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These are two guitars that were built from the same billets and boards for every component....except the red one is a solid body and the smoke one is highly chambered. I'm still troubling over color in my photos but the one of the back of the red guitar is pretty accurate as to color...it's a DEEP wine red.

I just got the aluminum bridges on today so I'm calling this design completely finished. Note the hardware all being silver sorta brings the whole visual together.

Check out the pickup rings on the red one. A little different from the P-Rail rings....and highly polished. I thought that turned out well.

Plus I don't think I posted pics of the truss rod cover yet....so those are new as well.

Woods:

Bookmatched Local Curly Maple facings....body and headstock are from the same board
Bookmatched Sapele body
Cocobolo fretboards
Sapele...Peruvian Walnut...Hard Rock Maple necks
Position markers are Maple and Toasted Maple
Logo is Wenge, Toosted Maple, and Bloodwood

Pickups are Seymour Duncan P-Rails in the smoke guitar and Seymour Duncan SH2N Jazz and SH1B 59 in the red one.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

and...

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

http://www.recordingproject.com/bbs/vie ... hp?t=40374

I linked to this before...this track was played on the red one.

The last four all play very well. The real trick for me turned out to be a studly aluminum caul for gluing the fretboard to the neck. When the neck comes out of the caul the fretboard surface is straight as an arrow...and the action is pretty low.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Ya...that was a lot of work....but classy is what I was shooting for so.....good!

I'm sending these pics to Dimarzio. They wanted to see the rings I described that would fit over the chrome capped pups.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I'm not very knowledgable about solid body axes, but they sure look wicked cool to me, and I'm not kidding! I particularly like the red one. It might not play any better than the other, but WOW it's gonna have some stage appeal!

Patrick

No....but ??...not 100% sure what you're asking.

You're looking at Seymour Duncan pickups with standard chrome covers which are epoxied into the polished rings that I made. Look at the close-up of the red pic; "tight fret & pup red"....you can see the gap between the ring I made and the chrome cap.

The whole solid assembly is held into the cavity...and adjusts up and down by the two screws under a spring load.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Beautiful guitars! What else can I say?

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

double post

Sweet mother! Those are incredible, Stu! The pup rings are insane. I love all the work you've put toward design-- the knobs, bridge, pup rings. Everything just works great together

Spectacular!
Really creative, great pix!

The red one is the TITS, man!
Ya done good.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks guys,

Question.

The red one has hardware with ebony inlay. I think if there's one thing that could have been an improvement, it would be to have made the fretboard in ebony. How many think that would have made a big differnce overall?

I'm now making some maple bodies and necks and I have some nice figured Claro Walnut to use as facings. That should be fun to play with as I now have a full compliment of Transtint dyes.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Not sure if an ebony fb would be an improvement, but I would definitely have the button inlays and fb match.

Beautiful guitars.
I think an ebony fretboard would look very good and helped tie-in the truss-rod cover which
is the only thing I see that I don't care for...it draws my eye to it. JMO about a very small detail.

Absolutely Beautifull ! Mannnnnn I wanna build like you when I grow up !

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The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
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Holy Guacamole Stuart! THESE ARE SCHWEEEEET! I think an ebony fretboard would not go with the 2nd one but maybe the 1st one - I'm going for Ebony FB's on the next 3 builds... awesome work, great eye for detail. If you and I built a guitar together, it would never be finished!!

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"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

I got to see these babies in person and they're even better looking than online. Those knobs are really sweet. Just everything about them is really sweet, keep 'em coming Stu

Wow! Those are nice!

(bump)

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Nice work Stu,

I'm digging those bridges a lot. So when are you going to start making your own tuners and fret wire?

I have to agree with Roger on this. That is the only thing I would change. I have come back to look at these a few times already. Really great looking guitars.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

Dang Stu, beautiful work!

What's the weight difference between the two?

Are the little switches for coil split on each pickup?

Thanks for sharing.
Kevin Looker

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

I like the blonde one very much. Super sleek design. Good work.

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http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

Ya...the larger three way works just like a Les Paul and the small dip switches can select between either coil or both coils.

When P-Rails are used the difference between single coils is pretty substantial. When using conventional humbuckers the big difference comes when going from humbucking to single coil mode and not so much when switching from one single coil to the other....there is only a slight difference between coils.

I'm half thinking about creating some of these pickup rings for a Strat type setup and offer that as an option.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

I've been trying to come up with a sane method for doing a single coil method like yours for a while now. Sort of torn between two options. I think this one is the best so far:



The other is maybe a plate underneath the pickup mounted to the body. It would be tapped for the screws. Only thing I don't like about that idea is the springs might be problematic to get in place. Anyway, I like how clean yours are and it's nice to know that it can be done. Guitars are pretty nice, too.

The plastic flanged base on a normal Strat pickup is a problem. On some models that frontal area is used to anchor the wiring. On others, the wiring pokes straight out of the bottom of the pickup. To make these rings I need the later. I'll grind off the plastic flanged base and design the mounting and height adjustment capability into the new ring...like I did with the humbuckers.

The idea is to have a form fitted cavity in the body in which to mount the ring.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic