Hi friends and family,
I’ve been busy trying to wrap my head around working for the next year and some months after a very restful time recuperating from surgery. It feels like the weeks before a much-anticipated vacation when you wake up every day and want to start the vacation right now!
Well, here’s an update on the Offset Semi-Hollow Guitar I’ve been building. The staining and polishing are done, parts are starting to arrive and I’m researching just how to get all those electronics into the holes designated for them when, once the pickups are installed, the only way into the body is through the F-Hole (that’s not a euphemism . . . LOL!). Thank the Twenty-First Century for YouTube! There are several techniques that are quite cool demonstrated on the internet and I’ll let you know which one I try when I’m ready for that step. I decided to go with the awesome Roasted, Hammered-Birdseye Maple Neck because of its tonal properties, its beautiful and it is very light which will keep the weight of the guitar down. The body only weighs 3 1/2 lbs. The total weight should be around 6 1/2 lbs . . . Nice!
Meantime, I’m fashioning the Pickup Mounting Rings out of laminated/sandwiched Black Limba wood laminate, black plastic pickguard stock and metal. I finished one and am going to duplicate it for the other pickup. I’m deciding on staining the rings to match the body or just oil them their natural color or something that will blend the Ivory color of the pickups with the rest of the guitar, somehow . . . Thinkin’ bout’ it . . .
So . . . Here’s some more pictures to tease you with the progress of this beauty. I have a tentative Model Name for the guitar. I have on order, (at half off on a pre-sale) a Thalia Capo that the inlay part made from ‘real angel wing shells’ is stained very much like the color of the guitar. The Capo inlay material is called “Tennessee Whiskey Wing”. What do you think of that for a Model Name?
I hope you enjoy this build process almost as much as i do . . .
Love to all,
David T
p.s. Comments are very much appreciated.You can write comments below each story.
Those are Hipshot Staggered, Locking Tuners. Because the tuner shafts are different lengths, I shouldn’t need to use a string tree to hold down the strings, covering up the awesome speckles. That’s a Graph Tech Nut, also.
Dave – I have a friend in Ann Arbor named Brian Delaney. He was a guitar tech for years, most notably with Ted Nugent, whose Byrdlands he maintained on the road for about five years. A couple years back I was rewiring a Guild X-170 semi-hollow (which I got from our UHS classmate Mike Phillips). Brian’s suggestion for pulling the pots into place was to use surgical tube. I had done a couple rewires before, and to quote Brian, it was like building a ship in a bottle. The surgical tube worked GREAT – you can get it small enough to really grip the pot shafts, and the nuts/washers will still fit down over it. Get about 2 feet for each pot, it’s nice to have extra. You can also mark each piece of tube with a small Sharpie, so you can keep them all sorted out when they are hanging out of the F-hole in a bundle. This method beat the crap out of the thin wire and dental floss I had used in the past.
Thanks Rick. I think I’ll try that. I have the system wired and ready to install. I have the long wires heat-tubed for some stability/stiffness.
Looks very nice, Dave. And I have a Kala archtop ukulele with f-holes (I can’t say “f-holes” without laughing in my head).