jenrg

Ok, so here's my contribution. I was inspired by dogismycopilot's thread to write about my own project, so here goes. I'm also building a JEM/RG copy from scratch. In my case "from scratch" means that the only thing made by someone else is cutting the fret slots, which is going to be done by my guitar building teacher since he has very accurate tools for this. Basically it will be a RG with some JEM features such as the lion's claw and a JEM style input jack. No monkey handle though =)

Here's some specifications I've come up with so far:

- body : one piece basswood
- ibanez lo-pro edge floating trem and top-lok III nut
- neck : maple/mahogany/maple laminate with AANJ, similar to wizard II but maybe a bit thicker
- ebony fretboard with jumbo frets, only side-dots and something nice inlaid at 12th fret
- gotoh tuners
- double action truss rod
- Seymour Duncan pickups

All hardware in black, haven't decided about other colours just yet.

Current state:
I have all the wood I need, and the bodywood has been planed down to 45mm (I'll be using metric units all along). Neck pieces are waiting to be glued. I have an almost complete template for the neck pocket/pickup cavities/trem cavity.

I'll be updating regularly but this project will take some time since I only have a few hours per week for this because at the same time I'm writing my master's thesis at the university...

Would it be better to add pics to my profile or straight here?

P.S. I'm not a native english speaker, so sorry for the occasional bad language.

the_random_hero

Your English is pretty much flawless (heaps of members here have worse grammar and spelling than you, so don't worry about it ).
It sounds like an awesome build - for pictures I'd make a free Photobucket account and link them from there (it's the code that starts with [IMG]).
Having a guitar building teacher sounds like a good approach for a first-time builder - are you doing some luthiery school or something similar?

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BFun

pics straight here plz lol. or both.

sounds like a neato Idea, go for a custom paintjob if ya can.

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jenrg

Well, it's a kind of guitar building course. We have 3 hours of time reserved from a local school's wood workshop with pretty decent tools. The teacher has his own company and has been making and repairing guitars for over a decade. Since he has a company, he can buy stuff like wood and hardware in large amounts and ofcourse cheaper than normal, which he can then sell to us. It's a win-win situation really, he gets a little profit and we still get our stuff cheaper than straight from some shop.

Here's a try with the images, my single-piece basswood: (I'm using Picasa and I already had a free web-album )


And here's my almost ready template for the front cavities:

the_random_hero

Hmm, I don't think you can directly link to your web album - you have used the right method for adding pictures though. When I went to the picture itself, I had to download it before I could view it.

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jenrg

Here's a link to the album:
http://picasaweb.google.fi/janne.nummi/GuitarProject

I don't know why picasa makes you to download the image if you use a straight link, but if I use a link that shows the image in the album, it won't show in the thread and instead people will have to click the links to see the images. So, I think I'll use straight links for in-thread images.

bluezombie

Good luck jenrg, it always inspires me to someday learn to build my own guitar, when i see people make builds from scratch up!

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jenrg

Ok, here's some new pics of the project. I have now finished the template for the frontside cavities and began making a template for the body outline. I'm making the templates of 12mm thick plywood which I think is adequate. You wouldn't want to ruin your body because of a warping and bending template would you?

Here it is, bandsawed and waiting to be routed to final shape. I'm using my old RG body as a model and routing with a copy router bit (with a bearing in the bottom) to copy the shape to my template.


I also began making the neck. As I told earlier, it'll be a 3pc laminate from maple and mahogany. The mahogany stripe in the middle is 16mm thick. Laminates are 70mm high which will allow the 13 degree tilted headstock to be made straight out of the same block of wood. I know this is an ultimate waste of wood but I didn't want any seams to the neck. I think at least 2 necks could have been made out of this amount of wood...

Here are the laminates:


And here they are being glued together. Like many others, I used Titebond. Also note the pieces of paper, they are there because Titebond between metal and wood is likely to colour the wood. The surfaces will ofcourse be planed but better safe than sorry...


...and here's what it looks like at the moment. The marking is there to show which way the pieces go and also if the parts have moved during gluing. I've removed the excess glue from the other side.

qotsa1998

looks good. See if u can get some neon-colored pickups or covers. those light-up JEMs are pretty cool. See if u could do a base coat of white and a splatter job of those neon colors. That looks awesome. Basswood is rly soft fyi, so try not to bump it into stuff alot, or it dings easily.

XibanezedgeX

Looks great so far!

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jenrg

I'm not much into neon colours but thanks for your opinion anyway, I'm open to suggestions =) I was thinking maybe some kind of coloured lacquer, so that the wood grain would show through, and then maybe have it fade to black towards the edges.. but I'm not sure how difficult that is to accomplish. White base coat and some kind of swirl would also be kinda cool but that also seems a bit tricky to do. I mean I don't have an awful lot of time to spend sanding it down and starting all over again if it doesn't look the way I wanted..


Heh.. tell me about it. It really is easy to get marks on this wood. I like basswood because it's quite light. Exactly the same reason why some say it 'doesn't sound good'. Well, it's a matter of personal preference isn't it? Other thing about basswood is that it's rather plain looking. I mean for example flamed maple top would be much nicer with a see-through paint/lacquer.

About the selection of pickups, any suggestions anyone? I know this has been discussed in other threads too... I play a lot of different kinds of stuff, from blues to metal and I've been thinking on getting something like the following (Seymour Duncans):

neck: SH-2N
middle: SSL-4
bridge SH-5

jenrg

Got the first part of my hardware order today, Gotoh tuners, top lok III and stuff. There was one minor detail though... the dealer didn't have a black lo-pro edge bridge in stock, so I'll have to wait until december for it... crap. Anyway, tomorrow I'll have my weekly guitarbuilding session, really looking forward to it.

tubab0y

Unless you're some kind of guitar speed-building demon, I doubt you'll need the bridge until december anyways. Looking good.

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jenrg

I guess you're right. It would have been nice though to have it so I could have test-fitted it to see if the cavity routing went ok.

So now I have routed the body front cavities, everything went ok so not much to say about it. Doesn't look much like a guitar body yet, but I think it's easier to do all the routing while the plank is still uncut.


I had a bit of bad luck also, the surface planer was broken so there was nothing I could do with the neck as I don't want to plane it by hand...

admbwr

man why have i missed this thread , this is awsome.
very neat templates, only one question though,
the wood you are using for your body has knots init, whats the deal ?

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jenrg

Do you mean this image?


It's not my bodywood, it's the template plywood. The bodywood is not even cut yet since I like to route the cavities first. After taking that photo I had to redo the template since I had cut it too small. Always remember not to cut too close to drawn lines

powermetalg

Looks nice... Id say put some emg style covers on it and paint (or have someone paint) a mural that covers the pickups and everything... maybe have it go up the neck. Ive got it have zues (not sure if thats spelled right but hes a greek god) throwing a lightnig bolt up the neck and each of the bolts angles could be fret markers. That would be awesome. Probably more elaborate than you want to go but would be nice.

Also your english is better than most peoples and probably mine.

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roast

Sweet build. Interested to see how this goes. Whoever thought of a mural, thats a nice idea. Could be cool to have a picture on the front of the guitar, over the pickups. I wouldnt do it all over the body and the neck though, the grain on the wood is too pretty!

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jenrg

I like the god of thunder idea, that would definitely look good. I just don't think my mad guitar building skillz are enough to accomplish that keep in mind that this is my first guitar and I'm learning things as I go...