Custom Guitar

[Cam]

Back when I was just 16, I sat down with my dad one day and made a scale drawing. This drawing was of a guitar, with a great attention to detail on it. It had many inlays, including geckos, a dragonfly, and some other small things on it. Over time this guitar was revised, and eventually I came up with a design that I liked.

About 2 to 3 months after starting the drawing, I had made a mock up of my guitar out of pieces of acrylic, plastic, plywood, and wood screws. It was quite rough, but I wanted to size everything up. It served its purpose. The important part of this was the templates that were on the body, as I later used these to trace the body, and route the cavity cover, pick-ups, and Floating tremolo system.

It was about this time I meant a man named Paul. The high school band (which I was then a part of) held an auction once a year to raise money for trips. Paul made a guitar, and donated it to the auction to help raise money so his kid would be able to go on a trip taken every 2 years by the band.

Paul helped me build my guitar, and even became my mentor for my Culminating Exhibition. The CE is a project that seniors have to do as a graduation requirement.

It took quite some time to build the guitar, and as I was not yet employed at this age money came quite slowly. I would save up what I could for material cost. Although the process was slow, it eventually was finished.

I am now 20 years old, and completed my guitar nearly 2 years ago. It is the best playing instrument I own, and sounds absolutely amazing. But I would be partial now, wouldn't I?

Neck-thru design
5-piece Neck (Hard Rock Maple, Honduran Mahogany)
Quilted Maple Veneer on Headstock
Gotoh Tuners with Ebony Knobs
Honduran Mahogany Body
Gold Floyd Rose Tremolo w/ Graphtech Saddles
EMG 81/60 pickup combo w/ 3-way switch

[icingdeath88]

That is a beautiful guitar. Just gorgeous. Classiest electric guitar I think I've ever seen.

[Trevor]

Originally Posted by icingdeath88

That is a beautiful guitar. Just gorgeous. Classiest electric guitar I think I've ever seen.

Kia ora Cam,

Seconded down this way. I recently helped my son modify the neck alignment, pick ups and switching on his guitar, so latched onto your post.

The natural timber look is great and much more tasteful and superior to the garish look, so often seen screaming for attention. It has the appearance of a nice musical instrument, rather than a painted music box. No doubt it plays well and also provides a feel good factor to your music.

How did you cope with the technical part of setting the frets to provide an accurate scale?

Congratulations, Trevor.

[RSVX]

Very, very nice!

[Cam]

Originally Posted by Trevor

Kia ora Cam,

Seconded down this way. I recently helped my son modify the neck alignment, pick ups and switching on his guitar, so latched onto your post.

The natural timber look is great and much more tasteful and superior to the garish look, so often seen screaming for attention. It has the appearance of a nice musical instrument, rather than a painted music box. No doubt it plays well and also provides a feel good factor to your music.

How did you cope with the technical part of setting the frets to provide an accurate scale?

Congratulations, Trevor.

My mentor already had a jig created for his table saw. Although it would not have been hard to create one myself. I will try to explain.

The table saw used a special blade that was very thin, with blade stabilizers on it to keep it from wobbling and make it spin true.The jig consisted of two parts. A piece that slid back and forth on the table, and a piece that moved adjacent to the first. The Blank fret board was double-side taped to the second part of the jig, with lines on the top of the lateral moving piece marked 1-24. I simply lined up each fret indexing mark (1 through 24) with an indexing mark on the first piece that was perfectly aligned with the blade. (a fret calculator was used to layout the indexing lines. 24 passes on the table saw later and it was slotted. I had previously ripped two small strips (barely wider than the fretboard was tall, and about 1/16th" thick. These were glued to the sides of the board. This is known as a bound fretboard. The reason to do this is to hide the fret "tangs" from showing on the side of the fret board.

It was actually very easy. If that was hard to understand (kind of difficult to explain) I could probably get some pictures of the setup when I have some time.

Thanks for all the kind words guys.

[Sean486]

Do you know what you spent total on parts, the EMGs frets, knobs, floyd, wood etc? Looks really nice!

[Cam]

I believe everything came to just short of 800 bucks. But the labor was ridiculous. I carved the neck by hand as well as the body contours.. If i had to estimate I would guess 150-200 hours of labor.

[SVXRide]

I'm thinking this guitar is going to stay in the family for a long time! Beautiful work!
-Bill

[tiv0]

This really is awesome. I have a lot of respect for people who get this involved with instruments.

I really like the looks of your guitar, it reminds me a lot of my peavey grind (bass):

[92_LSL]

i also play bass and that is by far the nicest custom crafted guitar i have ever seen. amazing job !

[Cam]

Thank you for the compliments guys. I like the look of that peavey grind. Peavey used to make amazing instruments. I have not played anything newer than 1990 that really impressed me, but the nice peavey stuff is pretty rare. I am sure it is out there and I have not been fortunate enough to see it in person. What year was your grind made?

There are a lot of similarities between mine and other instruments. The body slightly resembles a musicman silhouette. The headstock is pretty similar to an Ibanez. And a lot of people think it is a carvin when they first see it because of the neck-thru and natural wood look.

[Landshark]

very nice, looks like a lot of time and work went into it.

my guitars aren't very pretty, but they get the job done.


if you really want to geek-out, check out this long, but very interesting build:
http://www.exit45.com/VaxII

[tiv0]

Originally Posted by Cam

What year was your grind made?

I'm not sure, I'll have to get back to you on that. I bought it used on ebay 4 or 5 years ago and I wanna say the guy said it was already ten years old? I could be completely wrong. I've got a copy of the original posting around somewhere, I'll look it up. It's the only bass that feels right to me, needless to say I got really lucky buying it on ebay not knowing a thing about it...i just liked its looks