Diamond Dave

EDIT: All Finished! plenty of pics @ post #39, check them out and tell me what ya think

Hey everyone, finally got all the stuff I needed together for a guitar i've been planning so that means its time to post some pics and ask for help with a few things.

First things first though, here are the specs:

- Poplar body (cut like a dinky with extended horns)
- Squier Strat 21 fret neck (scalloped by me)
- Duncan Designed HB103 Bridge Humbucker
- Squire Trem (just gonna screw it down hard to act as a hardtail)
- Dimarzio Pot for Volume
- Killswitch (how original)
- 2 Red LEDs that i want to rig up to turn off with the sound from the guitar due to the killswitch (ie lights flashing with the stutter of the guitar signal)
- Tuners and input jack slavaged off the same squier strat as the other gear, i want to rear-mount the input jack though

So thats the setup, probably gonna finish it in white or yellow, the LEDs are going to go one above and one below the pickup or at least thats the idea.

Here's the initial batch of pics:

EDIT: whoops, pics are broken, i'll have them fixed soon EDIT: there ya go

My body blank




With my rough template


A few pics of the neck im using


(obligatory toe-shot)


All the parts


My semi-soundproof jam room




Oh well, thats it for now. Stay tuned because I want to get this finished by the 19th of February so it should move pretty quickly. Might need some help with how to wire the LED's in later.

Cheers guys

__________________

CvPrEpKiLLaH

wow dude, nice job on the scalloping. i'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out

__________________
'57 Reissue Gibson Les Paul Custom, Jackson Soloist SL2H
Marshall MF350
Cry Baby, Carbon Copy, Phase 90

Diamond Dave

cheers man, did all that a few years ago when i customized my old Squier. Got sick of that so now i'm salvaging what i can and making something new.

__________________

guitarcam123

Nice!
What finish yo going to give it?

Diamond Dave

either white or yellow is what i'm tossing up at the moment, and then the headstock to match. I'm open to suggestions though, I was thinking about putting the southern cross stars on it somewhere but thats just a vague idea at the moment. Might try to make a mock up on photoshop soon

__________________

billy0805

Stars and Bars FTW. Seriously.

__________________
Gear:
G&L Legacy
Fender Champ 600



SKYNYRD!

Jorsa

Personally, I think these ones are much nicer :P

Do an Aussie flag version of Dimebag's confederate flag paint job!

CobenBlack

i love your jam room. i really love your jam room.

cool project too btw, where'd you get the template? did you make it yourself?

__________________
Like independent 80's hard rock bands? Check out mine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Znu852-3qA

www.violentkarmamusic.com

Diamond Dave

that was my first thought, but i dont think the australian flag would balance too well on a guitar body unless it was an explorer shape or something. I've seen guitars with the union jack on them before but thats a bit too british which is why i was thinking about pulling the southern cross off the flag and just having that.


yeah i traced my dinky onto a piece of paper and then free-hand i went around it and extended the top horn and increased the cutaway on the bottom horn to get some better fret access. then i just taped that to a piece of wood, traced it, cut it out with a jigsaw and then sanded it more to the shape i wanted.

cheers for the jam room complement, lol. my dad and younger brother built it inside our shed while i was away at uni last year, i love it.

__________________

Diamond Dave

Sorry for the double post but i was going to cut out the body today but i thought it might be easier to mark out everything (neck pocket, bridge location, etc) before i cut it out.

problem is i'm not working off a plan or anything so basically i need any advice i can get on how to do it. My first thought was to get the neck, line it up where i want it on the guitar and mark it and then work out where to put the bridge and everything off of that, based on the measurements of the old body i took the neck off.

will that work ok? it should i suppose but i'm just wondering if there are any better ways of going about it.

cheers

__________________

Diamond Dave

Hate to post 3 times in a row but its a legitimate post so too bad, cut the body out with a jigsaw today and went around all the outside curves with the sander attached to my dads bench saw. probably wont get around to it today but tomorrow i'll use a belt sander to do all the inside curves and then work on the body contours.

now for some all-important pics

on the sander




the body next to the neck i'm using

__________________

guitarcam123

nice work, can't wait to see this one.
I remember when i was going to paint a guitar earlier this year, and i saw a strat with the aus flag painted on it and i was going to do that. In the pic it never looked out of place or anything. Depends if your using a pickguard or not i guess...

shadow phoenix

Looking great so far. Should do an AANJ =P

I'll be following this one.

__________________

Wii FC: 8115 1176 4951 3028

Diamond Dave

cheers man, i will be doing an AANJ of sorts, it wont be a copy of an ibanez heel or anything but it'll be my take on it.

one question, should i do all the body shaping before the routing or do the routing first?

__________________

Diamond Dave

oh well, this thread hasnt exactly been that lively so i went ahead and did all the body shaping and its pretty much finalized now and ready for a final sanding.

Here are some pics of the result:











EDIT: actually i lied, still going to take a lot of wood off the heel but i didnt want to do that until after i rout the neck pocket

__________________

guitarcam123

looks pretty thick?

Diamond Dave

yep, its actually not that heavy and i figured even if more wood = more tone is a load of crap it cant hurt anyway. I've still got about 3mm to take off as well because there are a few scratches the surface picked up when i was cutting it out.

overall im really happy with how its all going but i havent got a router and i've never used one before either. i'm thinking i could probably drill and chisel the holes for the control cavity and pickups but i dont know what to do about the neck pocket. any ideas anybody?

__________________

guitarcam123

carousel182 used to do his neck pockets with a chisel and drill and his turned out alright

Also, where'd you get your wood from?

Diamond Dave

this place in adelaide called otto's something that have a lot of specialty woods for instrument building and other things. the poplar i bought was $66 which is kinda expensive i thought but they had brazillian mahogany for about $100 and they're all cut as a one piece blank especially for guitar building.

__________________