Theo's 1x10

A dovetailed pine 1x10 cab for Theos Ulbrick firebottle. Awesom little amp these. We decided to scale the cab up a bit to avoid the boxy effect you get with a small 1x10 cab. It is 450x500x240 deep

Above:The porta pine panels hit the workbench

Above: haflway through cutting the through dovetails. To me, the strongest type of cabinet is built by this method. No corner blocks are required. Knocked together without glue these are mighty hard to pull apart. Glued up they make a very tough cab in fact strong enough to support my fat arse through a whole gig. :)

Above: The jig and router used to cut the dovetails

Above: Test fit to make sure it goes together ok

Above: After a frantic 15 minutes she's all glued up and clamped square

Above: Baffle in place

Above: Back panels in place

Above: got the pesky grill in place nice and tight - now its ready for sand and finish. Sorry for the pic quality of thos last couple of shots. Below: finished cab complete ready for the road

The Peril

This is an SG copy that came in for a refin and some mods. Destined to be a player for a well known guitarist around town I was hoping this guitar would be all the owner was hoping for. I had the job of doing the mods and finishing the guitar in gloss "baby poo" yellow. Then it was off home for assembly and setup by the owner.

The body is very light.. Not sure what the timber is but it is the right colour and grain for mahogany. Feels very light though. It is made from 3 pieces. Went over it with a stud finder and it is a chambered body.

A couple of shots of the guitar how it came - i have spread some bog around and blocked the original output jack hole. You can see the "interesting" design of the headstock and in pencil my idea of how to cut it to make it look better

Ahh yes I like it much better now. it will done in the same colour as the rest of the guitar - we will lose the cheesey" vintage" logo :)

Here you can see the new output jack port and the one I blocked off to the left of the control pot ports. The main prep work is complete and next jobs is to level crown and polish the frets. A short delay ensues while the correct radius block arrives from my supplier. This fingerboard has a 14" radius. I hate having tool work to do after the finish is applied. Not only is it boring, it also multiplies the chances of damage to the freshly sprayed surface.

Frets have been levelled - The factory fret job was pretty awful - it looked like a vague attempt had been made at levelling - maybe someone had pointed a file at the fretboard at some point during manufacture - the fretboard could be set to close enough to dead level with the truss rod adjuster - bonus - so it came up pretty good after quite a vigorous milling session.

Frets finished. Sanded to 2500 grit and then polished with 0000 grade steel wool. Can't really pick it up in the pic but those frets are shining brightly.

So thats it for the tooling side of it. Now it's time to tidy things up and make sure no dings have been missed. Next will come masking off the cavities and finger board in preparation for spraying the primer. Initially the white binding will be masked off. After the primer and colour coats have been shot and everything level sanded it will be revealed and sprayed with clear up to the transition edge of the fingerboard.

Next job is to mask it all off before spraying with primer, colour and finally lacquer. Pic of the back and front of the guitar

Shoot several coats of primer

Then finally some colour - as usual the colour is a little different to the sample chip but i kind of like it. It will not be missed on a stage. It's loud before you even turn the amp on. chuckle chuckle. Lacquer will deepen the colour a little.

The headstock with its new logo and most of the lacquer already shot

Below: The body of The Peril with most of the lacquer shot. At the moment a few low spots are being drop filled. Following that a few more coats of lacquer [around 3 more] will be added to the 12 layers already shot. That will give plenty of depth to level off the finish and buff it to a bright, mirror gloss. This guitar will be like a beacon on any stage. It is really bright.

After the final coats it will be stripped of masking, the holes reamed out and tidied up whiole the lacquer is still soft. It will then spend 2 or 3 weeks in a warm drying cabinet to ensure the lacquer is hard and well cured before final sanding, buffing and polishing. Below: last coats on and it's time to carfully strip off the masking.

After a couple of weeks in the drying cab it will be ready to sand and buff Below: level sanded to 1200 and after the first buff an excellent gloss is evident

A vigorous hand polish with fine compound then swirl remover consoldates the gloss. The final step is a thorough going over with a top grade auto polish to bring up a deep mirror gloss.

BACK

David Gilmour Black Strat

This came to me as box a box of parts. I was happily surprised by the quality of everything included. Obvoiusly a lot of thought and research had gone into this guitar. I felt quite honoured that I had been chosen to assemble and set it up. The guitar is based on the Gilmour Black Strat in spec and aesthetics. It is not a relic job. If I had my choice of parts to use to build a partscaster strat I would have chosen everything included except perhaps for the pickups. Being a vintage type guy I would have gone for some scatterwound vintage style pickups or possibly the same as in the Gilmour Black Strat currently. I was amazed at how well the Gilmour black strat has been documented over the years. Following is a pictorial of the assembly process interspersed with my comments on the different processes

What came in the box

A complete vintage Callaham hardware set minus pickups, Gotoh HAP locking vintage style tuners, The Kinman Woodstock prewired harness and most importantly a beautiful USACG single piece maple neck and 2 piece alder body [light]

I was asked to write some detail, sign and date the pocket and heel plus plug the holes drilled for the spraying process.

marked up some centres and laid it out to check all was true and it was. I line it up with a laser but you can't pick that up in the pic.

Next job is to mark the body screw holes into the neck.

Over to the drill press and carefully punch some screw holes.

all set to screw down the neck. I will do that later as there is some more prep work to be done before assembly

here is one of my most important tools

Next come the tuner bushes. The holes are always tight and need a little finnessing with the tools to the right to ensure a firm but not too firm fit. If they go in real tight it is possible to split the headstock. That will really ruin your day.

My method of getting the tuners lined up. A broken screw here can also ruin your day. Always predrill all holes with the correct size bit and wax the screw. It should be firm never tight

This is a Graphtec XLS nut blank sanded to correct width for a firm fit and the ends trimmed to the width of the nut

I have a spreadsheet that calculates the string offsets. This gets turned into a drawing and printed out. The print is trimmed and glued to the nut. A .010" file is used to scribe the positions. The nut will be filed and sanded asfter the slots are fully cut and the glue/paper will be gone.

next comes the cavity shielding.

Spring claws installed along with the bridge earth wire.

Straplocks installed.

Bridge screwed down.

Graduation day. It is always a bit of a celebration when a guitar goes into a case the first time - well it is for me anyhow

now to tackle this pretty complicated harness. Looks like it belongs in a computer so for me its pretty familiar territory. There was a bit of drama as the pickup input socket was loose and the neck pickup was cutting in and out. Kinman replaced the switch unit quickly enough but to add to the drama the new unit had the wires reversed in one of the sockets. So after a deal of head scratching and a flurry of emails to and from Kinman's it finally started working correctly. This had cost me a deal of time and reinforces my insistence on charging the same wiring fee for prewired harness as I do for wiring it myself. Invariably they have a problem that needs to be sorted.

Once the wiring was sorted a wiggle and poke for a few minutes got the harness and pickguard into position and screwed down. Next comes the setup. String up to tension, cut the nut slots, cut down and polish the nut, finalise the action and intonation, set the claw springs and tighten them until the wedge drops out from behind the bridge block. When the bridge is finally floating a check of the intonation and action is again made. The relief in the neck is perfect. I have found with USACG necks that if you snug up the truss rod adjuster about 1/8 past free its close to perfect everytime. The guitar now gets to rest for a couple of days to ensure everything settles down right. I will check the tuning a couple of times along the way. After that it gets a final check of action and intonation, a nice polish up and some more photos are required. By then the case will have arrived and it will be shiopped off to the owner in Adelaide.

Job done. Heres a series of shots of the completed guitar. It does sound very sweet i must say.

BACK

MJT Relic Strat I am not a great fan of relics butr this one turned in a box from a guy in sydney. It turned out to be such a great player I thought worthwhile to post in my projects area

As you can see the neck has been wildly overdone and this was the main critiscism I had for this one. I've never seen a neck worn naturally like that

The headstock, bridge, screws etc looked pretty good

A closer look at the body shows some pretty realistic looking dings, scratches and general wear

The finish closeup was real chalky and brittle. A lot of crazing was evident and i reckon a couple years hard playing woul;d see most of it gone. The grain ripples under the finish could felt and even seen in certain lighting so there was no grain fill and minimal finish. Just enough to get the guitar covered

Another peek at how the hardware looed out of the box

The front of the stock looked really good but that pristine indian rosewood board, 12" radius and jumbo frets really gave the game away

As you can see the overall effect looks pretty cool but most would pick up pretty quickly that this was no genuine vintage strat. The hardware was non branded but of a reasonable standard. eg: steel saddles but an alloy trem block. The tuners were probably Wilkinsons and it's likely that the whole package was ex Allparts USA - The neck and body definitely were. The pickups on this one were genuine Fender Custom Shop, The body and neck are licensed Fender spares

There's the whole effect. A pretty nice looking strat that looks like it has been round the block a few times. Apart from the aesthetic considerations, this guitar turned out to be a real crackerjack. The body light and resonant, the neck stiff and pretty decent pickups added up to a great sounding guitar with a nice friendly feel. The new owner had this to say when he got his "new" guitar: G'day Ray, Got the guitar back today - you did an AMAZING job of assembling it and setting it up ! Man, I can't put it down, it just plays so nicely and sounds great. What a great touch you have. Neck plays like butter. Nicely finished frets.... Trem feels really responsive. Nut is nicely cut...No fret buzz... I'm digging those Fender Fat 50 pickups too, very well balanced. The neck and middle pickups sound wonderful. Nice and chimey with just enough quack. I'm gonna sell my Stevie Ray Vaughan strat and Line 6 variax and buy another of these Mark Jenny relics and get you to assmble it. Thanks again and I will be in touch soon when I am ready to place another order with Mark Jenny

BACK

Ripping Squier this one came in for a bit of a makeover and i didn't really think it would amount to much to start with. A chinese squire with nothing out of the ordinary. The owner wanted the cheesey hardware stripped out.He supplied some of the relacement bits and pieces and I filled in the gaps from one of my hardware sets.

Here she almost buck nekked

Once I got the hardware strpped out and the neck off I started the ball rolling by enlarging the lead pickup rout to take one of the Brierley Buckers supplied. Got the template laid out and clamped on nice and tight so it don't wander.

Heres the Triton 1400 having its wicked way with that lead cavity

As you can see it didn,t take the whole cavity out and I could already see the potential for a big problem with that roundish bit at the back of the cavity

You can see what I mean here. For some reason the the cavity had a bit of a hook back in its shape which hangs out behind the bucker surround.

The idea was to use a Wilki 3 saddle bridge and slice just big enough to cover up the ratty hole at the back of the cavity. It took a bit of tight measuring to get it cut right to meet up good with the string through and bridge mount holes and be tight up to the pickup surround. Last thing i wanted was to have a hole between the pickup surround and the bridge.

Well there she is and and a real cracker of a player too with the tone of doom coming from Mickb's fab pickups. I was really surprised at how well this quite cheap guitar came up. To start with, everything was stripped off and most of it was thrown straight in the bin. The replacements were top quality parts out of a tele set I had sitting around waiting for one of my builds. They tell me there is a great Brittish guitarist who used to use a tele in the 60's that looked similar to this one. Who was it?? BACK