Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
Fender has used poplar for a long time. I have a body from Warmoth from the '80s made of it as well. McCreed's body is sort of an ideal piece. Lots of nice grain with nothing you wouldn't want to see. Fender mostly finished them in solid colors, though, due to the propensity for it to have broad green streaks. Not great with clear yellow finishes, but IMHO it can be pretty interesting with dark green finishes. I also sort of like those streaks, and have a flamenco guitar with poplar back and sides. Maybe not beautiful, but really distinctive. Poplar doesn't look much like basswood, but it's similarly easy to work, about the same weight. It's also the cheapest hardwood I can get at the big box store, so I end up using it quite a bit. Overall one of the underappreciated tone woods, I think.
Thanks McCreed and Fender3x,
Asking to get a better understanding of the different woods for a semi-scratch itch, I can't seem to scratch.
Thinking of offset, solid colour, but more durable (harder than) basswood.
But let's not digress from McCreeds build, again awesome looking body, looking forward to seeing it come together!
Good input there fender3x.
Also worth noting that the body is two-piece, and whilst not a perfect match, it's not stupidly horrible either. I was pleasantly surprised for the price. The join line is less obvious on the front due to the burst, and once the pickguard is on, most of it will be covered.
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
From the pic I thought it was one piece. No one will know it's not unless you tell them ;-) BTW I meant that poplar looks pretty good with dark finishes, not dark green finishes. Stained dark it can look a lot like mahogany.
I've thought about using poplar for a scratch build too. Not to hijack the thread, but if you guys in Australia can get it cheaply as we can here it's almost an ideal wood for a scratch build, since it's reasonably hard, easy to work and cheap to buy. It's only drawback is the streaking, and with a solid color or the right stain that can be good too.
Also reminds me of home. Lots of poplar trees where I grew up ;-)
So you're a Northerner???Also reminds me of home. Lots of poplar trees where I grew up ;-)
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
Yup. Born in Washington State in the Pacific Northwest. The joke around my house is that was actually born farther from Miami than my wife who was born in Bogota Colombia
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No pics to post, but I've been slowly making some progress on this one.
I've got the neck pocket sorted to accommodate my heel, which has allowed me to plug and re-drill the neck mounting holes, which also enabled me to drill the recess holes in the back for the neck screw ferrules, then plug and re-drill the holes in the heel... yadda, yadda, yadda...
That process was all necessary to move on to the next critical step which will be setting out the bridge. After that it should be pretty straight forward shielding, wiring and assembling. (should be )
I'll be doing another PTB tone circuit, but am also considering adding a series option for the neck and bridge pickups. Dunno yet...
The frets are all levelled and dressed and the nut is shaped but will require fine tuning once the strings are on. Still waiting on my white pearloid pickguard. It seems to be on that proverbial boat...
I've also been filling in the gaps with some changes to one of my pedalboards, and prepping to do a series mod to one of my teles with a push/push pot. I ordered two pots, which finally arrived last week. And of coarse, all of this has been carried out with an adequate amount of procrastination and dawdling .
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...
Don't feel bad about your purchase, you're not the only one who has shot off an impulse purchase...
I'm waiting for the JZ-6 I've ordered to be released into the wild.
Nothing really exciting to show, but it's getting closer to done. Since last post I've mounted the vibrato, got the neck
and tuners installed.
I've been waiting on the pickguard & back plate since ordered 10/10/21. Just got notification that it's finally in
Australia! (30 days and counting in transit) The pickguard in the photo is just temporary so I could wire up the pickups.
I haven't fully decided on the black knobs/pup covers, but I'm leaning that way. I'll wait and see how it looks with the white pearloid. I have the whole kit in white and cream as well.
I did have one little setback with the neck. I somehow managed to ding the 17th fret (still don't know how or when it happened). It was pretty much right where the B string would pass and was too deep to just level out without levelling the remaining upper frets, so I just replaced it. Oh well, all sorted now.
One thing that's deviated from the original plan is the pickups. I was going with a set of Tonerider Classic Blues, but
remembered I also have a set "Duncan Designed" SC-101's from my Squier Deluxe strat. The 101's have been discussed and debated online as to being a poorman's version of SD SSL's. Opinions seem to be quite polarized between love 'em or hate 'em. I didn't have them in my Deluxe for that long, but remembered them favourably. After doing some looking around online, I found this article/forum post and decided to try the mod and give them a try.
https://www.strat-talk.com/threads/d...hereof.467148/
As per the linked post, I removed the shielding and adjusted the pole pieces to a vintage stagger. I've got the TR's if they don't do it for me.
Making the world a better place; one guitar at a time...