Sixty Six Body

[JimC]

New project... This is hopefully going to be a 66 shaped body to go on my cheapish Squier Strat.





Its one piece ash, mainly because the local timber merchant didn't have any narrower 2in planks of Ash I Iiked the look of.
The 66 body profile is because my No 1 instrument is a early 80s Tokai Jazz bass, and I thought it would be nice to have a match. I don't rave over the hardware layout on the 66 though, and in any case the Squier already had a pair of Seymour Duncan humbuckers. It also had an old Shadow midi pickup and a middle pickup as well, but I've decided all that was too much of a good thing, so this will be simpler. I failed to draw a JB style control plate I was happy with, so until I change my mind its the simple Telecaster shape that's planned.

[fender3x]

The one piece ash bod looks nice. Hard to go too wrong with Tele controls, and the switch may look a bit more "natural" than it would on a jazz control plate. I always think the most interesting builds are the ones where you can't quite tell whether what you are looking at is strange or familiar. This should fit the bill. Offset jazz body, Gibson-style humuckers, tele controls...maybe a hard tail strat bridge? Classic, eclectic and practical.

[impala59]

Love it! looking forward to your progress, love the hybrid feel

[Trevor Davies]

I love the pattern on the ash. I looking forward to this build. I hope it goes well.

[JimC]

Almost finished with 60grit paper. Enough errors on this one that I probably ought to do another, but hopefully I can make it into an adequate job.

[McCreed]

Quite a transformation from the rough-cut slab in post #1. Good work!

As for errors, the only thing I can see is a slight routing mishap on the edge of the control cavity. Should be easy enough to fix or cover up I would think.

Is it heavy?

[JimC]

As it stands it's almost exactly 2kg

[McCreed]

As it stands it's almost exactly 2kg

That'll weigh in at a manageable weight even by the time your done with neck & hardware.

My Ash tele (one in avatar pic) finished up at 3.7kg, and that was after I did a swimming pool route for weigh relief.
Most of my guitars weigh in around the 3.5-3.8kg mark, so it falls within average. (for me)

[JimC]

More of a pink/purple colour than I was hoping for. It's Fiebing's Leather red colour, but maybe not that red. Their colour chart does show something of a pink cast to be fair.

[fender3x]

This is a really cool shape, and coming along nicely. I had a car that color once. I think it had faded from a burgundy... When I would get comments about driving a pink car, my wife would point out that it was really more of a fuchsia. I would usually reply "How does that help me?" Of course the color looks a lot cooler on your guitar than it did on my beater Ford Escort...