The Canary Strat Build (Complete).

[vikingred]

This is going to be a very, very nice guitar.  Canary on mahogany, chambered, gloss finish by Warmoth.  Neck is Canary with Black Ebony (UC) board, SS-bigboy frets and Wizard neck, and that pearloid swan dot thing.  Pickups are oldschool handwound "Dawgtown" from a cool cat on E-Bay, "Gilmour A5" set.  Pots are impedance matched CTS to .05% and I did not solder on them but used some lugs and ingenuity instead.  It's a work in progress.  The neck burnished beautifully.  And the waterslide decal on the headstock is the best I've done so far.  It's a real delicate thing to make it totally disappear correctly, and look like part of the finish.  In this case the finished face of the headstock actually matches the burnished back and sides of the headstock and neck, so it looks 'factory' if you could call it that.  I went the extra mile and did some tedious coppering as you can see.  It was fun and challenging.  And then my OCD kicked in and did some coppering of the back of the pickguard.  Anyway, so far so good.  here are some pictures, first of what I started with:

More to come....  :glasses9:

 

[vikingred]

And here we go....I know the copper thing is debatable, but I had already bought it, so why not....

Getting sick with it:

AND THOSE INFAMOUS IMPEDANCE MATCHED POTS EVERYONE THINKS ARE A JOKE:

OH YEAH BABY, LOOKIE:

The GILMOUR set:

And let's get a little nuts and paint that switch blade BLACK:

Time to heat up the old Weller and let's melt some solder

More to come...

 

[vikingred]

And here we go again:

BOLT THE NECK ON BAYBEE:

WATERSLIDE GLORY:

Anyways, a LOT more to do on this build.  Gonna take extra care with that glossy finish when drilling for the pickguard, jackplate, and strap button screws.  Also gotta do the Floyd Rose mounting routine.  Then finalize everything and peel the plastic off the pickguard and send it to Cagey for the fretwork. 

I absolutely love the Canary in gloss.  After finding Warmoth, I don't know that I'll ever own anything else.  I've got something wicked in mind for the next build.  Gonna try to build one guitar a month.  That's a reasonable pace dontcha think?

Nite.

 

[dmraco]

Very nice.  Great attention to detail.  My wiring usually looks like a birds nest.

One guitar a month?  I wish I had that kind of cash.

 

[sixstringsamurai]

One guitar a month?  I wish I had that kind of cash.

You and me both.... :laughing7:

 

[vikingred]

One guitar a month?  I wish I had that kind of cash.

You and me both.... :laughing7:

Yeah, I don't think that's going to fly with the wife anyways, so.  But I'm having fun for now.

 

[stratamania]

Nice work on the copper tape. Very neat.

I thought you might have got a SoZo cap

 

[vikingred]

Nice work on the copper tape. Very neat.

I thought you might have got a SoZo cap

Big ole gnarly paper-in-oil .047uf tone cap!  Can't wait to get it strung up and jam.  "Vintage" parts in a beautiful Warmoth strat through a Swart STR tube amp is heavenly.  The Zoso guitar is badass.  I tuned that sucker to DADGAD and played some Kashmir (played along with the song like 5 times through, heh).  Needs some adjustments, it will likely be going to Cagey next after I get the Korina Strat back from him.  Now I gotta find something exotic from Warmoth for that black "Dialtone" pickup I bought.

 

[stratamania]

Playing Kashmir in DADGADs always fun.

The SoZo caps are pretty gnarly themselves, obviously made by another Zep fan. You can see one in the last photo of this post.

http://unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=24977.msg365278#msg365278

 

[vikingred]

Playing Kashmir in DADGADs always fun.

The SoZo caps are pretty gnarly themselves, obviously made by another Zep fan. You can see one in the last photo of this post.

http://unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=24977.msg365278#msg365278

Oh yah yah, haven't seen those in forever.  Didn't know what you were talking about.  Just ordered a few directly from the place itself:  http://sozocapacitors.com/?page_id=8

Dude.  Check this out: 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODidAgdL40Y[/youtube]

Those dudes are TRIPPIN' but trying to keep there cools.  Can you imagine jammin' with Page?

 

[stratamania]

I thought you might have liked those caps. If nothing else they look quite cool. 

That's a cool clip. I've got it on DVD. One of the things that really comes across is that Jimmy, really enjoys music whoever made it. This really shows in this clip I think.


[youtube]RLEUSn8y9TI[/youtube]


I need to check out that biography you posted the other day.

 

[dmraco]

It Might Get Loud.  I must have watched that movie a couple dozen times.

 

[jmcecil]

love the build so far.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

And the waterslide decal on the headstock is the best I've done so far.  It's a real delicate thing to make it totally disappear correctly, and look like part of the finish.

That decal does look good, the picture of it really jumped out at me. I still consider a successful headstock decal application to be one of the most crucial and stressful milestones on any of my builds, I lay awake at night thinking about it, haha! Beautiful wiring too. Well done!

 

[vikingred]

love the build so far.

Thanks, it's a lot of fun.

 

[vikingred]

And the waterslide decal on the headstock is the best I've done so far.  It's a real delicate thing to make it totally disappear correctly, and look like part of the finish.

That decal does look good, the picture of it really jumped out at me. I still consider a successful headstock decal application to be one of the most crucial and stressful milestones on any of my builds, I lay awake at night thinking about it, haha! Beautiful wiring too. Well done!

Thank you sir!  I'm sort of developing my own way of doing it, blending things I've read on here and around.  And you're right it's crucial to get it right, or it just looks bad, and the stress of the whole process is serious.  My main problem is I want to rush the lacquer drying process, and you just can't do that, or at least I don't know how you would.  After I sandwich the decal in shellac, I apply about 8 coats of deft satin lacquer, and let it sit a week.  Well, almost a week.  Then I just go straight to wet sanding with 2000, and then wipe and alternate with that green 3M cloth sandpaper stuff, and back and forth 2000 then blue, then 2000 then grey, then pink, and you can tell when you're really close.  Then you shoot another coat of lacquer, let dry overnight and hit it with the pink again.  It's such a delicate thing.  Easy to screw up.  It'll take me another 10 of them to get it down pat, prolly.

 

[vikingred]

Did the tuning keys and the drilled for and installed the jack plate.  God it's noisy on testing, though, lotta hum.  May need to recheck everything.  Got the nut installed, FR prepped, removed that huge shim under the saddles, and put 3 x 2mm shims on each E string, and 1 x 2mm shim on the A & B string.  And, just to test it, I swapped the stock block for a TITANIUM BLOCK, oh god.  Let's see how that sounds.  I know it'd be a lot easier if I just went with some modern humbucking single-coils but I want some vintage sound ya know.  Anyways here's the latest (wow I just realized that nut doesn't look right, ugh):

Man, I wish I could stay home all day and build guitars.  Seriously, I'd love it.

 

[Cagey]

Man, I wish I could stay home all day and build guitars.  Seriously, I'd love it.

There's more money in burger-flipping.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Man, I wish I could stay home all day and build guitars.  Seriously, I'd love it.

There's more money in burger-flipping.

Reminds me of this old chestnut:

Q: What did the luthier do when he won the lottery?

A: He kept making guitars till the money ran out.

 

[Cagey]

Hehe! Yeah. Reminds me of another...

Q: How do you make a small fortune in guitar building?

A: Start with a large fortune.