#3rd Custom GR-1SF ‘Annylonation’.

[DarkMark]

It arrives tomorrow. I’ll start the diary tonight because tomorrow I’m unlikely to have the time.

GR-1SF
F holes, neck cavity, no other holes! (No pickup holes, no pot holes, no input jack hole, no bridge holes, no switch holes.)
Rosewood fretboard.
Dot inlay.
Extra large blank 3 aside paddle headstock with no tuner holes.
No hardware.
No pickups.

Planning this has nearly driven me made. The idea is to have a classical headstock with nylon strings tide onto a tailpiece around a KNA NG-1 detachable piezo pickup for nylon strings. Luckily I’ve had a long time to plan this and I’ve almost changed my plan on how to finish it on a daily basis. It’s taken months for me to settle on something close to my original plan for the headstock. Not sure about the truss rod cover just yet and even less certain about the tailpiece.

I’m going to use a floating roller bridge for two reasons 1) to help maintain string spacing, and 2) these strings are going to bend and hopefully a roller bridge will be an advantage under these conditions. As an added bonus it will help with intonation. I guess that makes 3 reasons.

The headstock design requires 20+ veneer gluing steps and it took me three attempts to plan the order that it goes together. I’m hoping to use the extra large paddle blank off cuts to thicken up the headstock for the tuner machine.

Back of the neck is only getting 2 coats of satin wipe on poly.

My head tells me to keep it natural finish (especially given the neck treatment), but my heart is worried I’ll never have a shiny red stained guitar if I don’t do it now.

Working title will be ‘The Annylonator’, as in Annihilator, but I’m open to any other God Awful nylon puns.

I might play a little game of how far I can get into the build before Mrs DarkMark finds out it has arrived.

Here are pictures of the planning and evolution of the headstock.

[DarkMark]

The headstock and lamination steps.

[DarkMark]

The rough headstock model, pickup and tuners.

[caseyone1]

Looks great, almost Art DEco. A mate of mine built a guitar which this head stock would almost match perfectly. I will try and get a pic.

[DarkMark]

Looks great, almost Art DEco. A mate of mine built a guitar which this head stock would almost match perfectly. I will try and get a pic.

Post a photo

[Simon Barden]

Of course you can give up guitar building any time you want.

[DarkMark]

Of course you can give up guitar building any time you want.

I was only ever going to do one, maybe two guitars. Now I find myself buying parts for a fourth and making grandiose statements about a scratch build. How did this happen?

[FrankenWashie]

I was only ever going to do one, maybe two guitars. Now I find myself buying parts for a fourth and making grandiose statements about a scratch build. How did this happen?

It appears you have your own version of Igor at work in your head, my sympathies.

[blinddrew]

It's just n+1 at work.
You can't argue with maths...

[DarkMark]

No, no. I will stop at some point.