(slightly) offset strat in progress...

[zebra]

@ Cagey:  By knock-off, I don't really mean 'cheaper,' just alternative.  They are a bargain, but I've been waiting on my Lawrence/Wilde pickups for months now.  For a one-off sort of thing, I don't mind the wait.  But I wouldn't want to make them a go-to if I had to wait months on end for every order.  So yeah, some inventory for the typical high-volume order pickups would be nice...looks like they have new digs, so hopefully, between the new space and not being distracted by the logistics of moving, they'll be able to accommodate the rather high demand for their delicious products...

@ Brotherjack:  Smooth, yes, they'll do that well. Crunchy sounds tend, by my experience, to be focused in the midrange - and Alumitones don't really have that sort of pronounced mid-range.  However, I play my Alumintones through a solid state Yamaha with active eq that also has a sweepable EQ, so I can get some pretty precise sounds with it. 

Interestingly, the bright pull-switch does NOTHING when I use these pickups.  When I engage the bright switch which normal HBs, it's like night and day.  Someone who knows more about pickup and/or amp design could probably explain why that is the case, but I can't - so it's just an observation for others to apply their knowledge to explain.

A regular amp (by regular, I mean passive EQ / no modeling) might not be able to boost the mids enough to get the throaty, growly sort of sounds that I think you're thinking of, but with the amp modelers you mentioned that you tend to play through, you can probably find something you like.  They're like the play-dough of pickups.  I live in a small apartment, so I like them because I can find good sounds at reasonable volumes.

 

[BrotherJack]

Got the first coat of Tru Oil on it tonight!  Some of a biscuit, this is looking purty -- I promise you, the low quality cell phone pics below do it no justice!    Now to do this about twice a day for a week, and then the interminable 2 week wait while the oil cures good and hard...

Before any oil:

After the first coat

And the front just for a look-see - this is the best looking side, which is important.  I routed out a bunch under the pickguard to shave weight (and then got paranoid I'd gone too far  and reinforced the horn with the screw-through you can see in the pic).  The wood I removed took about 7 oz off the weight.  You don't make a light guitar all in one spot, you do it a few oz here, a few oz there, etc.

 

[BrotherJack]

Still gonna wait another 10 or 12 days before I do the final-sanding and start assembly, but it's been 3+ days since the last Tru Oil coat, and it's dry enough now to (very gently) lay the parts out for look-see at where it's going.  The bridge pickup is just sitting down in the body/not bolted to pickguard, because I'm still waiting Lace to send me the right screws (the good news is, they were very responsive, and I expect to see said screws soon-ish), and I have black GraphTech saddles coming for it, but this gets us really solidly in the visual neighborhood of where it'll wind up.  I'm really (really) pleased with how it looks like this will end up.  This will probably be my 'it' guitar for a while (I hope, LOL).

Edit/Note: the cheesey cell phone photo in bad light does it no justice.  The finish is actually shiny and beautiful.

 

[Cagey]

Pretty sweet! I'm not sure I like that neck, though. Plus, you'll get more sustain out of it if you install some strings. They have a tendency to vibrate for a long time  :icon_biggrin:

 

[BrotherJack]

Pretty sweet! I'm not sure I like that neck, though. Plus, you'll get more sustain out of it if you install some strings. They have a tendency to vibrate for a long time  :icon_biggrin:

Yeah, the current neck is kind of rough to me too.  Kind of feels like I've got a chunk of 2x4 in my hand when I fondle it, and I swear when I look down it, it's not straight either.  I think I'm going to have to put a nice roasted maple neck with 3x3 headstock on there in a thinner contour before I'm really happy with it.  Luckily, I already have a Warmoth neck on-hand that matches that descrition that I'll put on there once the Tru Oil cures some more.    :icon_biggrin:

 

[BrotherJack]

Only related to this thread because it may end up involving pickup choices, but as a side note:

I found a setting combo in the TC Helicon amp stomp-box amp modeler a couple days ago, that when fed with the GVH1 Giovanni bridge pickup is just drop dead out of this world amazing.  I normally play with the neck pickup to get that really 'thick' sound I like, but some biscuit, this setup on the bridge pickup is all-that for 'thick' and hot sweet sexay for everything else I like in a guitar sound to boot.  I think this is my favorite guitar tone I've ever had in 25 ish years of playing; really, seriously, it's that good.  You'd swear there's a half dozen full size high end tube amps hidden in the little stomp-box somewhere, for reals.    I did a small gig last night, and I got a ton of compliments on my guitar tone, most of them from people who've seen me play quite a bit (it's a regular gig I do ever 2 weeks), and they all instantly noticed that I'd done something new and way better with it (and it wasn't exactly awful before!). 

I am hopeful that since this is a modeled sound, and the Alumitones are a fairly sterile/pure/clean signal that the modeler could then have it's way with, that I can more/less duplicate this tone with the Alumitones.... but if not, them GVH1's is going in this build for 100% certain.

 

[BrotherJack]

2 weeks is up for Tru Oil dry/cure time.  That means it's time to work on it some more.  I finish sanded to 5,000 grit (started at 3,000 grit).  Very pleased with the results.  It's not mirror shine, but that's not what I was going for, I wanted more old furniture, ever so slightly matte, a finish that didn't distract from the wood - and that's exactly what I got.  There were a couple of minor slip ups on the job, but you'd need a bright light, the right angle, and good eyesight to figure out where they are.  I'm totally happy with it.

From the back side, it's 100% done, ferrules and all.  Front side is close; I've actually got a bit farther than in the pic there.  It really just needs pick guard screw holes drilled (easy money with a drill press), the pick guard/electronics soldered up and bolted down, and a set of strings, and it'd be ready to rock (well, gently anyway - I'm going to give the Tru Oil 2 more weeks of cure time before I gig with it or otherwise do any serious playing on it; per Birchwood Casey's recommendation of 1 month cure time).  Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on the screws from Lace to show up.  They shipped them to me for free (as should be expected from a legit company in a 'screws no fit' case, so nods to them for owning up to it), but yee olde shipping company is taking their sweet time getting them here.  Since removing pickguard on a string-through is a bit of a pain, I'm not really keen to install other pickups, only to change them out in (hopefully) just a few days.  Otherwise I'd have this thing strung up and ready to play by sundown!  :guitarplayer2:

As mentioned previously, the final build also gets a inlay-less neck with a 3x3 headstock in a vaguely PRS-ish shape, not this neck you see in the pic; this one gets block inlays and put on my black strat that's got the Les Paul motif going with the PAF's, 3 way Gibson switch, etc.    But the 3x3 stays on my daily-player until this one is 100% ready to go, so I'm using this neck you see here while building.

Anyhoo, next pics you see of it after this, it should be "done"  (or 'playable done' anyway, I'm still debating if I want to finish the headstock or not.  The neck itself is staying raw roasted maple, that's just too nice under my hands to finish - I will just sand it smooth again if it ever roughs up.. but the headstock, I might like it if it was a little better protected... still debating, and may continue debating for a while yet, but not want that debate to hold up playing on it!).

Anyway - pics; coming out pretty decent for a newb-ish guitar builder, if I do say so myself. 

 

[Cagey]

That's a beautiful piece of work! Better not take it out, lest somebody relieve you of it.

But, I'll tell ya - you should put some strings on it. You'd be surprised at how much better it will sound. Not always, of course - it depends on who you hand it to. But, overall, and I speak from long experience, strings are a Good Thing  :laughing7:

 

[stratamania]

Looks good to me...

 

[BrotherJack]

That's a beautiful piece of work! Better not take it out, lest somebody relieve you of it.

But, I'll tell ya - you should put some strings on it. You'd be surprised at how much better it will sound. Not always, of course - it depends on who you hand it to. But, overall, and I speak from long experience, strings are a Good Thing  :laughing7:

If you look close at the pics of the back of it, you'll see that there is a string on it now.  Just the low E.  I like to keep it simple.  But you're right, it sounds better than plain air now. 

 

[BrotherJack]

Finally got 'er done, strung, and been rocking it all afternoon arty07:  :guitarplayer2:  I copper foiled the inside of the cavity, soldered it all up, and put it together last night.  I let it sit overnight so the strings could settle in and I wouldn't be cussing them for tuning today.

Technically I still want to do something more to the headstock someday, but that can wait (possibly a year or two, possibly forever).    It plays absolutely incredible!  The roasted maple bare wood neck is just heaven itself, and the body mods came out better than I had imagined (and my imagination is pretty good!).  It's amazing what some relatively minor body re-contouring can do for making  a guitar fit you like it was made for you (oh wait, it was made for me, and by me, LOL!).    It's a touch heavier than I had predicted (6.4 lbs says my kitchen scale), but the balance is superb, I don't care at all that it's over my 6lb target.

The Lace Alumatone pickups are actually really really amazing.  Crisper, clearer, hotter (way, way hotter, wow - I can only imagine how hot the 'deathbuckers' are, if these are the 'mild' ones), more tone, more sonic definition, more bass, more treble, still a nice midrange peak in PAF-ish territory, overall, just more of pretty much everything.  It also doesn't 'wash out' like most anything else I've ever played does when you crank the gain up high.  It gets heavily distorted, yeah, but I can still chord and have it not sound like mud, and if pick around different notes within the chord, you can hear every one.  All that said, it is enough different in enough ways, that I can see it taking some getting used to, and how that getting used to would end up modifying my playing to suit them, and I can see how folks who are used to the way wire and magnet pickups sound could not like them, but.. so far, I am digging them.  My only big gripe, is that they are more or less too narrow for my vintage spaced bridge (calipers say is about 2.20-ish E to E vs about 2.06 ish being more common on modern (imported) guitars).    I had to fiddle a lot with the spacing of the pickup in relationship to the strings and the alignment of the pickup as well, in order to get the bridge pickup where the high E string isn't un-usably quieter than the rest of the strings.  It's not really quieter as adjusted out, the volume is there, but it still lacks the presence and bite that the other strings get (though the low E is just starting to loose out a touch too where I have it lined up at currently).  I tested by pinching them in with calipers to 2.060 ish and hitting some notes, and that fixes it about 95% (though it is still there, even then).    It's not so bad as it is that I would be ashamed to play it at a gig or anything, but I notice it.  Anyway.. time will tell.  At the moment, I like them a lot, but they are 'ooh, different' enough I'll have to play them a while before I decide I'm 100% into them or not.

Anyway, pics or it didn't happen, right?    Taken outside to see if I can get some better lighting than I have in previous pics.  I think it was better, but cheesy cell phone pics can only get so good, even in good lighting.  But you'll get the idea.

ccasion14:

 

[BrotherJack]

I knew there was a reason I didn't post the last photo's in the 'completed guitar' section of this site.  Turns out, I lied (unintentionally, I assure you). I am not done yet.

I like the Alumatone's a LOT, and I am not liking the Vintage spacing on the bridge so much.  So I'm going to kill two birds by replacing the bridge with a Fender American bridge that's 2 1/16 string spacing (vs 2 3/16 currently on the Vintage bridge).  2/16ths doesn't sound like much, but I checked it all out with calipers, and loosing that much will get the strings narrowed enough to put the high E string solidly over the pickup magnet (it's just on the edge of it currently), and 2/16ths extra also turns out is enough to make my picking hand a little grumpy with some of my old favorite licks, after 25 years of playing them on 2 1/16th spaced bridges.  So, bridge replacement, coming up, soon as parts get here.

I'm also happy enough with the Alumatones (both sound and looks wise), that I'm ditching the middle pickup and switching to an H+H pick guard.  I am also wanting more simple and less options in my controls, and will run the whole thing knob-less with a single 5 way super-switch wired up as:

Pos 1: bridge
Pos 2: bridge+neck
Pos 3: neck
Pos 4: off
Pos 5: special -- which current plan is to do neck+bridge out of phase, assuming that Alumitones will do that 'antique record' effect that normal pickups do when wired out of phase.  If that doesn't work well, I will figure out some thing else for the 'special' setting, probably involving the coil splitting option and/or adding (or removing) (a) resistor(s).

I did manage to fight off the urge to put a Graphtech Ghost system in it when i was ordering bridge parts, so yay for that!  The Alumatones through the TC Helicon with 'Acoustic Emulator' turned on sounds as much like an acoustic guitar as an acoustic guitar with piezo's does when plugged into an amp and turned up (is the argument I used to talk myself down).

It's a process... LOL

 

[BigSteve22]

It's been fun watching your vision change and come to life. Love watching the creative process breath and grow. Rock on Brother!

 

[BrotherJack]

No pic's yet, as I am still waiting on some trim parts to finish the look, but I got it all wired up and together in the new form (dual Alumatone humbuckers, no other pickups), and after playing it for about 6 to 8 hours (in total) over the weekend, am really (really) liking it like this.  My confidence level that it will stay this way long term is very high. 

I used a super-switch to wire it as follows:

Position 1:  Turbo (bridge pickup goes direct to output jack with no impediments - loud, hot, screaming, cutting, etc).
Position 2:  Bridge pickup only + 100kohm resistor between output wire and ground (resistance warms/smooths/rounds/etc the sound)
Position 3:  Bridge + Neck + 100kohm resistor between output wire and ground
Position 4:  Neck + 100kohm resistor between output wire and ground
Position 5:  Off (ground shorted to hot)

No other controls.  Simple is beautiful.  Fast. Clean.  Easy.  Intuitive.  And does everything I want with the flick of a switch.  I run with my gain on about 4, and in 'turbo' mode, you'd swear it was on 6.  In the other positions, it rolls back to about 3 and cleans up nicely, with nearly no volume drop. 

I also figured out how I think I'm going to manage to stain just the face of the headstock.  Going to tape the front face up, then lacquer the back and sides.  Pull the tape, sand the front face to make sure the line where the lacquered sides meets the front is clean and even.  Tape the sides off like I would for painting, then carefully stain the front with the same stain I did the body with, being careful to not let it sit too long.    Once done, I should be able to pull the tape, maybe sand the sides of the headstock again to smooth out the stain meets non-stained line, and then lacquer the whole thing to protect it (the main neck, I'm leaving bare wood; it just feels too nice in my hands that way, I couldn't stand to put a finish on it).

Anyhoo, more later.

 

[BrotherJack]

Soooo close to done - down to the last fiddly bits which are the headstock (and the chrome switch tip that hasn't arrived in the mail yet), and that will be that.  I had a solid idea on what I was going to do with the headstock (stain the front face), but after hearing The Wife(tm) and a couple of other friends bug me repeatedly that they think I should NOT stain the headstock, I am waffling.... so, I'm taking a poll:

In your opinion (see pic below) should I

1)  stain the front face of the headstock to match (ish) the guitar stain? 

2)  just slap a protective coat of lacquer on the headstock, leaving it more/less natural color it is now, and call that a day?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

 

[BigSteve22]

Certainly your choice, but I'd leave the headstock as is.

 

[Cagey]

I think I'd leave it as-is, too.

 

[Vallhagen]

My opinion:

Do not stain the headstock.

***

I think this is my first post in this thread, ive clicked it a few times though. Nice overall work, sweet guitar!

Cheers
/Bengt