Blazer

For a while I have been owning a cute little half scale guitar called the "Volcano Rock-a-teer"

Which is my "play-it-when-sitting-on-my-lazy-chair" guitar, I tune it in A-A tuning.

But the small body and tight cutaways do not make it a serious instrument and so I've toying around with the idea of making a similar guitar but with a bigger body but still smaller than a regular strat sized unit. I also want to make a neck to my own specs for that project. So I've been searching around for wood to use and found a couple of left over pieces of mahogany left from my telecaster built, from which I can make the body and a piece of birdseye maple too short to make a normal sized neck from.

And so I began to design a downsized version of Eddie Van Halen's famous striped Kramer. I can use my Gibson explorer to copy the "Banana" headstock shape from and I still have surplus Humbuckers lying around which will be perfect for that, the pickup will be in a slanted position and seeing as how a trem will not work with that scale I'll give it a non trem strings through hardtail but placed on a piece of aluminium in the shape of a Floyd Rose profile to at least get the look right.

As I'm writing this down, I'm just finishing up the pencil designs for this project. They will serve as a base to make my routing templates from.

As always, I'll keep you guys informed.

It's done.

That looks good, nice work on the explorer.

Well I got the body back home, buffed it to a shine and started assembling it.

All I need to do now is install the pots, wire it all up, install a pickguard and I'm done.

Well here's the body in black, the white residue you see is from the wet sanding.

And from another angle, all whats needs to be done is spray it with a yellow tint lacquer to give it that vintage tint. And then I have to wet sand it again and polish it.

Natural with a black plate and Pink pickups.

Well if all goes according to plan I can assemble the amber tele this week, as always I'll keep you guys informed.

Well I got a phone call today telling me that the painting of the body is done, and I'll retrieve it later this week. (My schedule is a bit tedious here)

In the meantime, I did some work on the neck, I filled up the chips and dings in the finish with Black shellac and buffed the thing to a shine and then I installed the tuners, it makes for a very classy look.

And here it is today after a wet sanding and a second layer. The pictures don't do it justice, in person the color is much deeper in shade.

Here's the body inside the workshop yesterday after I applied the first layers of amber shellac.

Well today was the day for me to rout out the scallop in which the neck plate will sit. And while I was at it I also screwed the neck on to see if that needs adjusting as well.

Blazer, when you get done ,you should really give that thing to someone.......ME .Way cool guitar.

It will gonna set you back around 800 Euro's considering the work I put into it and the value of a vintage Ibanez.

Anyway, I got on the phone with the guy who's doing the finish for me and he told me that he already applied the first layers of transparent coating, if all goes well the first layers of black will follow soon afterward, later this week I hope to have pictures of the body during the finishing process.

Beware of thinning the neck pocket - pine is not very high on the list for either strength or long-term stability.

That scooping of the heel is meant for the Mahogany guitar, not the pine ones.

Okay you guys, tomorrow will be the day that I finish the routing and drilling work on my tele body. After that it will be sanding and finishing. I have two options on where to go with this tele.

Either with or without pickup rings, what would you guys say is the best option of the two.

As for color I'm still biased to do in in translucent red.

The body after I used two component filler on several places to fill in cracks and shallow dents in the wood where the top got chipped during planing.

What I need to do now is sand the body smooth again and drill it for a Fender Non trem Strat bridge, string canals and string ferrules.

On the back I'm planning to rout a recessed heel pocket similar to the one on this Ibanez guitar.

I need to do this because of the neck bolts not being long enough to bolt it secure in place and it also make it easier to play high up the neck.

As always I'll keep you guys informed.

Well with the body being painted there was not really much I could do on this project, so I started to look around for replacement tuners, seeing as how the guitar came with a mish-mash of Schallers which didn't exactly made the guitar look good.

So I went to my local store and was scouting their pile of spare parts when all of a sudden a box caught my eye...

Okay, new old stock thirty year old Ibanez Tuners, and I need tuners for a 33 year old Ibanez, it didn't take me long to put two and two together. And when I opened the box my smile got even wider.

They were in the color I was looking for, how perfect do you want destiny to become?

I still have to do some repairs on chipping and flaking of the finish of the headstock but the tuners make a perfect fit here.

And just Yesterday I performed a LOT of work on that third body.

I routed the neck pocket, the body rounding, the pickup cavity and...

...The back cavity.

It's starting to look like a tele, Although I'm not sure yet if that will be the bridge I'm gonna use here.

Side view: you can see that I used two routing bits, a smaller one to do the top and a bigger one for the rest of the body, this was because hard rock maple can splinter when routed and this way I avoided chipping. This picture also shows the thickness of the body. It's thicker than a standard tele body but that will translate in sustain.

The back: as you can see, a big "Eye" where a branch sat is prominent at the bass side. But I don't mind, I think it gives the guitar something of it's own. My Boss already nicknamed it "The Jupiter's storm guitar" because of this figure in the wood.

I filled the "Eye" in the back of the body with two component filler. The transparent stuff also gives a little preview on what the mahogany will look like when finished.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...91/100_0989.jpg

And this is the thing I used, dependable stuff.

A little water on the top exposes that pretty texture of the maple here. I already decided that this will be a twin humbucker, rear-routed guitar, no pickguard because I feel it would be a crime to cover up such a pretty piece of Maple: it needs to be seen in full.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0948.jpg

And off we go....

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0949.jpg

Slow and steady wins the race

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0950.jpg

And routing a pocket to recess the backplate so it looks and feels smooth.

Finished

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0952.jpg

Time to whip out the grain filler.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0953.jpg

For both bodies of course.

And here's how they look after the first sanding when the filler has set.

And from behind too of course

But with my decision to abandon using the necks I had ready I also created a problem, I still had those necks lying around and so I decided to build a THIRD tele. But this one would be quite different. I still had that Stunning Birds eye Maple neck and it would be a shame NOT to use that neck so I decided to make a third tele body so I could use that neck and I also decided to go for that tried and tested wood combination that makes a rock guitar: Mahogany and maple.

Book match baby, you can see the join but it's not really that bad.

Well once again I decided to get rid of stuff I have lying around and made an inventory of what I can use for a new build and came up with this.

- A Birdseye maple tele neck with a rosewood fingerboard

- A plain maple Strat neck with maple cap fingerboard

- Two Dimarzio Super distortion humbuckers

- Two chrome Fender style hard tail bridges, one toploading the other for string through body construction.

- Two sets of Cast sealed tuners, one for each neck.

-Two chrome humbucker rings.

So with that I decided to build two matching pine body Teles.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0931.jpg

The first body still in the clamps, the glue has set over night

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0932.jpg

The second body in the clamps

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0935.jpg

Routing the first body

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0936.jpg

And here it is after the routing was done.

The second body during the routing

The two bodies together

Then I decided to drop the idea of using the necks I had lying around and instead opted to made the necks from scratch, also when talking to Jack T Ripper, our second guitarist, he asked me if it were possible to give the guitars 24 fret necks and I found no reason why it shouldn't be possible. It also makes that I have to give the guitars a Gibson 24, 1/5 scale length.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0954.jpg

One of the necks while the glue sets

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...uw/100_0955.jpg

And here's the neck after the glue dried and I planed it. This particullar neck was made from rest pieces of other necks we made, it consists of three main pieces of Birds eye maple, two layers of rosewood veneer, two layers of maple veneer and two layers of lacewood veneer, the effect as you can tell is striking, this will be a KILLER neck.

As for work on the bodies, I finished routing the neck pockets....

...and started work on the routing of the electronics compartment.

And here's what the guitar looks like today.

I routed out the space between the pickups and filled it with a solid piece of maple that I carved to match the carving of the body, I then routed the whole thing for two humbuckers.

I know, it doesn't look like much but when the humbuckers are in you don't see the mismatching pickup routs.

And I also filled the holes where the mini switches sat. and sanded the whole thing smooth, you won't see the things after the guitar is finished in black.

And here's a little preview on what it will look like finished.

I already shipped the body to the guy who will do the refinishing job for me, I already spoke with him about the vintage tint I wanted it to have, a 1976 guitar shouldn't look brand new.

Hey all, I'm Wouter Jaegers from the Netherlands and I'm a professional guitar builder and repairman. And I discovered this site and seeing so much cool stuff going down here I decided to join in on the fun.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a vintage guitar fair where I bought a rather unfortunate victim of eighties "let's make it look metal" ethic. Believe it or not but this WAS an early seventies Ibanez Les Paul Custom copy with the lawsuit "open book" headstock. It has three dimarzio pickups and again was fitted with "Everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-is-also-included" switching options. But for 75 Euro's I didn't consider it a bad deal, there's a lot of usable parts on this one.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...91/100_1004.jpg

Well I removed that Junk from the Ibanez' top revealing THIS.

As you can see it had a couple of home applied (rattle can) re-finishes which also covered the body bindings. Also, as I suspected, the middle pickup is not original and the hole is rather crudely made.

Here's pictures I took when I started the stripping.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...91/100_1010.jpg

You guys wouldn't believe me if I tell you that I came across four colors, note also that there's no Mahogany anywhere to be found...

There's some of the original finish still left within the cutaway, the previous owner apparently couldn't remove it from that spot.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e22/guit...91/100_1011.jpg

The previous owner glued in the neck using two component resin, the same stuff used to restore cars with, as a result it sat way too high in the pocket, but chopping away that junk rectified that.

Nice snug join, just as intended.