Yes, well, if you are even moderately coordinated, then having a bazillion switches is great for variety. I can barely control the guitar as it is and ride my Tone control a LOT; having it be a Push/Pull feels like a recipe for an unpleasant mid-song surprise.
Having said that, I want to road-test both Humbucker modes - I’ve been surprised at how wrong my preconceived notions are about a guitar too many times to trust my advanced judgment this time…
Update - email from Bill:
I think I’ve got the body color.
I did a test on a whitish piece of luan plywood. The grain and color are very close to the korina. Pic 1 shows the test piece near the body. Pic 2 shows the test piece next to the EB-0.
I’m sure there will be some tweaking, but this is real close.
Bill
Picture 1 here - very cool - you can see the body and the neck (for the first time on this thread - at least someone is taking pics). You can barely see the wavy grain of the Brazilian Rosewood fretboard - it’s real purty.
Picture 2 here. For a slapped-together test attempt, that’s pretty darn excellent. You can just imagine it under a few coats of nitro lacquer.
My reply:
Cool! I see four colors on the sample: the light wood itself; the red; what appears to be a brown undercoat; and then the two colors combined for the cherry look - do I get it?
As for the decal - I’m not happy; I tried the decal on a blacked-over surfaced - the decal disappeared! The printing is not opaque enough. I am going to research this further…
Thanks,
S
Yeah, you got it. First on is the dark brown grain filler. Wipe and scrape off the excess, and the pores are filled. In this case we let the filler stain the surrounding wood. Next on is the blood red aniline dye. Lacquer on top of that.
This was a quick and sloppy attempt, just to see if it was close.
When I do it for real, we’ll probably need to fill 3x…the pores are really deep. The filler stains the light wood to closely resemble raw mahogany. The korina has a grayish cast that the luan does not, so we’ll see what adjustments have to be made.
Too bad about the decal. There are many trips back to the drawing board in the world of One-Off.
Bill
So I am posting a thread on The Gear Page to inquire about DIY Waterslide Decals - oy. If anyone reading this has any thoughts, I am all ears…
And I really gotta order the pickups and get the wiring scheme down…after I get back from a weeklong business trip; that will be a nice welcome back from the road present to myself…
OK, this has got to be the geekiest remark I’ve ever seen. Congratulations!
The color looks good. A little too light of a red but I’m sure Bill will get it close…
Why thank you, sir! Guilty as charged!
**BigShooter **- yep; Bill noted that when we spoke in person; it’s a combination of the lack of sufficient undercoat (he plans to fill the woodgrain a couple of times and lightly sanding before applying the top color, so the brown undertone will be deeper and more even), the sloppiness of the test application of the read, and the fact that there is no nitro topcoat…
Update: So I get online to ask a question about the headstock decal - this guy replies, asks me a couple of questions and solves my problem. The he asks “what’s the decal?” I show him and he says “oh, lemme take a shot”, asks for my last name - and sends me this great design that uses the Jack Daniels pouring-bottle logo I found on the internet, my last name as the “brand” name and has “Tele Special” underneath it just like a Fender would have “Telecaster” (I am still an old fart when it comes to public message boards, so I don’t know if I will show the pics since it has my last name…sorry!). Bottom line, the guy is a pro with Graphic Design software and did a great job - loads better than my feeble attempt. I am on the road right now for work but will try it on the decal paper I bought in a week or so when I am back.
WordMan, you do understand that the colour match is time affected, that Gibson has already undergone seasoning. Anilines though generally colour fast do suffer some fading, and another factor is how your korina ages vs. mahog. Can’t comment there having no long term experience with it. True mahogs give up the raw steak look.
Since Bill is using aniline, fine tuning of shade can be achieved when shooting lacquer basecoats, assuming it is solvent mix. For that matter, it could be used to tint the grain filler which may be to advantage given his 3x statement.
Carson - yep; his EB-0 bass that he is using as a guide has a slight fading to it. We’ve discussed this a bit - all Gibson Heritage Cherry is NOT the same. Some look bright red, others have more of a purple-ish tone to them. As you state “True mahogs give up the raw steak look” and that is the look Bill and I are targeting. I will share your thinking with him, but I suspect he is thinking like you along these lines - he is a great, old hand at this wood / finishing stuff…
Update - okay: I mentioned that I was a little uncomfortable showing the cool new decal design I got because it has my last name on it - and sure enough, I got help! My new-found friend from The Gear Page* came over the Dope, saw this and my other threads, and mocked up the same design using both “WordMan” and “Cecil” instead of my last name - pretty cool, eh? Our own squeegee is the one who took the decals and Photoshopped them onto a black Tele headstock so you can get the whole look - thank you sir!!
Pretty cool - eh? I am so psyched at how this guitar is coming together.
*A special plug for the gentleman who helped me with the decal design - as you can see, he’s great at what he does. It turns out he does freelance Graphic Design work - could be a guitar decal, or a new business form your company needs, or anything requiring a pro Graphic Design touch - as a way of saying thanks to him, if I can steer any Dopers his way, I would love to! If you think you might have a need, PM me and I will put you in touch (and yes, I am checking withe mods to make sure this type of plug is okay! )
No problem. I still like the logo with your RL surname best; there’s a lowercase descender on one of the middle letters (like a cursive g,j,f), so it hugs up to the “tele special” letters nicely, and the overall letter shapes get “out of the way” of the tuning pegs well, kinda like the “l” in the version “Cecil” does, but better.
Update - body finishing in progress check:
1 - dark-brown filler undercoat laid on thick - here
2 - undercoat wiped down - here
3 - body painted with Cherry finish, dried, ready to be sprayed with nitro lacquer - here
4 - body front vs. guide color Gibson EB-0 - here
5 - body rear vs. guide color Gibson EB-0 - here
Really coming along and the color is perfect! Needs a few more coats of nitro to smooth out the texture and even out the tone.
I have a couple of different types or tortoiseshell on order for the pickguard, and I need to order the thin, white pickguard that I will glue the Tort to and cut around (the tort is thin for acoustic guitar pickguards, so needs a backing; and heck, I need a guide for the shape anyway…).
I have been working diligently on the homemade decal for the neck and hopefully will have a solution soon - I found some white-foil-backed decal paper that fits into a laser printer, sold by the sheet - oy. We’ll have to see if that provides an opaque back so when I apply the decal to a black background, it doesn’t just disappear, which as been the problem…
Sweet. That body color is awesome, and looks dead-on compared to your reference color.
Okay - last update for this thread:
I finally got the freakin’ decal to work: after much experimentation, I found this laser-printer compatible decal paper with white backing, so when you print the decal design on it, the backing is opaque - the color of the surface you put the decal on will not show through. So I got a version of my decal on a black backing (since the peghead it is going on is black) and tried it out on the new paper - bingo; looks like it is supposed to.
So I dropped the decal sheet over to Bill - he will contour-cut it out (after spraying it with a bit of laquer to make it stiffer and easier to work with, and to fix the inks on the decal) and then put it on the peghead, so he can then finish spraying the neck (only the back of the neck; with a rosewood fingerboard, it won’t be sprayed).
Most importantly, I got to see the guitar laid out for the first time - the body with the neck sitting in the right position and the guitar bridge sitting on the body. No pickguard yet but it looks perfect so far! The body has that spot-on Cherry SG / “raw steak” look in person - and with the Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and black peghead, it really has that 50’s Les Paul Special look. Very very cool. And the whole thing is light as a feather.
One open issue is the pickguard - I want a single-ply Tortoiseshell pickguard in the shape that works on a Tele (meaning just a sheet of T-shell; normally pickguards come with black/white/black layers on the beveled edge - but 50’s LP Specials and Juniors were single-ply) - but you know what? They just aren’t made*. I thought about doing what I did with my first Tele - buy a thin white pickguard and glue some acoustic-guitar thin Tortoiseshell pickguard material to the top - but the only TShell I can find has too much orange in the color - doesn’t go with the Cherry body. Sigh. So I am just ordering a straight up, 3-ply b/w/b pickguard with a TShell top that is the right color. Heck, I will use a Sharpie to darken the edge or something.
*I have seen what I need at the website of Steve “I can charge $6,000 for an assembled Strat or Tele where each piece is unobtanium for one reason or another” DeTemple (has a GREAT rep, but he is still assembling a guitar the way I am…) - but they are made from Italian celluloid used in making high-end fountain pens, and the pickguards are, like, $250. Don’t get me wrong, I will spring for pricey Unobtainium like a light-weight Korina body - but $250 for a hunk of pickguard plastic? Not so much.
Beyond this, unfortunately, I gotta wait a bit - Bill wants to spray a bunch more nitro on it to even out the color and texture, to really bring out the depth and “play” in the grain of the wood, and in this cold weather that will take some time to ensure the coats dry between sprays. I have to wait a bit anyway - money needs to go for the Xmas budget for now, so I can’t stock up on pickups quite yet…so I will be signing off for a month or two but will report back with an update when I have more to share…
I built a Kramer up once and used a Dynasty emlem from a Dodge and chopped the Dy off of it. It was a grungy fucker anyway so it didn’t look too bad.
