A tale of two STs

[WeirdBits]

See what I did there

Two ST-1's to be precise, one for my brother and the other for me.

His: Wudtone Black Magic Woman, clear neck, chrome hardware, modern 2-pivot bridge, locking tuners and hot pickups.

Mine: Wudtone Columbian Gold, aged vintage yellow neck (probably), gold hardware, upgraded vintage style bridge, locking tuners, vintage style pickups.

Probably some mods to the wiring on both, I have a few ideas in mind.

For convenience, I'm calling them Blackie and Brownie.



Headstocks roughly shaped. On both headstocks, the B and particularly the high E tuner holes are slightly out of line with the other holes… and yes, I probably won't be able to stop myself from 'fixing' them.



Both fretboards are good, but each has some mucky spots that will need a bit of cleaning up. However, I luuuurv the grain on Brownie's fretboard (lower), even if it has a small crack in the headstock (I glued the crack today, so I'll see how turned out tomorrow).

[Gavin1393]

Hmm....you have chosen two colours to use on bass wood bodies that are (along with Olympic Girl) the most difficult to be sure of the resulting colour. Mind you, with your attention to detail and determination, i guess you'll show us how to get it right! Going to be watching this with interest!

[lawry]

Cool thread title Scott. It made me chuckle. This will be the first time I have seen someone build a double neck guitar with each neck on a separate body. Clever idea!

[stan]

will be great to see a dual build Scott

[Brendan]

Keen to see how this turns out - BMW and Columbian Gold look great in the samples. Watching with interest. Great also to see the attention to detail.

[WeirdBits]

So, the crack in the headstock on Brownie was glued with super glue, a touch of Maple dust, and clamped for several hours.



When the clamp came off the repair looked ok, but I thought I might help it along a bit more. As some of the tuner holes were slightly misaligned on both headstocks I thought I may as well plug and re-drill them as counterbores. That will not only allow me to align the holes better, but the counterbore should give a much better fit for the Grover tuners and keep more wood in the hole (not a euphemism) for Brownie.

Plugs cut, taped up and ready to glue.



Plugged and setting.

[WeirdBits]

New hole positions marked… then double and triple-checked for alignment and spacing, and finally checked again to make sure the tuner washers would cover any plug edges.



New holes drilled with a 5/16" (7.94mm) bit for the bushings, and then drilled from the back with the 10mm counterbore. mmm… counterbore.

[WeirdBits]

And, after a clean up of the new drilled tuner holes and sanding both headstocks down to 180 grit, here's how the crack repair on Brownie ended up. Not sure if I really need to try and blend/hide it more, as I think it'll be ok once it gets some Aged Vintage Yellow on it… don't know yet. It may change a bit when I do the final 240 sanding on it.



Next step, body work.

[stan]

weirdy, that looks great, nice work

[stan]

weirdy, that looks great, nice work