One of my planned builds will be heavily Gretsch inspired, and as part of that I am looking into Drum wrap finishing for a proper Sparkle Jet finish.
Given the price of proper Delmar wrap I decided to try some cheaper celluloid drum wrap first, just to get an idea how it works. I got some white pearloid from Aliexpress
First step is to try that on an existing guitar. This will be trickier as I'm working around a neck and existing routes. The actual build will likely have the wrap applied before routing.
First step, find a carved top guitar - my old Epiphone will do
Mark out the wrap
and cut to shape with scissors
Next I use heat gun to gently coax it into the shape of the carve - its mostly there. Obviously with celluloid I need to be careful not to overheat, so i'm going very slowly
And that is all for now - i need to see how best to glue it down
This white pearl is pretty nasty looking but might look good with a grey sprayed over it - If I get some Delmar it will likely be silver or champagne sparkle
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IMO the crucial tonal thing with duo jets is the archtop base and high fingerboard clearance. It adds a bit more of a short acoustic decay and also means you can use a non tension bar bigsby.
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Very Godin Radiator vibe too
I was thinking of binding to neaten up the edge and a vaccuum bag to hold it down while gluing, but interested to see how you approach this.
So far, as proof of concept I am happy. I might stick with a subtle carve on the build as it will be easier to form the material to it, but a vacuum bag would certainly help with that. A flat top build would be really easy, but i like the way the carves look with the material
I've got some puckered edges on this attempt, but I think I can avoid it
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