Kashmir

[mayfly]

SO!

when the body arrived friday at noon, I figured that I should not rush things.  I had a (rare) day off, my wife was working, and the boy was at daycare, so I immediately walked down to the local pub.  I drew up my plan of attack over some chicken curry and chips and a pint of Bass Ale.

I decided that I would make it into a regular guitar first, then worry about the bender later.

When I got home, I did the easy stuff first, like attaching the heel strap button:

Then I did the old soldering iron trick with the string ferrules.  Yep, it works with paisley as well:

Then I threw the bridge on, put the neck on, and put the E strings on to see where we were at.  So far so good!

So far, so good.

And how about a round of appause for Dangerous Doug and his custom neckplates!

More later...

 

[Nando Vallart]

YAY

 

[Mor Paul]

That's making me dig the burst a bit more. I see what you mean about the paisley showing through

 

[DangerousR6]

:hello2:

 

[nathan a]

I love this build and I don't even know exactly why! Regardless, the paisley colors and those in the canary neck look so nice together.

I agree, don't rush it. But... sooner or later, we are gonna need some video here.

 

[blue313]

the paisley colors and those in the canary neck look so nice together.

Definitely!  I'm digging this build on many levels.  It's showcasing the talents of three different forum members.  :rock-on:

 

[mayfly]

Thanks everybody!  Tonar and Dangerous!  take a bow!

So, I strung it up, gave it a quick setup, and everything worked.  Has good tone and a nice spank to it.
Interestingly, the fret ends on the neck are all nicely finished (?!?!).  Someone down at W took the time with a hand file and took the sharp edges off of the fret ends and then gave it a polish.  It's nice and smooth and feels great!  Don't know who did it, but thanks!

Now on to the bender.  b-string placement is critical with these devices, and that all comes down to the placement of the tower hole.  After all the work done on the body, I was really hoping that it would be lined up!  Fortunately, there is a bit of slop to play with (about 1/16" or so), so I found that I could get it lined up just right:

Bender is bolted down and ready to twang!

For some reason, this bender feels better than the one on my red tele.  I suspect that on the red one some of the moving parts are rubbing on the body somewhere, causing friction.  The one on Kashmir is very smooth; you can easily get a nice delicate pedal-steel lick out of it.

 

[DocNrock]

For the record.  That is really cool.  I would never want a b-bender for myself, but that is awesome for your build.  Now please, don't give me grief about Floyds.  :laughing7:

 

[Death by Uberschall]

Really coming together nicely.

 

[rapfohl09]

Probally works so well cause you did it yourself, looks totally awesome :icon_thumright:

 

[DangerousR6]

 

[mayfly]

Next bit.

So now it was time to put in the pickguard and wire the remaining bits.  Some notes on clear pickguards:

1 - the stuMac clear guards are slightly the wrong shape and they are waaaay too big at the neck pocket.  Surprisingly, you don't notice when it's on the guitar.  Maybe that's got something to do with the fact that it's clear  :icon_jokercolor:
2 - with a regular pickguard, you just slap it down, drill some holes, screw it down, and that's it.  Not so fast with a clear one mate!  With a clear guard you'll see any speck of crud that you have under there.  So you have to clean it.  Like you would a window.  Both sides.  Then you have to clean the front of the guitar.  Then you have to do it again.  Then you put it on, and find that you left a spot so you clean it again.  Then you put it on and find that there's some water droplets that were left that are now squishing out on the face of the guitar, so you have to dry it.  Then you clean it one more time and install it.

 

[Mor Paul]

Think that can be shipped with those tuners? I'll do a bit extra for shipping.

 

[mayfly]

Think that can be shipped with those tuners? I'll do a bit extra for shipping.

errrrr.... NO 

 

[mayfly]

allright, let's get this thing soldered down!

I had the control plate pre-wired, so all I had to do was solder on the bits:

Here's the result:

I'm starting to really groove on the cloth pushback wire.

 

[mayfly]

Kay, it's done!

It's mighty fine.

If you look close at the face of the guitar, you will see some of the defects that I put in when gluing down the paper.  At the time I was gluing it I was  really really close to sanding it off and doing it again.  But I didn't.

In some ways I'm glad that it has the little imperfections.  There's a native spiritual thing that says (and I'm paraphrasing here), when you create or acquire something that's perfect, you should make a little mark on it just to make it imperfect.  If you don't you'll spend all your time worrying and obsessing about it and won't be able to enjoy it or use it properly.  The little imperfection is called a soul escape - if you don't have it the object will capture your soul and you'll just end up being so captivated by the perfection of the thing that you'll never touch it or use it again.

I think this guitar has built-in soul escape  :headbang:

 

[mayfly]

Tony - feel free to kick my ass if I got that Native spiritual stuff wrong.

 

[mayfly]

Here's some cheesecake shots with my '66 super:

 

[smavridis]

ITS. SO. PRETTY.  :sad:

 

[tfarny]

Wow - words fail on this one. One of the coolest projects I've seen in two years lurking here. Congrats^2 my man.