It will be coming up for 20 years since my first guitar build, so I want to mark it with something special.
I ordered this pickup on a whim from Mojo the other week, it gives me a starting point for ideas
I'm not going to be making a clone of a Bigsby guitar. I considered it briefly, but given the 20 year milestone I thought it would be more fun to combine some of my influences into something unique.
I'm considering an archtop, kinda inspired by Les Paul's Clunkers (the guitars that followed The Log). Imagine they got tidied up and made into productions guitars
or like this bigsby guitar
or this Chet Atkins guitar
Still need to decide on a few bits but I'm thinking spec will be a development of the hollowbody I made this year and a few of the other "alternative reality prototypes" I have made before that
*Medium/small single cut hollowbody
*Carved English Walnut back and sides
*Carved European Spruce top
*Laminated Birsdeye maple neck
*Single P.A.B pickup
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I really like the look of that Gibson clunker thing!
Will be watching with interest ....
Do you know what the Bigsby pickup sounds like?
This as a LP Junior: solid body & one pickup, keeping bridge and Bigsby. Now where to find a bird's-eye top
no idea how it sounds with modern playing, that will be the interesting bit.
here is a restored original,
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another arch top build will be great to follow @WezV
This is the walnut back, spruce top and walnut sides
The spruce wedges for the top start like this
They are nearly 2" at the thickest point. The book matched face is in the middle, not the outside of the wedge... important to remember that when jointing them
They have gone through the planer to bring them down to a reasonable thickness. This has the added advantage of giving me a flat surface to work with later on. Nice consistent colour on the freshly planed woodqqq
It did reveal a few flaws in the middle of the set if I was going for a full size atchtop I would make sure these ended up in neck pocket and cutaway areas. Since I am going for a smaller body, I will just cut them away altogether.
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Nice project Wez.
Today I cut out the walnut back, and spruce top. I also managed to rough carve the spruce..
I've left the plates oversized and some handy clamping tabs on each end. Didnt do this last time and it made work holding a challenge
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Nice to see you've gone down the small body LP route again - the spruce and walnut looks really good.
Do you fully hand carve the spruce or use some templates?
One of the advantages of sticking with a small size is I have the templates already
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Can't believe it's been 20 years, I guess I met you when you'd made a few, I'm trying to remember which is the first you built me. It might be the JB style SG (back in 2007).
I can't believe it's 20 years either, but somehow it is. It's when I was working at the school, and had some really productive summer holidays.... much harder to be productive these days.
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The last one was a 20mm top and shallower 18mm back
This one is going deeper, 25mm top and 22mm back. The extra depth and spruce top should increase the acoustic volume significantly
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I would love a thickness sander, but without one this job involved a few hours hand planing and scraping to get them from 4mm rough sawn wood to 2mm, ready for bending.
I managed to get a load of binding strips out of the walnut. I think I want to use some walnut binding on this, but am still undecided. I have the option either way
Also got the tail block made and some mahogany glued up for the neck block which will encompass the cutaway, strap button and pickup, like the last mini archtop I built.
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