Second guitar - Black limba/BB/multi-scale 7

[KR250]

Ridiculous. Such cool job you did. Congrats!

Thanks, it's definitely NOT perfect but I'm quite happy for a first all the way through build. That it plays and sounds well is an added bonus. I also know what I need to practice on before the next build (will start a separate thread for that).

My goal was to build a guitar with the spec's I wanted that only seem to come in a custom shop build. I looked at the price sheet for a Mayones and a multi-scale guitar was somewhere north of $6,000. I don't think this build is at the quality level of an expensive custom like that, but I've put in a little under a thousand worth of parts/wood and the process was fun. I've easily got at least 4-5 more projects to try and really nail it

 

[warped]

Wow - excellent job! The finish looks great. The whole guitar looks great!

 

[J_Mac]

She's tasty!

 

[Slaeyer]

Congrats! That top looks awesome.
I really like how you matched the top on body an headstock with the lower part being dark and the upper bright.

 

[neun Arme]

That's really beautiful.

 

[kingo]

Damn this is an awesome looking guitar.

 

[KR250]

I'm now calling this project done, to the best of my ability at least. Some mistakes, some flaws, it's not perfect, but it plays and sounds great so I'm happy.

I waited about 3 weeks to wet sand and polish the finish. I was worried about cutting through so I didn't get super aggressive with the courser sand paper and started at 800 very lightly. I think next time I'll lay on more coats so I can really level it out before the fine grits. I used some micro mesh pads for the final stages which worked reasonably well, and some automotive polish and a lot of elbow grease, and finally a cleaner wax. I've still got some swirls, but the poly finish feels silky smooth and I didn't cut through anywhere except for a small spot on the head stock. I really need some type of mechanical buffer, I just can't get all the swirls out by hand.

Appreciate for all the feedback on this, it really helped and I've got a lot of ideas to make the next build go even better.

One of the biggest mistakes I made was on the neck. I routed too far in towards the neck pocket and had cut the whole area down and then use a shim which looks pretty ugly and probably isn't helping with strength. The profile isn't quite right, but totally usable and still very fast to play. I've since cut some mock up pine that feels much better and will use that on the next project.

Another issue, I didn't route enough material out for the input jack to reach all the way into the cavity, so it's held in by interference currently. You can kind of see it in the pictures of the electronics.

Overall pretty happy and it's been my "go to" guitar since I put it together. Not quite as good as my ESP E2 Horizon, which is the current bench mark, but pretty close. Hopefully I can hit that mark on the next attempt, and if not I've still got another 3 tries before hitting the $$ mark for an expensive custom

Anyway, on to the final pictures as I was finishing polishing and putting it back together.

Some swirls still left to try and buff out.

The back side is just with a light wet sand/buff, mostly just left it as-is from many light coats of poly.

Ugh.

I stopped short of trying to make the frets look perfect since they already had some wear from playing the last few weeks.

I can't decide how to hang it, the backside looks just as nice as the front.

Comments/critique welcome.

 

[dankarghh]

Lovely stuff man

 

[M3CHK1LLA]

i think you did a great job...looks awesome.

can't wait to see your next build.

 

[pettymusic]

Outstanding work IMO.

You said it's not perfect but, I've learned they never will be.

Not only have I not built the perfect guitar, I've never even played one, lol!


Really great work, man!

 

[Genocyber]

Looks absolutely amazing! Great effort...

 

[J_Mac]

Dude, she is epic! \m/

 

[SlamLiguez]

Amazing. Makes me have dreams of making guitars!

 

[Spicypickles]

I think the shim looks neat lol

 

[shadowlife]

That top!
Great job dude.

 

[jemfloral]

Great work, it looks very nice!

 

[KR250]

Decided to revisit this build after about a year of playing on it. It has a great sound but lacked a few aspects in the build that I've gotten better at. So.... I stripped it back down to nothing and:

• Thinned down the neck
• Replaced the frets with stainless
• carved a much better neck heel
• Trimmed the head stock shape
• Re-finished in satin poly. The surface prep I did originally left some waviness and I wasn't happy with how the gloss was holding up.

I actually re-did the finish 3 times in the process. First step was applying epoxy as my base and sanding perfectly flat. The epoxy also really brought out a 3D effect in the grain on the limba. Tried gloss poly again and it simply doesn't cure hard enough to buff properly (Minwax). I did a test with buffing just the epoxy which looked great on a small patch, but I couldn't quite get it to the level of shine worthy of a gloss coat. Ended up using satin poly which looks and feels great and is very easy to apply with consistent results.

Anyway, some updated pictures from the shop.

 

[Sir Ibanez]

Oh, that's awesome, man!

 

[pettymusic]

You just took it up to a whole notha level!

Awesome!

What poly finish did you use?

I'm trying to get better at finishing but, keep coming up short on the quality I'm after.

 

[KR250]

I used Minwax satin poly spray on. Not perfect, but I'm quite pleased with it and was really easy to work with once I got the epoxy sanded and prepped. I built a guitar-rotisserie so I can spin it and apply all at once which really helped. I've already dinged it once already against my desk, ugh. What I noticed is that the ding stops exactly at the epoxy layer, so it's doing it's job at least and shows the poly doesn't cure very hard.

The finishing on this took about 80% of my time (my least favorite part), hadn't been totally satisfied with my early build finishes and figured this would be a good test bed to get better.

I bought some 2K clear for doing gloss, but I don't have a good enough ventilation system to use it at home. I might try spray on lacquer for the next gloss job over the epoxy when I re-do my third build.