I've just finished a build for my son-in-law, Alex. He plays a number of different guitars but, to date, his go-to was always his Epiphone Firebird, bought when they were still fitting the splendid Steinberger gearless tuners. Great guitar...but includes many of the downsides of the iconic original - not least, the behaviour on the strap.
So I offered to build him an 'essence of'. It was planned to prioritise his particular playing preferences over the actual shape and layout of the original.
Things he wanted:
- good strap and knee balance
- split-able humbuckers
- steinberger gearless tuners
- access to 18th fret max
- a shorter neck reach
- medium weight...he was not especially after a lightweight
Beyond that, he gave me complete freedom to add stuff that took my fancy.
I'm more than happy to add some details of the build itself and I add the spec below the pics - but if there are any specific questions, just shout...I'm more than happy to clarify what I did and why. In the meantime, cutting to the chase, here is the final result:
Spec-wise:
- 25" scale (yes, I know) with the whole scale shifted back an inch or so to improve the reach and the balance. To retain at least some upper fret access, this meant losing some of the reverse offset. Alex was happy with that. Even so, this would not suit a player who likes to explore the dusty end
- Alder back; figured ebony top; ebony fretboard; maple/ebony laminated through-neck
-12" fretboard radius
- Alder body and neck using
@WezV 's excellent Tru-oil slurry-and-buff method; ebony top brought to polish by sanding progressively from 180 grit to 12000 micro-mesh.
- Seymour Duncan P-rails, independently splittable to the P90 coil with CTS push pull
- EVO Gold fretwire
- Steinberger Gearless tuners
- 8lb 2oz playing weight
I passed it over to Alex on Friday - happily, he's very pleased with it. Phew!
As always, thanks for looking
Comments
It was also definitely the right thing to make the 'P90' coils individually splittable rather than the 4-option arrangement that SD suggest with the same push-pulls (that is, giving series humbucker; parallel humbucker; P90's only; rails only) In practice on my own guitars using the SD suggestion, I found that I never used the 'humbucker parallel' or the 'rails only' but did find it restricting to have both pickups always having the same configuration as each other. Alex agrees that the arrangement I've put in gives him all of the options he would normally need. That said, it would only be a 20 minute job to wire it up the other way so, if he wants to try it out, that would be no problem.
And thanks!