nice work around with the pup holes, looks neat
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nice work around with the pup holes, looks neat
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Pretty much finally finished. All the wiring done and it is making noise. Just the straps to screw in a a few fine details and one last buff with the wax. Very happy how it has turned out even though it isn't exactly as I planned.
Big thanks to everyone on here for all their advice and help. Certainly not good enough for a guitar of the month entry but I'm already thinking of ideas for the next build!
looks great Freaky, how does it sound and play ?
Don't be silly that is well good enough to enter December GOTM
Plays surprisingly well. Very happy with the neck. The guitar was pretty easy to set up the way I like.
The sound is decent enough. But still has stock Chinese pickups. I said if the build worked out well I would upgrade to tone rider or bare knuckle or something.
This SG looks great and as Woks previously stated this is a GOTM entry for sure. Nice job
Love the black on brown, is it still finished in wax? looks great.
A lovely looking guitar, very classy. The 'rescue' with the extra pickup surrounds haven't detracted from the overall look at all.
You might want to try a roller bridge if you find the solid saddles a bit sticky when you use the trem. I've got a Flying-V with a maestro style trem and roller saddles and that stays in tune very well (providing the strings aren't too old). Your bridge is rather high off the body (but no worse than many Gibson LP bridges since they changed their neck angle) but you'd need that to get a good string break angle with the Bigsby anyway. But as a result it may be very slightly wobbly and be able to rock back and forth by a small amount, especially when using the trem.
One thing I do to all my Tune-O-Matic bridges (and associated stop tails) is wrap some plumber's PTFE tape around the post threads going into the body (just low enough down so it doesn't show). If you use enough of it so that you can still turn the posts whilst preventing any sideways movement (most rattle about with no string tension on them), I'm convinced adds to the tuning stability and maybe helps out with the sustain. It's easily reversed if you're not convinced after trying it.
Oh Freaky that is NOICE! I really like the adaptation on the PUP surrounds and that Bigsby is mental! Is it a bit tail heavy?
love the wax finish, "let the Wood Speak" as the mantra goes.
Top job mate, you'll have to post a sound demo.
Definitely worthy of entry into GOTM, very nice looking build.
Looks good, like the wiring, a LOT better than current Gibson SG's that use a circuit board like below ....try changing anything on one of these without screwing the whole board up.
Attachment 14923
IMHO, if you want the best from this guitar, search Ebay from some 2nd hand Gibson 57 PAF pickups, plenty about, as a lot of fools exchange these out of LP's with super hot wound pickup's, which are only good for thrash.
I recently bought a MIJ Tokai SG, not that their is anything wrong with a Pitbull kit of the same, it's just that I already have 3 kit's in the works.
So my recent use of a SG pulled my eyes to your build.
Yes, those Gibson 57 Classics do sound pretty nice.
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If that's abrasive polish then for that genuine factory style you need to leave some of it in odd corners of the body routs...
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Quick test
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Anybody know what kind of pickups go into those cavities? Double humbuckers are too small. Don’t want to use a scratch plate for this makeover
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Can't think of any standard humbucking pickups that will fit the larger than normal routs. I think that was a factory stuff-up.
Can you sit a humbucker in the rout and take a pic so we can see just how oversized it is?
My only thoughts are that a Fender Wide Range humbucker is a lot wider than a normal humbucker (1.75" vs 1.4"). But you don't get them without covers (unless you go for a custom set) and they aren't that powerful and are pretty clean sounding.
Unless you want to fill in the routs to make them smaller (as you seem to be going for a solid colour finish so you can cover up the fill), then a full-sized SG 'batwing' scratchplate would be my choice.
I would suggest making 2 custom pickup rings out of pickguard material. I think 3-ply would look really sharp with that aesthetic you're going for. By making them yourself, you're not restricted by convention but can still use standard humbuckers in there.
Yes, making the custom rings can be a lot of work, but most anything "custom" is.
Below is an example of custom rings I made to fit a single coil into a humbucker route. Yes, you can buy conversion rings, but I've not seen 3-ply like mine for sale anywhere. They're generally one colour/one ply.
With your build, you might also need to find a way to mount the custom rings up off of the body to get the pups close enough to the strings, but that's not hard. I can think of several unique ways to achieve that, right of the top of my head.
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Yeah, maybe need to mount humbuckers to a custom scratch plate
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A standard scratch plate will do. It doesn't need to be custom just because the routs are over-sized as it will cover them up.
I suggested two individual rings, because you said you didn't want a scratchplate.
I figured two custom-made rings would at least allow some of the are between the pickups to be exposed.
Alternatively you could buy a standard SG "Full Face" scratchplate and re-cut/shape it to minimise the coverage, or turn it into the two pickup rings I suggested in my first reply. At least you wouldn't need to worry about cutting out the pickup holes.
Been a while since I have had time to get back to this ...re build.
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So I have filled all the ash grain as much as I could with wood filler. It’s all been primed and sanded as flat as I’m willing to put time into.
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I had never tried stripes before so tried to measure everything out as precise as I could and put the lines out
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Happy enough for a first attempt at it. There is some blue bleeding into the cream lines and there is that “tide line” there too. Anyone any advice on how to clean it up a bit? Or is it one of those things that is gona cause more hassle than it’s worth?
Regardless of the slight bleeding I am going to spray the cream lines with a few coats of lacquer first, and then go for the whole body.
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Whoops. Anybody any ideas? Try to glue? Or take off and try filler and spray over?
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I'd glue it with superglue. As it's before clears you should be able to touch that up pretty easily.
Also with the bleeding, you probably want better quality masking tape, that will help enormously with getting a nice clean edge. The little ridge is pretty unavoidable, but once you build up clears you won't be able to see it.
Bummer about that broken neck pocket. I would go with a CA fix too.
You'd never get any bog or filler to adhere properly and would lack any integral strength. As it is, gluing the broken piece may or may not be strong enough, but I reckon it's still the best option.
There's no real load there, but an accidental bump of the neck could re-break it.
Like the racing stripe idea. I've never done any striping, but funny thing is, my brain automatically went the opposite way. Doing the cream stripes over the blue. Don't know it would have yielded a different result though.
Have you ever thought about just top loading the pickups and not worry about mounting rings? Alternatively there could possibly be metal ones out there or make your own from brass or aluminium.
EVH didn't care for them on lots of his guitars.
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The problem with no pickup rings and direct mounting is the problem that started this in the first place, the oversized and not well shaped pickup routs:
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Any direct mounted pickups will look rather silly sitting in there.
Unless there's a cunning plan in the offing, Freakystyley seems to have missed the opportunity to fill the routs to make them a normal size, and has also left the two strange holes at the top and bottom of each rout unfilled as well. Any filling would now require a respray.
My only suggestion to mount the pickups without more filling and painting is to get some clear acrylic to make a mounting plate for the centre section, and spray the reverse with the blue and cream to match the blue and the stripes. You'll need to paint the reverse to hide the extra large routs. But you'll need to be comfortable routing out (or cutting out) standard humbucker-sized holes in acrylic/perspex to do so (and not scratch the surface whilst doing so).
As McCreed said, I would glue the little neck pocket wing. However, I would use epoxy and just push it into the break without removing it.
Epoxy will be just as strong in that area and less brittle so may take the knock that McCreed mentions without re-breaking.
I love the 'Go Faster' lines.
Cheers
Ricky
Matt black paint inside pickup cavities would help to disguise things.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
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Great ideaQuote:
Originally Posted by wazkelly
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I thing with regards to the pickup cavities I will just mount the pickups to a custom shape scratch plate.
Superglued the crack and squeezed some filler in. Hopefully I can smooth it all out. The whole body is getting re sprayed for exactly the reason of the bleeding.
Sonic, I used 3m tape but I reckon I maybe left it on a little too long and the blue bled into the cream. So yeah a complete respray when the paint arrives. If you can recommend a better tape please do, always game for trying new things
mcCreed, The neck is actually the reverse of this, cream with one blue stripe up the back [emoji1605] hopefully I can pull it off better on the 2nd attempt
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There are a STACK of 3M tape products for various applications, but what you are looking for is 3M FINE LINE TAPE 233. There are a couple of variants and other brands do versions as well. It's about 5mm wide, so you mostly just use it to get the nice sharp edge and then overlap some normal painters tape to cover the larger areas. Last time I checked there was a similar product at Autobarn, but you might need to go to a paint supplies place.
It might also be worth trying that green Frog Tape from the big green shed. Not sure it comes in thin formats, but I've had some nice edges using it.
Generally speaking you should remove it once the paint has tacked off before it fully cures so the edge doesn't tear.
Thanks sonic. I’ll research those. I reckon I left the tape on for too long as you say. One coat of blue wasn’t enough so I had to wait until it had dried a bit before applying a 2nd coat. Then I took the tape off.
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Trying out this tape as recommended by sonic.
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Restarting this to see if I can get the lines sharper.
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I used this for my SG Bass - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/3M-471-F...IAAOSwYGBZiogp
Did you spray the white first, wait for it to dry, then tape it off and spray blue? The lines look super sharp!
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Oh man. Now i HAVE to build my own AC Cobra SG
They look awesome!
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