Sonics Semi-Scratch experiment - Flying Victory

[FrankenWashie]

Starting to feel a bit like Christmas... another order from a while ago arrived today.

I saw these on Teamjeffos build and thought they looked awesome - so based purely on that I bought some.



Another slightly weird headstock treatment - It will work with the body shape, but looks a bit odd at the moment.

As much as I like the grovers, the don't really suit this head stock - I'm thinking of trying to change the actual peg 'heads' to somthing a bit more angular. I'm also toying with having them mounted on an angle - more to come.



I need to start seriously looking at some timber - my ideas with this keep evolving, but right now I think I want to get some maple to match the neck and do a kind of semi whitewashed finish something like this.

Yers, I went looking for heavy pickups and ended up with LACE Dissonant Aggressors for the silent build, still a ways off getting them firing though.

I must say that LP whitewash pic is rather noice....it would be a cool contrast with the ebony fret board.

[Sonic Mountain]

Bit more mucking around. I decided to try and mod the tuners using the PBG tuners (which I'm starting to get a bit of a collection of) I pulled them apart and, what do you know, but the threads etc are the same, and the dimensions close enough that some parts are interchangeable. I quite like this.

Some doodling of mods on the headstock - I'm going to make a long odd shaped truss rod cover - a little like the Rickenbacker headstock I suppose.

[wokkaboy]

looks good Sonic. Are they 3 +3 tuners ? Headstock shape looking good and will look cool with Ricky style TRC

[Sonic Mountain]

The grovers are 3+3, the ones I borrowed bits from are all just in a container together - mostly the inline 6. I kept the most important bits of the grovers for the 3+3 arrangement.

So otherwise I've been looking around for wood sources. Most of the solid body pieces I have found aren't quite big enough for the V. Any recommendations?

There is a pretty good site for a guy in Maleny - which is fairly close to me. It may be I have to modify my design a bit to suit the wood sizes. I don't want to go too crazy with the price either....

[Sonic Mountain]

*Blows dust off thread*

cough

Well this one basically stalled.

There were a few things - I decided I didn't like the head stock shape. Then the fret board started cracking, I thought lemon oil might help but instead I got it all over the maple as well, so I made a nice mess there I also don't really enjoy playing on the Gibson scale necks.

Then the pickups and other hardware ended up on the black cherry and I just got side tracked with other builds.

This year I really want to do a full scratch build as my main project. I'm collecting bits and pieces and equipment to do it including a router table set-up. I have't really used routers much so I thought reviving this project would be a good way to christen the new gear and get comfortable before I try and wreck some more expensive wood.

So the plan is rough and cheap, hopefully it'll be a fun guitar for the kids to mess around on or something. Expect a fair bit of bodge in this thread.

First job is gluing together some cheap pine. Longer clamps are definitely needed and I actually meant to buy some at the big green shed and forgot. A bit of redneck engineering to the rescue....

Probably still going to be slow on this. 3/5 of my family went to Bali a week before Christmas and brought back Denge Fever - Christmas day culminated with a trip to hospital and they've basically been poleaxed ever since. So, fun holiday this end so far....

[Andy40]

Wow, thats not good Sonic, Dengue fever, I understand really knocks the tripe out of people. Hope they recover well and soon!

[FrankenWashie]

Damn, that’s some bad luck with 3/5 down. Best wishes for their recovery.

[Sonic Mountain]

Guys... I think I'm in love. Family is on the mend today and while I'm pretty dusty from jamming in the new year, I finally got to play with my new router table. This is just crappy pine, but on half speed it goes thru it like butter. Few boo boos where I caught the end grain, but as this whole project is a bit of a practice run I don't care. Considering I have the templates I can always knock up a better body down the line if I decide I like this one.

[JohnH]

Man, that sucks about the Dengue, but the build is great!

[FrankenWashie]

I had assumed that your join line would have been down the center line of the body?
Did you run the whole body width in the one pass?
Was that the standard Diablo/BGS follow bit?
How was the stability of the Ozito table?

Inquiring minds need to know!