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I have finally finished my first two electrics that I have been building side by side for a good while now.  School got really busy, then I went to Europe and got married - anyway - they are done...

Then on my way to give them to guys I made them for, a Southern Ohian man with a 3/4 ton pickup decided he was going to try to thwart my plans and smash into the back of my little Vdub at 50 mph and send me straight into the Saturn Vue in front of me.  He suceeded in totalling my car-from both ends, smashing my trunk into the back seat, breaking windows, and interrupting my life  - however, despite his best efforts, these two electrics and my Breedlove Acoustic - all in the trunk, were not damaged.  The Breedlove was even in a gig bag...go figure.  I had to break the trunk hatch the rest of the way off to get to them.

 
What a blessing.

The body design was a blend of a PRS and a LES Paul...so this picture is interesting.  Essentially, all I can see for next time is to reduce the size of that blasted upper bout...it is a little bigger than I thought.

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www.ziegenfussguitars.com

Beautiful guitars, I really love the colors. They must be pretty tough, too.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Steve, the guitars look fantastic!

I had a chance to play the blonde one before Steve presented it to his best Bud. The action was still high, as Steve was still setting it up, but what really got me was the sound! It was a VERY versital guitar and a total tone monster!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Bummer about the car...that is some impact. Glad to hear that you made it out okay and it is amazing that the guitars came out intact.

Nice Electric design...a very cool mix of LP and PRS...Did you do anything different as far as the electronics? At first glance it looks like the pickups are really close together which would limit the difference in string sound but I see that you have the p/u's reversed so it gives you more distance.

Wow, what a story Stephen!
Glad to hear You survived as well!
Nice Guitars! Congratulations!

Wade

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Wade
Nashua, NH
http://www.wadefx.com

Those are some great looking guitars.  You must be living right for the guitars to survive the crash.  Sorry about your vehicle, but vehicles are replaceable, and guitars are artwork that can be rebuilt, but are, somehow, not the same.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Yeah, the car thing kinda stinks.  My wife and I thought we had that figured out, and we were saving for a down payment on a house - but I figure I will not get anything close from the insurance as to what the car was worth to me - ...oh well.  We'll figure it out.  The apartment neighbors have yet to complain about the bandsaw running...

Shawn - honestly, when I first positioned the pickups, I knew no better...That will change in the guitars to come.  What I did with the wiring was a combination of a great many standard methods.  I made it possible to tap both pickups, which gives some good tonal variation.  Additionally, I added a small capacitor on the volume pots to bleed some of the treble off at the low volume end - so it would be more consistent across the volume board.  I also swapped volume - 3 way - tone connections to provide for individual volume control when both pickups are activated.  Aside from that, I work for a prototyping engineering firm, and we recently bought crate loads of a company's old stuff - in it were boxes of mixed up orange and green drop caps...so I experimented with them to better attenuate certain frequencies based on the pickup position...blah.  I had some fun and learned a great deal.

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www.ziegenfussguitars.com

Fantastic looking guitars!  I'll bet your heart hit the floor though when you got out and saw your car, and then realized the two guitars you just spent a ton of time building were in that crumpled up mess.  I am not too sure how I would have handled the situation until I saw they were okay!

Thanks for posting the pic's.

Way Cool
               James W B

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee