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Korina Strat : Finished

Steve_Karl

Steve_Karl

Hero Member
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1,702
Hey there,

It took a while ... plenty of fun distractions ... but ...
it's done and I've been playing it for a few hours ... setting the action.
It'll probably be really tweaked in a few months, but so far it's pretty good and usable.

Lots of pics from 7:00 AM 'til about 1:00 PM when I got it done.
http://www.sightsea.com/renders/korina_finished/

062.jpg


047.jpg is where it got strung up ... lot's of strange stuff before that ... wiring, and a few DOF shots down the neck,
and some strange lighting experiments, but interesting if you're into such.
---------
Specs:
Warmoth: 1 piece Black Korina body finished with Behlins Master-Gel ( yum! I love the gel ... so easy to use )
Warmoth: Neck: '59 roundback, pro construction, compound radius (10/16)
1-3/4" (at the nut)  Padouk(core wood) / Bloodwood (also called Satine) (fretboard)
Wilkinson VS-100 with a heavy brass block from KGC:
http://tinyurl.com/2efm8rd

Alembic: STR/AE-1 Yea ... the $1300.00 dollar one, which I got for $50.00 (used) as a spare and have been sitting on
for 10+ years. I've got the same in my hard tail strat, but they were only $200 ish back when I originally got it.
3 bat switches. I don't like 5 ways.
It's slightly brighter and more mid range (crunchy) than my mahogany strat.
I'll post some audio clips when I get around to it.

-------

Next one will be chambered Alder, 1 F hole, finished in Duplicolor (car paint) "Silver Shadow" like a Rolls,
but actually like my old Triumph 650 Bonneville tank,
with a 1-7/8" superwide FATback or boatneck, and strung with nylon using Ghost saddles.
I've already bought the Ghost saddles so it's already a WIP!

SK

Here's a PhotoSynth of it
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=c7887384-d12d-444b-907c-11a85b89b032


 
Oh man. That is one classy looking guitar.

I bet the lack of a normal paint & clear coat finish will make this sound really open & organic.

VERY NICE!!!!!  :hello2:
 
That is indeed a real looker  :glasses9:
I like that 3 mini switches over the 5-way.  Very cool...
:rock-on:
 
can you tell a bit more about the gel finishing process? I've seen it at Home Depot before and wondered if it would work for a body..
also, what is so special about the pickups?? are the 1200 new per set of 3??
have you considered getting some padouk knobs for the vol/tones to match up with the fingerboard?
 
Wow that's really nice. It's always great to see a unique piece come down the pipe. You should enter in GOTM.

Sorry Marko. :laughing7:
 
Steve Karl, did you see the body before hand or did Warmoth pick it out for you? I've seens some beautiful pieces, like yours, & some not so beautiful pieces.

Although I just got a new build to work on, your guitar has me jonesing for a black korina body & I'm going to start specing it out now for 2011.

I especially like the black korinabodies  that have a little bit of orange steaking.
 
Thanks everyone.

Doughboy:  "open and organic" ... well .. it does sound good on my lap with no amp but not as open as my mahogany. It's just slightly tighter sounding than
my mahogany. Yes. I saw this one in the showcase and got it from there. There were 2 one piece korinas on show at the time and I picked this one for the way the grain wrapped.

TroubledTreble Wow  ... GOTM ... I never dreamed but maybe I will. Thanks.

Marko Nice idea on the wood knobs. I'll have a look.

The story on the Alembic system is ... at the time of my first warmoth late 80's IIRC ... the mahogany hardtail, I think I got my first one, new and complete ... i.e. pups and preamp for something near $275.00 ish.
I had described my intended use and long term mission to the luthier, the mission being to do away with amplifiers and record direct to console ... and he suggested the Alembic system. He'd already built up one for an other local player and I tried it out for a few seconds, ( thru an amp ) and said .. well ok.
This direct to console thing started when I got a 76 musicman stingray and discovered the active treble and bass controls and the amazing punch and control of having a preamp in the ax.

A few yrs. later, one of his other builds with this system came back to him for a re do in which he replaced the pups and pre with something else and I got wind of it and offered him $50.00 for the whole Alembic system and he just required me to find it in his parts bin and it was a done deal.
There's nothing really special about them except that they're very flat and uncolored as far as I can tell. I think that's also they're claim to fame.
Why the system is now $1300.00 ... who knows ... probably because they can get away with it.

Anyway ... back to the direct / no amp thing ... I recently picked up a LP Studio that has burst bucker pros in it and was amazed to find that they have enough highs to compete with the alembic system when set to flat(ish) so ... that's it.

The Behlins master Gel ... I've not used any Home Depot gels or anything other than the Behlins so I can't compare but I can give you my point of view from a novice finisher and also how and why I found it.

My old mahogany hard tail has a maple neck and the original finish on it and the body was some crappy water based stuff that was torture to maintain. Always going sticky etc. Nothing worked. I was always a lemon pledge junkie in my earlier Gibson only days and all of my Gibsons loved Pledge so .....
Well eventually I just had enough and the maple neck on the strat was down to bare wood in a few places and I just started googling and found the Behlins and got a quart metal can of it. ( don't get the metal can unless you have a pipe wrench for the next time you want to open it and a long screw driver to break the skum over on the top of the liquid ... it comes in plastic bottles now also. )

So ... I stripped the maple neck with a 50/50 mix of windex and water and a rag and some steel wool and then a bit of light sanding to get the remains cleaned up.
Just wipe it on and wait 4 to 8 hours between coats. I did 2 thin coats on the maple neck and did some touch up a year later with a thicker coat. It's been good now for 3 yrs. and I play it every day for more than 3 hours a day. It feels very close to raw. It looks satiny. It never gets cranky and sticky and if it does begin to feel the least bit sweaty ... I just wipe it lightly with a wet rag then dry with anything available, usually a hand towel ... and voila ... it's back to being perfect.

On the Korina body ... well ... not as easy as the maple neck because of the grain filling and I didn't do a perfect job on that, so it looks good but I'm feeling some small imperfections, maybe dust bumps, under my right finger tips, if I let them rest on the body when picking ... but ... what I've learned from the neck touch up is that it blends or melts into itself perfectly if you go back to it and only do part of it ... so I'll probably hit that spot on the body later on with a white scotchbrite if it's still bothering me, and if it looks like it needs more gel after that then I'll just wipe some on.

I just took some shots of the neck so here's a photosynth of it:
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=cdf6416e-d33f-4945-a431-14ddc82bb89d

Please be aware that when I removed the original finish and did the first master-gel job, I wasn't even aware that sand paper came in more that light med. and heavy. I didn't really begin to learn about these things until I found you guys here, so the wood on the maple neck is a bit rough and might show in the photos, but even still, it feels great to play so I'm very happy. I still have more than 1/2 a quart and will use it until it's gone.

 
The current sale lured me back from drooling over figured maple tops back to the korina/wenge/ebony route. But ... they only have two bodies left that fit all the other features I want and they're both top-routed. So I'm sitting here watching showcase bodies disappear one by one until I decide to either do something, or wait for something closer to what I want to show up.  But that... wonder how it'd look with a black pickguard and gold hardware.
 
Black pick guard and gold hardware would be the way I'd go if this one was a top route.
Any of the shell ones would work for me also.
 
That photo hosting site wants Microsoft's "Silverlight" installed in order to work, so I'm afraid I'll miss those pics. I like my computers too much and have too low a pain and suffering threshold to install Microsoft products on them <grin>

That's a beautiful fiddle, though. Very much what I'd build, less the 2nd tone control.
 
Nice pics. Went through the whole stack, and got a better appreciation for the thing. Pretty heroic measures you took shielding/filtering the control cavity/wiring, especially considering the electronics you were using.
 
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