Well I’m pretty pleased with the way this guitar has turned out, especially as it cost only about £30 to make.
Being only 36mm thick and very light it’s a great sofa guitar. It has a very loud and quite brash unplugged sound, due to its hollow construction.
If I was building another, I think that I might make the body a bit deeper, to see how it affects the bass response.
Oh and maybe add a neck pickup too…?
I tweaked the geometry to get the bridge height down and the strings closer to the pickup.
The action at the 12th fret is just below 2mm which is a bit higher than I’d normally set my guitars but suits this guitar well.
Final adjustments
Please excuse my cack-handed playing!
This was played via a BOSS GT-8 on cleanish settings and Edirol UA-4FX USB audio capture interface.
Okay, twenty minutes with the bench grinder and pillar drill and the neck plate is reshaped and has a new hole.
You can see how I had to fit the neck pocket to the Danelectro neck.
I’m getting grief from the family about the carpet tape edging so may have to rethink that and try for something with more of a quality feel about it. But not too high quality of course! 😉
Despite not yet having modified the neck plate, I was eager to see how it all went together so fitted the neck and strung it up.
Amazingly everything lined up perfectly. The action was spot on, as was the intonation.
The pickup is too far from the strings though so I think I’ll rout 2mm from the neck pocket which should do the trick.
Or maybe a shim would be a safer bet? I’ve ruined too many jobs with “just one last cut”!
I think it’s looking pretty good though, if I say so myself.
I have now fitted all the hardware to the body.
The basic electrics were threaded through the pickup hole before the pickup was screwed into place. Note there is no tone control who uses them, anyway?
The pickguard is an off-cut of acoustic pickguard material not large enough to make an acoustic ‘guard.
Next step is to fit the neck but I’ll need to sort a neck plate out. I’m going to modify the one I have in case the “deluxe” style one doesn’t arrive in time. Plus, I’m impatient to get this guitar strung and playable!
The neck got a bit charred when I stripped the lacquer so the plan was to paint it a solid colour.
When I sprayed a coat of sealer the neck took on a really nice colour which i felt suited the general vibe of the guitar so I ended up spraying with clear lacquer. I think it looks pretty good.
I did however blacken the headstock face as the colour of the wood wasn’t pretty.
Wood £6.74
Neck & tuners £0.00
Bridge £5.00
P-90 Pickup £10.50
Strap buttons £0.99
Lacquer £3.60
Neck plate £2.99
Carpet tape for edging £1.25
Total: £31.07
I’ve sprayed the body in copper lacquer. I used 150ml of clear gloss nitrocellulose lacquer (cost £3.60) containing 10g of finely divided copper (free sample), sprayed on quite dry so that I achieved a low gloss.
The pigment is Crescent Bronze Coppertone #420
The result has a few rough edges but this is the general vibe that I’m aiming for so no problems there!
I used woven carpet tape around the edge to hide the joins.
The neck came from a 90s Danelectro ’56 U2 reissue which was damaged in the post, showing a crack at the scarf joint.I couldn’t detect any movement and my attempt to run superglue into the crack didn’t show any signs of a gap.
I didn’t want the neck to be green so decided to strip off the finish.
Of course, Nitromors didn’t have any impact on the finish so out came the heat gun.
Unfortunately this caused a bit of charring so my plan for an oiled finish was dashed.
There were also some nasty mineral streaks in the wood so I think I’ll end up with a black peghead face to cover this.
I did some reshaping of the heel and plugged the old screw holes with maple.
You can see that there is some wood cut away on the treble side of the heel, and I have shaped the body to match.
La Cabronectro 