Not sure, but I think I have this "collectors" disease. I saw it when I collected action figures. I was the admirable member of the comic-con community with my collection. Then I stopped collecting them, I sold them off and then it became having as many guitars as I possibly could. Most of the time I became broke doing this, so in-they-came, and out-they-went. Some were around for as little as two weeks before they were re-sold. It's tough to invest hundreds of dollars into an item and then realize that the gas and electric bill still needs to be paid, or my car could use a tune up. I think I had simmered down a bit, until I got the wood working bug. But in retrospect its not really anything new...its a morph of my original Guitar Acquisition Syndrome (GAS)...the woodworking I'm doing is to build custom guitars. So I found myself sniping auctions on ebay for exotic woods to build these guitars.
The first shape I made was the Telecaster. Its' fairly simple. Front and back (the biggest surface areas) are flat and parallel. Its just a matter of cookie-cutting the shape out. I got the first itch a few years back just prior to Vocoder. I worked with my bass player Phil Ebner at a cabinet making shop and I convinced them to help me build a guitar. They did the most work as my skill level was not quite up to par at that time. Here's the guitar at Vocoder's new year's show.
After that one was complete I quickly snatched up 3 blanks worth of ash, and began into 2 telecasters and 1 jazzmaster. The jazzmaster sadly was whoops'd and sold off to some guy in France so that I could avoid my shame of poor woodworking. The other two made also had a few whoops' but made their way down the assembly line and were given to two good friends of mine: my drummer of 10+ years Jason Vick and my former coworker & amp/guitar aficionado Mike Vella.
Jason always wanted to borrow one of my guitars but I was a bit protective of my "babies" so I built him a custom one-pickup "Esquire" in transparent purple to match his Noble & Cooley drumset. I presented it to him on his birthday in Oct 2010. Mike was a Gibson player, but always wanted a natural ash tele with a rosewood fingerboard. Fender only made that combination in the $1,000+ American series. Since Mike had two Les Pauls -- a Gold Top with P90s and a sunburst with humbuckers, I made his with Duncan humcancelling P90 neck and a tele sized '59 humbucker bridge pickup. Similar to Jason's, I presented Mike's guitar to him just after his birthday in August of last year, although finished it sometime in Nov 2010.
Jason's Esquire (mocked up)
Mike's Tele
I soon started hunting down deals on wood to build the next. Most of the time I scored great deals on the wood for dirt cheap. I made them out of wenge, leopardwood (a type of lacewood/sycamore), makore (African cherry), limba (aka black korina), zebrawood, mahogany, alder, and ash, and topped them with figured woods like crotch walnut, curly maple, flamed redwood, as well as matched the core woods on the wenge and leopardwood and zebrawood. I'd make one guitar, sell it and it'd cover the cost of the wood, but I'd still have enough wood to make another for myself. It generally worked out well as teh first ones tended to have some sort of "whoops" in them.
Here's a stack of tele bodies shaped (top to bottom: ash, alder, limba, zebrawood, African mahogany, lacewood, mahogany, wenge).
Since some of them began to weigh a bit more than a reasonable amount (normally 5-6lbs) I decided to hog them out and make thinline version of the Tele. The wenge weighed in over 10lbs and the leopardwood just under 10lbs and the zebrawood around 7+lbs. Not really easy on the back. The process of thin-lining a tele is cutting out part of the core body then covering it with a top.
Here's the rough cut:
The smoothed out version:
The glue up:
The final product (prior to cutting pickup holes):
In 2010 I spent over $2,000 in wood and a few tools (starting in the summertime). My first post tax return purchase for 2011 will be a $1000 drum sander. I have enough wood for approximately 19 projects and can probably do at least 10 tops to be put on other guitars. That's close to 30 guitars.
Sounds ridiculous right? Who really needs that many guitars? Well, I've come to accept the answer is "not me". I enjoy the building. I enjoy being the only one in my dad's garage for 8hrs listening to the buzz and hum of tools with the occasional ipod track poking thru. No phone calls, no internet, no girls bugging me, no band member's ego's pissing me off. Just me doing what I enjoy. There is one downside I noticed--once its built, I kind of don't have the interest to play it. Or at least with the last three they fell under the "meh" category. They just sit in the case and I play on it out of pity. But then again these were just tester's to see what that type of wood sounded like, so I don't feel that bad.
But now that my skills have gotten better, I'm now trying to build my "perfect" kickass guitar and will be just selling the others off to justify and fund the purchase of new wood. I'm looking to build the necks next, and then after that carved tops and glue in necks and then acoustics. From there I definitely will be making guitars that rival their $3000 custom shop models available from other builders. In the meantime I'm learning as I go. breaking even with cost, and usually getting a new guitar out of it. My dad actually enjoys that he gets to see me every single weekend both days. We're both a creature of the same nature, nerding ourselves in calculations and holing ourselves up in the garage on projects. As I get older I enjoy the fact I do get to see him. Band life. My own life. Whatever life I lead, I sometimes forget to make time for my family. So this new direction is a win-win to me.
Well at least until I cut off a finger or something...then that will suck balls.
til next post...
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