Homebrew Guitar


 
This guitar is a completely original design, and was built from scratch - back in the 70's. I signed up for an evening woodwork class at a local school so I could use their woodworking facilities! Brian May, eat yer heart out!

The through-neck is a 5-layer sandwich of maple and rosewood with the center maple strip rotated 180 degrees to counteract any tendency in the wood to warp.

The body "wings" are made of wenge - a West African hardwood with a zebra-like grain pattern. As my original body blank was thicker than I needed I band-sawed a thin layer which I used to make a grain-matched rear cavity cover, and a facing for the headstock.

The fingerboard is ebony with a solid brass nut and mother-of-pearl marker dots. The truss-rod cover is also made of ebony.

The control circuit is built around an active pre-amp module made by  Bartolini. I also designed the circuit which lights the LED embedded in the wood next to the 

volume control if the battery is low and needs replacing.

The pickups are copies (I forget who's) of DiMarzio's successful copy of the Gibson PAF design.

The bridge is made by Schaller with fine tuning adjusters, and the tuning machines are Gotohs.

The finish is a traditional cellulose lacquer. Unfortunately, when the instrument was sprayed (which I had done professionally, by Chandler Guitars in London) nobody anticipated just how porous wenge can be - and after many coats of lacquer were simply sucked into the wood, the guitar gained a huge amount of weight and the tone and resonance was dulled. In areas where the lacquer was not absorbed the thickness has caused quite extensive checking over the years.
Cool Features:
    - Through neck design
    - All original design
    - Original electronics design
    - Weighs a T O N !  :-(
    - Matching headstock and access cover
    - Looks

 

Note the little white dot next to the larger front control? That's an LED! It lights up when the battery is low.

The front control (volume) includes an ON/OFF switch. The rear controls (bass and treble) include pull switches for treble boost and active bypass (in this mode the bass control is volume, the others inactive)

Switches allow bridge/neck/
bridge+neck/bridge-neck.

The flight case is also made from scratch! (The gray foam has yellowed somewhat over time)