Grateful Dead Music Forum

I got a call from my buddy John that my guitar was done! Went by and picked it up, it looks and plays great. I had a crazy day with the kids and haven't had a chance to plug it in. It's the body is burled redwood, purpleheart, flame maple. The through neck is flame maple and purpleheart. The pickups are Seymour Duncan Stag Mags and it's got the OBEL and Waldo's buffer. It's been a long time in the making, the neck and wood had been sitting around my basement for almost 10 years. It's good to see that stuff get put to good use. I've got a gig Saturday so I'll try to get a good recording. It's got a great acoustic tone (something I like about electrics with redwood tops) - we'll see how it translates to electric tone . . .

Very nice, looking forward to hearing the recording!

the headstock reminds me of national's pearloid paddle on the reso-lectric

Right On! Congratulations man! That was really worth the wait, that thing looks amazing. Can not wait to hear how it sounds. Do you plan to add any type of Synth pickup?

Grant, never thought of that - it does kind of have the National vibe. He's an acoustic builder and that's the headstock from his first acoustic he built. We jokingly called it the " Gumby" headstock. I'm a big of those Resolectrics. Maybe I need to get a piece of perloid ...

I want to put a synth pickup on it but as with most of my home projects I encountered a few unforeseen things and one of them was I originally was going for HHS pickup configuration but the single coil was supposed to be Gibson spaced came in a standard Fender spacing. So I put that on my strat and got a third humbucker not thinking that the 24 fret 25" scale would really jam them in there. I'm not sure if there's room for a synth pickup. I'm gonna try an old GK2 I have in my spare parts collection but it's looking like it's not gonna work out. I don't know what I'm gonna do about that yet. Might need some good ol' trailer- park engineering as I like to say

congrats! sure is pretty! I played a guitar the other night with the same bridge and thought it was awesomely comfortable and smooth!

strumminsix wrote:congrats! sure is pretty! I played a guitar the other night with the same bridge and thought it was awesomely comfortable and smooth!

Thanks! I kind of randomly got one of those bridges for my first homemade guitar and really liked it. Nice mass and low profil - easy to adjust too.

Congrats!! It sure looks nice- hard to believe you had that wood floating around for 10 years! Looking forward tot he sound analysis!


Bruce

CoolBreeze wrote:Congrats!! It sure looks nice- hard to believe you had that wood floating around for 10 years! Looking forward tot he sound analysis!


Bruce

Yeah, it was one of those "roundtoits" and I was never gonna get around to it. I'm surprised the wood or neck didn't warp in a damp, cold basement all those years. I've got another body that's kind of Alembic-Omega looking made from spalted pecan that I've had from the same time that I might try to tackle next.

Beautiful, well done, sir!

Hope you at least have side dots on the neck! My Alembic bass has no fret markers and it throws me off once in awhile. My lefty-strung/righty-necked Strat has the dot fret markers, but the side dots are on the wrong side, and occasionally that throws me off... it's nice to have both, esp. in dicey stage lighting.

Beautiful !

tigerstrat wrote:Beautiful, well done, sir!

Hope you at least have side dots on the neck! My Alembic bass has no fret markers and it throws me off once in awhile. My lefty-strung/righty-necked Strat has the dot fret markers, but the side dots are on the wrong side, and occasionally that throws me off... it's nice to have both, esp. in dicey stage lighting.

It's got side markers but I've also got some fretboard stickers to put on. My PRS has brass side markers and the moon inlays both of which can disappear under stage lights so I know what you mean. What's worse is my Gitane gypsy jazz guitar that has the dot on the 10th instead of 9th fret - that used to cause a lot of "jazz" notes

tcsned wrote:Grant, never thought of that - it does kind of have the National vibe. He's an acoustic builder and that's the headstock from his first acoustic he built. We jokingly called it the " Gumby" headstock. I'm a big of those Resolectrics. Maybe I need to get a piece of perloid ...

I want to put a synth pickup on it but as with most of my home projects I encountered a few unforeseen things and one of them was I originally was going for HHS pickup configuration but the single coil was supposed to be Gibson spaced came in a standard Fender spacing. So I put that on my strat and got a third humbucker not thinking that the 24 fret 25" scale would really jam them in there. I'm not sure if there's room for a synth pickup. I'm gonna try an old GK2 I have in my spare parts collection but it's looking like it's not gonna work out. I don't know what I'm gonna do about that yet. Might need some good ol' trailer- park engineering as I like to say

sure would look nice...



NRP really do make some amazing guitars - The Don is my fav (I'm a single cone guy)

Gigged with it last night. Man, I'm not sure what the X-factor was - the pickups, the through neck, the wood, Waldo's buffer or what but I got as close to "the sound" as I ever have. The bar was packed so dynamics were a little difficult (not that I'm complaining about a full house). Soul Mate makes some nice necks. I'll see if anything I recorded came out and I'll post some samples.

Here's a short audio clip - a little drive from the T-Rex Dr Swamp
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/tsnedike/music/clip1.mp3