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I just finished this one. It's based on a Gibson Midtown. I call it my "Uptown" model. (I wanted to call it something...) The top is from a board I found at the Lowe's Home Improvemet store. It was marked as poplar, but it is obviously maple. That was a lucky find! The pickups are english-made Tonerider Alnico II. I was going for a cleaner, less gain, sound than an Alnico V. They have nice punch and can get dirty if you want them to. No glamor shots yet. I just wanted to go ahead and post it.

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Sweet colour!

Steve, that turned out great!


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Love it, Steve!

Nice!

That's the nicest flame poplar I've ever seen. Good find. The color works great. I've found neck wood for violins in the scrap bin at work. It was under bundles of bars of steel. Curly cherry, walnut, maple, and poplar block wood.

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Why be normal?

Always pays to walk down the hardwood isles at the big box stores. I think most folks see figure as a defect just as sawmills of old did. I've found some nice wood too but not that wide.

Curly maple is just soo nice, like flashing lights, and colors work well! I like it.

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

Gotta love that! Nice job.

Beautiful!


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Fresh!

Pat

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Pat

That looks Killer Steve!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I’ve never heard of a “Midtown”. Can you tell us a little more about it? It looks a bit like a 335, but without bent sides. Smaller, too? Is the top flat as well or carved?


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The Midtown is the same shape as a CS-356, except it has a flat top rather than carved. Its shape is reminiscent of a ES-335, but it is a routed out slab of mahogany rather bent ribs and is smaller. For this reason, it is very much like a Les Paul in construction.

I built a CS-356 styled guitar (with a carved top). I had a template and decided to make the Midtown style.

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

I love that color, Steve. Sooo nice!

From bare wood to final look, what steps did you take to achieve it?

Ed, I experimented with blue and aqua transtint dyes. I decided to go with just the aqua color. I used a rag to apply it. The more you put on the darker it gets. I was going for a lighter color, so I didn't put too much on. Much of what determines the color is the concentration of the solution and the amount that you put on. I used 50 drops of aqua transtint per ounce of water and applied it directly to the wood.

There are a lot of different things you can do with transtint. You can put on one color, sand some it off and then use a different color. You can do various bursts. This time I just went with aqua by itself.

On previous builds, when doing a sunburst, I put the transtint into the finish and sprayed it on...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com