Frankenstein's Lab! [SHOW YOUR PROJECTS THREAD]

[kosta]

Killer stuff, Repoman.

[repoman]

I finally got his sumbitch painted. Used some fancy automotive polyurethane (Tamco) which is freaking amazing, I used probably less than 3 oz. with base coat, colorshift coat and 3 coats of clear combined. I would use probably half a quart of lacquer in comparison. I need to learn how to shoot this stuff because it got orangepeeled as fuck, but in a legit spray room this stuff must be just awesome. It lays on so fat, it covers up huge scratches and imperfections, and I can't believe how little paint it took to do that. Stuff is super expensive at $300 per gallon+catalyst+reducer, but I figure I could probably do 40-50 bodies with a gallon+quart of base coat. Automotive paint is nutty, this apparently is cheap stuff, common paint used on cars and in body shops is PPG and that is about $800 a gallon!!
Also learned how to wind pickups, made this pickup prototype, its basically a Jazzmaster pickup but its about 25% taller and 20% more narrow, sort like a Jazzmaster pickup crossed with a Strat pickup, but more JM then Strat. Also had to completely redo the pickup cover dies, but they look a lot nicer overall (this bobbin is in the old one with gnarly edges). I pressed the new pickup cover in brass instead of nickel silver and I'll have to learn to electroplate them in nickel silver to save money, nickel silver is super expensive now. I think I'm going to fill the pickup cavity with resin to hold the bobbin inside. They have electrically insulating resin, I'm curious if you used that if it would cut down on hum, or if it would completely kill the pickup.
Trem is mostly done, fretboard mostly done just need to level and dress. Need to use pure black Richlite for the next board.

[kosta]

Looking killer, Repoman! That pickup especially.

[Chankgeez]

Looking killer, Repoman! That whammy-arm tip especially.

[qersty]

warmoth 7/8s tele with some weird hungarian brass bridge. Neck pickup is some early lawrence thing he did for gibson. It squealed alot when I got it but luckily I didnt have to pot the whole thing, just the cover that was taped on. It is a really nice pickup now. Love the neck on it, super beefy. Kinda wish I could play 4/4 on it though

[dubkitty]

nice! a 3/4 size Tele is an appealing prospect to me, the guy with the 22.5" scale Duo Sonic.

[qersty]

nice! a 3/4 size Tele is an appealing prospect to me, the guy with the 22.5" scale Duo Sonic.

22,5" is the original scale, no? Yours had the neck of some mini fender, right? This guitar is not quite that tiny, still it is gibson scale. I started out cause I really dug the 24" scale of my Duo-Sonic. It is not quite the same feel but idk if that is due to the neck being very different from current fenders or the scale. The fingering feels kind of the same as the duo which I had an issue with playing my strat after only playing my duo for the longest time

[dubkitty]

22,5" is the original scale, no? Yours had the neck of some mini fender, right?

yes to both. the 24" Duo Sonic didn't come in until 1964 when they redesigned it as essentially a hardtail Mustang with the pickup switches mounted horizontally above the pickups. after some sleuthing i figured out that my 22.5 Duo Sonic was cobbled together from a Squier Classic Vibe DS body and a Mini Strat neck. if you examine the headstock closely you can see where the hole for the second string tree was filled. i got it off of Reverb for $490 plus shipping; i can't imagine that it was much more expensive than the parts alone, particularly because it has Seymour Duncan Antiquity DS pickups. i never pass up an excuse to post it because i love it so much. at some point i'm going to get a repro 1959-64 pickguard and move the bridge pickup to the proper location; that's how i know that it's a Squier body.

duosonic.jpg (6.61 KiB) Viewed 10325 times

[qersty]

sweet! what gauges do you use with it?

[dubkitty]

.010-.046. i went to .009s on most of my electric guitars, but on a 22.5" scale they're absurdly floppy and don't stay in tune for shit. i might go back to .010s on everything...i switched because my hands are 64 years old, but they're a bit wobbly for playing "Jump Jet" by Ride. or almost anything else, really. if you start smacking out chords with my preferred Fender Heavy picks they get kind of frightened. in that case i'd go to .011 or .012 on the DS to keep everything in the same ballpark as far as string tension, which would probably sound better as well with the pickups which are a bit low-output.

[coldbrightsunlight]

warmoth 7/8s tele with some weird hungarian brass bridge. Neck pickup is some early lawrence thing he did for gibson. It squealed alot when I got it but luckily I didnt have to pot the whole thing, just the cover that was taped on. It is a really nice pickup now. Love the neck on it, super beefy. Kinda wish I could play 4/4 on it though

Firstly denied. You're in a prog band now.

Secondly

[qersty]

at least it's not a 13/16:7/8 tele

[repoman]

warmoth 7/8s tele with some weird hungarian brass bridge. Neck pickup is some early lawrence thing he did for gibson. It squealed alot when I got it but luckily I didnt have to pot the whole thing, just the cover that was taped on. It is a really nice pickup now. Love the neck on it, super beefy. Kinda wish I could play 4/4 on it though

Awesome! It kinda reminds me of that crazy guitar Steve Morse made when he was in Dixie Dregs (but a lot nicer finished).

[qersty]

Thank you! I love hacked up teles like that. I think I have seen his exemplar some time but it is nothing I remember being actively influenced by. The two teles I really like is Norman Westberg's and the one Jeff Baxter had with the Lawrence 500s. Also one of NINs players had some pretty cool teles.

I do have an Ampeg tho. Maybe I'm subconsciously becoming a Morse rip-off

[repoman]

Haven't been able to paint because of crap weather for the past forever, so I had some 8/4 mahogany sitting for a long time so I started building this Billy Bo, using leftover Padauk for the cap. I think my router bits are shot because they keep heating up so much they fall out of the collet. Never built something like this, it's kind of confusing the order of steps to take.