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The End, Abbey Road

I picked up a Strat body routed for 2 P90's a while back and finally sourced some parts and started work on it. Progress has been slow as my IBM ("Peter Frampton's disease") has been kicking my ass and allowing me fewer "good days" when I feel like doing anything. The body has a Chechen top and Cherry back. I left it au' naturale and did a Watco Danish oil finish on it. I was a bit undecided on a neck but wound up going with a rosewood over mahogany neck thinking P90's and mahogany necks always worked for Gibsons w P90's so why not here? The neck pictured in the first mockup pic is ebony over maple. It didn't make the cut and will be used on another project. The P90's have faux rosewood covers and I have rosewood knobs and tuners keys that will go on it.. I decided to veneer the headstock face with Chechen also. I stain-matched the neck to the Cherry back of the guitar and put a couple light coats of lacquer on the neck to make glue removal from the veneering process easier. I was kind of hacked that the body had some chip-outs around the pickup routes (see the first pic), but after working with the Chechen veneer, I can commiserate with the builder. Chechen is rock hard but splits and chips like crazy. Here is the plain headstock as I drilled out the tuner holes to accept the locking tuners. Being a master of "Ghetto Luthiery", I used a step drill (which is essentially a reamer) and drilled from both front and back partway through. I then used my Dremel to remove the remaining "step" inside the tuner holes with an appropriately sized abrasive stone tip. No drama, no chips or splits. I cut a piece of Chechen veneer about 1/4" oversize for the headstock face, steamed the veneer lightly with my Black and Decker steam iron while wrapping it around an aerosol can to shape for the cove of the headstock. I applied wood-glue to both surfaces, aligned the veneer at the edge of the fretboard, pressed the caul into place and applied small C clamps to hold everything overnight. IIn the true sporot of "Ghetto Luthiery". I padded the back of the headstock with a paint stir stick I got with my kitchen paint. lol You can see the block with the radiused end (caul) that I made to clamp the veneer to follow the cove of the fretboard to headstock face. Ghetto Luthiery Alert! Steaming veneer for neck cove contour I trimmed the excess veneer off with an Exacto knife, sanded the edges flush with a Dremel and drum sanding attachment followed by finish sanding. As you can see in the pic below, I had a small sliver of veneer chip away while sanding. I trimmed the split straight with an Exacto knife and glued a small scrap of veneer in with CA. Note that I left a convenient "tab" to hold the veneer in place while the CA set up instead of gluing my fingers to the headstock face. lol. More progress pics to follow!

If it's too good to be true, it probably is. "Each customer can only buy one product at a time. Thank you for your cooperation." Which music store in the world ever says that?!

Axis Bold as Love

“Eclipse” is pretty strong on DSOTM

My first guitar was an Airline (Kay) Vanguard II 1967. My dad paid $15 for it and $15 for an amp. I was able to find another one recently (great to have for nostalgic reasons)

I wouldn’t buy from that site even with someone else’s money. There is no way those are legit guitars - either they’re counterfeits or it is a scam, or both. Besides, protonmail is another bad sign IMO. A high percentage of spammers use that (encrypted) email service, so that’s yet another red flag IMO.

Are you buying a guitar or a picture of a guitar

"Carry on my wayward son...… CLUNK …. There'll be peace when you are done.... gurgle gurgle gurgle....." Followed by the infamous.. "Crap, it's eating the tape again!!!!"

Zamfir will have his day!😡

seems very suspicious...they don't show the headstocks on any instruments,...which right there says they are trying hard to not quite be called counterfeiters...but they use the actual brand names...how could they possibly sell any name brand instrument, even B-stocks, at those prices? Maybe that's the monthly payment or downpayment....? No, this wreaks of caveat emptor

Won't Get Fooled Again

Here is the finished headstock. I need to stain match the trussrod access bevel but am waiting to spray a couple more light coats of lacquer to seal off the endgrain inside so it doesn't go too dark. I walk the neck out to my deck, spray a light coat and then bring it back inside to dry. I added some character lines to the veneer with my Varathane stain pens to better batch the body too. I have 7 builds I have been working on and off for quite a while. I work on them when I feel like it and leave them sit when I don't. 2 are semi-complete just needing some final solder connections and one is a completed body w. set neck waiting to be assembled. Here's a pick of parts cabinet. Inside pick shows "kitted" bags of complete hardware and electronics for each project and also a pick of the 4 current projects. Why not start and finish one at a time you ask? Yeah, I know … crazy. Honestly, I complete the woodwork and finishing in my garage before the weather turns, leaving me these winter projects to assemble, wire and setup.

Just as I kicked off #2 before #1 was done, #3 has been kind of waiting to happen. The back and sides are black walnut from StewMac in Athens, OH. The top is student grade sitka from RC Tonewoods in Buffalo, NY. The neck came indirectly from Martin in Nazareth, PA as did the precut bracing and neck block. The fretboard came from LMI way out in California. This will more of a kit-type build as the internal components and the neck are pre-shaped. The bigger challenges being reducing the plates and slats to final thickness and bending the sides. My technique is getting better as I learn to plane at a 45 degree angle from the grain. I must confess that planing the top did not come out as clean as I'd liked but at $20 I'm willing to order another and start over. As the sides get slowly thinner as I work them I am already amazed at how pliable walnut is. My hope is that it retains its shape after bending like EIR has for me in the previous build.

My dad is the only one in the family that doesn’t play an instrument... and he came along about the time of the “incident” when they lived in Roswell, NM... my maternal grandfather played lap steel in a party band during prohibition so it was kind of natural that my first guitar was an old harmony hawaiian lap steel... grandpa played a gibson skylark... koa wood, Flying V model... he taught me on that guitar for the first few months... I believe it was a 59... cream colored case, red velvet lined... I can still smell it... right now... anyhow, the pup from the harmony was culled and installed on an acoustic 6 string cheapo harmony that I bought when I was 10 years old... paper route money. At 13 I was making more money with my guitar than from my side hustles with the paper route, mowing lawns and selling eggs from my chickens and thus my descent into the dark abyss began... and continues...

Check out my review of the new Epiphone Vivian Campbell signature Les Paul... As always, if you have questions or comments about the guitar or the review, please post them here.

"shut yer festering gob, you twit! You vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodourous pervert! " Monty Python, 'the Argument Clinic' [actually the line is 'tit', but I felt at the moment I could take a small liberty...] so wait, you wanna pick our brains...so you can monetize your twitter account....? Right, sounds fair to me. and please, no queries as to the past tense of 'twit'....

Can you save me a seat in the hot place? Hopefully end of row as I may need to take frequent bathroom breaks, tho sweat factor may take care of potty breaks.

HIGHLY subjective. And genre-dependent to boot. There are some orchestral recordings that will give you goosebumps, like you're standing at the conductor's podium. Some candidates: Aja - Steely Dan Avalon - Roxy Music The Blues and The Abstract Truth - Oliver Nelson Kind of Blue - Miles Davis Back In Black - AC/DC DSOT - Pink Floyd So - Peter Gabriel Songs From The Big Chair - Tears For Fears Making Movies - Dire Straights Off The Wall - Michael Jackson In Absentia - Porcupine Tree

I was around 15 or 16. Freshman in highschool. My dad's friend's daughter had this 100 dollar Johnson Strat that she wasn't using and was giving away. I remember him telling me about it and next thing I know, it's in my room. That thing became my reason to get up because I couldn't wait to learn the next song on YouTube guitar lessons and cover the songs. Only a few years after that I started taking songwriting really serious. I'm not sure that I would be here if I never got started with that guitar. I still have it today and it definitely has a story.