Heavy Rock
Junior Member
- Messages
- 52
The story begins when a few months ago, I got a cheap body from Reverb, because I had a few cheap parts lying around and wanted to turn them into a complete guitar, although to be a beater cheap one. So I went on searching and found this Rockwood by Hohner black body for 58 euros including shipping and I assembled the guitar with whatever crap I had around. Well, to my huge surprise the guitar sounded so good that I couldn't stop playing it. Since then it's the guitar I play almost all the time and whatever pickup I put in it, it brings the best of it out, the notes jump as long as I touch the strings and it's crazy how much the whole body vibrates while playing it.
So a couple weeks ago I decided that this body really deserves to be a better guitar than what I had matched it with. I made a quick research on what this body is made of and looks like many people believe it's made of plywood or basswood. It's a 1996 Rockwood body which in fact is a Korean Cortek body. It's surprisingly well made. For a while now I wanted to make a red superstrat, so I decided to use this body instead of getting a new one. I'm currently in the process of sanding the original color off and it's not plywood. It's a 3-piece body (one center piece and two sides), I don't know what wood it is but it has the tonal character of maple, super tight, super clear etc. I have a maple Warmoth soloist body which is almost identical in shape but the Rockwood is not as heavy as that though. Maybe it's a lighter piece of hard maple or it's soft maple, I don't know.
So at the end of this month I'm ordering a new Warmoth neck for this project, which will be a paddle headstock one. I want to make a guitar along the lines of the Hamer Californian model which I love the looks of. That headstock is pure 80s but not too bold, really perfect.
I'm attaching some pics of the body as it was originally and how I progressed with the sanding so far. I have made it down to the sanding sealer (I'll leave that on) and sculpted the heel a little. I'll be updating this thread as I go. Sorry for the lengthy post. Thanks for reading! See you around...
So a couple weeks ago I decided that this body really deserves to be a better guitar than what I had matched it with. I made a quick research on what this body is made of and looks like many people believe it's made of plywood or basswood. It's a 1996 Rockwood body which in fact is a Korean Cortek body. It's surprisingly well made. For a while now I wanted to make a red superstrat, so I decided to use this body instead of getting a new one. I'm currently in the process of sanding the original color off and it's not plywood. It's a 3-piece body (one center piece and two sides), I don't know what wood it is but it has the tonal character of maple, super tight, super clear etc. I have a maple Warmoth soloist body which is almost identical in shape but the Rockwood is not as heavy as that though. Maybe it's a lighter piece of hard maple or it's soft maple, I don't know.
So at the end of this month I'm ordering a new Warmoth neck for this project, which will be a paddle headstock one. I want to make a guitar along the lines of the Hamer Californian model which I love the looks of. That headstock is pure 80s but not too bold, really perfect.
I'm attaching some pics of the body as it was originally and how I progressed with the sanding so far. I have made it down to the sanding sealer (I'll leave that on) and sculpted the heel a little. I'll be updating this thread as I go. Sorry for the lengthy post. Thanks for reading! See you around...
