan have no information either (I know, because I asked them!).

I'm not a great fan of the Teisco-by-Kawai guitars of the 60s & 70s - the strange shaped ones with lots of switches and too many pickups. But I really do like the late 70s ranges.

So, I thought I'd ask here, just in case there's anyone else who stumbles across this blog whilst searching for any info on Kawai guitars, to contact me if you've got any of the following models, or any information about any of the following models ...

KS-10-Junior, KS-10-XL, KS-11-Junior, KS-11-XL, KS-12-Junior, KS-12-XL, Moonsault.

In fact, perhaps any of the non-Teisco Kawai guitars ... I think there are a few designs which could be described as "inspired by Alembic" - the F1 model and others - which were also around in the late 70s/80s.

This is a real longshot, but if anyone involved in the production, export/import or distribution of those guitars stumbles across the blog ... please get in touch. There can't be many worthwhile subjects which isn't covered by a www site (and perhaps there are way too many non-worthwhile sites), so perhaps I can add some value to the www ...

Another Kawai ...

Earlier this week a very helpful and observant reader-of-the-blog left me a message to say that he'd seen a Kawai guitar in his local music shop. This is a pic of that guitar.

I phoned the shop and spoke with the very helpful owner, and the deal was done. On Friday, the guitar arrived. It's a Kawai KS-11-XL, in natural finish. A 1-piece mahogany body, 3 piece mahogany neck with a maple cap. It's in "not bad" condition for it's age. The neck pick-up is non-original, as is the bridge (though I have the original Badass bridge too). It plays brilliantly though, and the various dings and scratches are only skin-deep - the construction is still sound.

This one makes it 4 Kawais in my little family ... still interested in hearing from anyone who's got any of the KS-10, KS-11 or KS-12 models though ...

It's done!

It feels like this one has taken ages, but it's actually only a couple of months. Probably feels like longer because I've been desperate to play it!

It's finally all together, all wired, and all set-up. Thanks for assistance with the set-up go to Dr Robert (he of Guitarist magazine fame as well as many other roles!)

Based, not very loosely, on the Yamaha SG2000, with a couple of SD HotRails. It's a weighty guitar, and quite a chunky one too, but that all goes to add to the power of the sound.

The neck join is quite chunky too, but it doesn't stop access to the dusty end and it ensure a really good solid join between the neck and body.

We probably spent most set-up time cutting the nut - which surprised me, as I thought I'd already done that bit of work. Well, I had done it, but not quite as well as it should be done. I also now know how to repair a cut-too-deep with a little dab of super glue.

This one is going on the "play often" pile ...

I'm building another cheapo ...

The people at the MusicRadar forum decided to do another £100 challenge. The challenge is to spend no more than £100, take no more than 1 month, and create a guitar. That might mean modding an existing old wreck, or building something from scratch.

Last year, I built one from scratch - a Cherry Tele - but it really wasn't that good. I had decided to take it apart and scrap it (or re-use the parts in another build sometime). But then this year's challenge came along, and I thought I'd try modding my build of last year.

The progress of that build will be blogged on my other blog (strangely enough, called the £100 guitar challenge!) and I'll be doing even less here for the next few weeks.

That guitar in the last post ... is all finished now! So, I'll post some final pics soonish.

Finally, the latest guitar is almost finished

If you've read the posts below, you'll remember that I did another make-a-guitar course in November. This course was less focused on a "make-a-guitar" and more focused on "learn-how-to-make-a-guitar".

So, the guitar wasn't finished in the 5 days, but I learned a lot more tips and techniques, and 101 (useful) things you can do with a router.

It's only with the Christmas break that I've had the time to do some more work on the guitar, and it's still not 1oo% finished, but it's reached a stage of finished-ness that I can share here ...

The wiring is now 95% done, the set-up work is partly done. I've just dis-assembled it to put another coat or two of oil on the body. And it looked so stunning, that I thought I'd take a couple of quick pics and post them here.

For anyone interested ... the 2 pickups are both Seymour Duncan P-Rails. Each mini-toggle switches between single coil, humbucker and P90 for each pickup. There's then a standard 3-way pick-up selector switch, a tone and vol, and a varitone switch (which will go where the spare hole is and is the outstanding 5% of the wiring work).

That works out to a lot (a very lot) of tone options from this one guitar.

The bit that I'm happiest with is the neck/body join, which you can't see in the pics above. So I'll post some more pics when it's all back together in a couple of days time.

DIY fret press

I know that you can do the fretting with a hammer ... but using a fret press is so much neater and quieter. And safer on the fingertips.

Unfortunately, StewMac's fret press is a silly number of $$s (165 of them, plus shipping, plus duty, plus VAT, plus ParcelFarce handling fee), which adds up to quite a silly number of ££s with the current exchange rate. So I've been managing without one.

But the fret press cauls are a lot cheaper ($40), so I'd added one to my last order, thinking that maybe I'd be able to come up with a way of using it without the whole press system.

Ages ago I'd bought a cheapo cheapo drill stand. I think it was £5. I hadn't done much with it ... but thought "it might come in useful" one day.



And it did - it came in very useful ... there's rather's a big clue in this next photo ...



On the right is the $40 fret press caul, with a standard 12" radius insert, just perfect for fretting 12" radius necks! On the left is a piece of nylon, after it had been machined and drilled on my neighbour's lathe. I never knew he had a lathe. But then I never realised what you could do with one either!

Lookee what we made ...

One DiY fret press system. StewMac price $165 which would have added up to about £120 with all the fees. Cost of mine ... about £30!

Here are the pics of the caps

I'm going to use one of these on the next guitar course. But which one?

a. bicoloured maple

b. maple burr


c. quilted maple. This piece is about 10mm thick, so will take quite a lot of carving to shape the top.

d. spalted maple. Very solid (for a spalted piece)

e. or ... walnut ...

Decisions, decisions, decisions!

November will be fun

I've had no time to do any building in my own workshop, but I'm taking a long weekend in November to head off to Walesland to the workshops of Mr Neil Morgan, where he'll guide my attempts at another self-build. I'm hoping to pick up another set of tips, tricks and techniques from Neil, as well as to come away with another guitar.

I'm planning on building a double cutaway, twin pickup guitar, along the lines of the classic Yamaha SG 2000s, similar to my first Bailey build.

The body will be mahogany, the neck will be either mahogany or maple. Fretboard may be ebony or maple.

The pickups arrived from the US. If I'd bought them a couple of months ago (£1 = $2.10) and if they'd managed to sneak into the country under the radar of customs, then they would have been a bargain. As it was, they were still cheaper than I could get them in the UK. For anyone that's not seen/heard the P-Rails before - check out Seymour Duncan's website. They're a combined P90 & single coil in a humbucker sized pickup, with all sorts of clever wiring options.

I'm now left with a choice of caps ... walnut or maple ... but the maple could be quilted, bi-colour, burr or spalted ... I'll get some pics of those posted later

Still no building ...

Still no building progress to report, but I have been busily adding to the stocks of materials and parts, so that when I finish working I'll be able to get building again. My current piece of work was due to end last week, but it's been extended towards the end of the year. Sort of a good news (money) - bad news (no guitar time) situation.

I've just bought a couple of stunning looking tops/caps from my "usual" supplier, and a set of Seymour Duncan P-Rails, which I'll be using next month ... read on!

Having done the Bailey build-your-own course twice, next month I'll be going to a new course, just set up by Neil Morgan. There are no details of his course on his website (http://www.morgancustomguitars.co.uk/) only pics of his stunning guitars, but I'm hoping and expecting to learn some new tips & tricks. Hopefully I'll get time to put them into practice before the year's out. This is only the second time that Neil has run the course, but having spoken to the people who completed course #1, and seen the guitars that they produced, my hopes and expections are high!

As long as I can find internet access whilst I'm on the course, I'll add progress pics here.

Where did that time go?

Anyone who's looked in here over the last couple of months might have wondered whether I'd given up guitar building ...

The answer is definitely "no", but equally definitely that I've had no time to make any progress over the last few weeks.

In fact, I think that I've found the problem with guitar building as a hobby ... it takes too much time, and doesn't fit too well around "work". At least, it doesn't fit around the sort of work that I do. I need a holiday ... maybe at the end of the month ... then I can get back to the serious stuff of making guitars ;-)

and finally ...

This one has been more delayed than a National Express East Anglia train out of Liverpool Street on a Friday evening.

Or - thinking about it - just about any other evening too.

Finally, 'tis done ... I thinline-Tele-alikey thingy. Cherry body, with a (bookmatched no less!) Cherry top. Mahogany neck and a Wenge fingerboard. I got a bit adventurous with this one - see the mahogany inlay around the soundholes on the body, and the cherry inlay on the headstock. I think it works ...

Pickups are "AXL by EMG", just because they were cheap on eBay. Other bits and pieces from Keith at Axetec.

There's a bit of finishing off still to do. When I put it all together, I had to take 2mm off the heel of the neck to get the action right. I've not re-oiled that area yet, which is the light area that you can see in the pic above.

Apart from that, I'm fairly happy with it. Quite a few firsts in this one for me ... the first time that I've used a cap, the first time that I've chambered a body, the first neck that I've made from scratch ... it's a lot different when you're doing it all on your own rather than on a course somewhere - it takes a lot longer, and you have to work out for yourself how to fix all the little "features" that appear.

Now, what's next ...