Guitar Nerds Anonymous

Holy fuck that fake Custom tele does not fill me with confidence. It's hilariously bad. I'm guessing the B5 is going to be a Chinese made fake. Meh, I ordered it whilst still half asleep this morning. If it turns out to be crappy i'll maybe stick it on a partscaster for fun. Will see what turns up.

Ha, touché.
I do plan to paint the aluminium black, though.

Paint or anodise?

Paint, as I know how to use a spray can, but have no idea of anodizing.
Then again, a little workshop science can't hurt?

I'm not sure how complex a process it is, I'm sure all it takes is a bucket of stuff and a couple of electrodes... 😂

I seem to remember the big issue is getting your aluminium super clean and then coverage can be a bit irregular... I'm gonna YouTube it!

Hmmm, looks too dangerously complicated for me... You might have more luck...
https://youtu.be/L2RKze7baJw

Found a guitar tech in Cantebury who seems to know what he's doing. Gonna drop the botched Riviera off this afternoon. Suppose I should wait for the Bigsby to arrive and kill two birds with one stone I just want it fixed now. Plus if I like him i'll take it back for new pickups and a bigsby in a little while.

Have finally got round to ordering the connections i need to have by home studio monitoring sorted and am looking forward to getting some recording done later this week.

I found this tutorial. Anodizing big parts (A pickguard would be pretty big) seems way off the faff scale. Black Spray paint looks safer. Significantly less risk to flood my workshop with poisonous gas...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lytl4VxFr3g

You can buy anodized aluminium (any colour) by the sheet online. Then you’d only need to cut it to shape and finish the edge.

We have a winner!

So the kit arrived and it's proper shit. Back to square one, I guess. New idea: buying a finished neck online and sourcing wood for the body locally. A friend of mine has a big stack of ash and some machinery.

Pro:

• I can freely design a body
  con:
  
• I can freely design a body.
  

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Oh dear...

Pro:

I can freely design a body
con:
I can freely design a body.

Definite mixed blessing. I’ve spent countless hours tinkering with my design, and I’m still no closer to actually making some sawdust.

Fucking hell. Been exchanging messages with the guitar tech, had finalised timings and was 30 minutes from jumping in the car and he finally send me directions to his workshop. It was only then I realised he's not in Cantebury. he's in London. Balls.

So I started up CAD, took some reference photos and threw this together. Quite like it.

Also made a deal for some locally sourced ash. Going to buy a slightly (much) more expensive neck and go from there.

Edit: Upload won't work... Balls...

I guess I can admit it, pretty much any non master volume amp will be less than ideal for home use. I've got a 20W amp with half-power switch, and I tried swapping the speaker in a 1x12" cab from Celestion V30 to weediest Jensen to drop sensitivity from 100dB to 92dB.

I could just about crank the amp to overdrive, but it wasn't terribly comfortable without hearing protection... Not an amp I'd get these days I guess, for a number of reasons (not to mention the 50W and 100W heads I've also held onto).

I'm still tempted to build a champ clone kit, not sure that makes much more sense :D

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Printed it out and stuck together with tape to check proportions. Doesn't look bad.

Edit: nds fail...

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Looks great! Are those chamfers on the top edge?

Get an attenuator, the Weber ones are supposed to be good and they don't cost the earth... Look out for a used one...

That does look great... The only thing I'd change would be to continue the sweep of the scratchplate and controls into a point... Lovely flowing shape you've got there...

One is on top, one is on the bottom. The forearm rest chamfer on top.

@>>>>>> I hear you about the scratchplate. Not 100% happy with that yet.

Also thanks all. I found a new feature in my CAD Program, allowing to connect two circles tangentially with a third circle, which makes drawing flowing shapes a breeze.

Yeah, of course. Maybe my point was a bit laboured, but I've been thinking that a single do-it-all amp should well be enough for my noodling needs. I'd been eyeing Marshall DSL20, but fixing having too much gear by getting more gear seems counter productive. I'm crap at moving on stuff.

The little Cornell does surprisingly tight distortion, and the two channels are voiced differently so in theory I think it's fairly versatile. Maybe attenuator would be the way to go. I have a DIY reactive load box I could use for re-amping, but that would be more complicated setup.

Looks good, can't see the "con" here :)

Does the narrowest section at the edge indicate (sg style) bevel?

Thanks!
Yes I plan to chamfer the edge with a router bit at 45° and then rasp, file and generally fuck up the chamfers at the wider parts.

I like you shape a lot. I'm seeing it as red in my head- probably because of the SG style chamfer ;)

Absolutely not a critiscism: are you commited to using a full size ash tray bridge - you might be able to free up a bit of space using a shorter one, and also get the two pick up guards flowing into each other?