This project has the following specifications:

  • 6-string electric guitar with three pickups
  • Neck-through construction
  • Neck core is birdseye maple with a walnut center stripe
  • Body core is chambered black walnut with AAAAA quilted maple top and AAA quilted back
  • Three pickups custom-made by Kent Armstrong:
    • Neck: Humbucker with 12 adjustable pole pieces
    • Middle: dual-blade strat-size humbucker
    • Bridge: Quad-blade humbucker
  • Switching to allow out-of-phase connection of bridge & neck pickups
  • Series/parallel switching for all pickups
  • Volume controls for each pickup
  • Mid-boost electronics
  • Stetsbar tremolo tailpiece/bridge assembly
  • All gold hardware

July 30, 2006: These are the first pictures taken of the construction process. The neck core was glued up a few weeks ago, And I started fabricating the body wings today. In these pictures, you can see that holes have been drilled through the body wings so that I can cut out the chambers with a jigsaw.

These are the templates that I used to lay out the body and neck. The one on the left shows the positions of ther bridge saddles and the end of the fingerboard. The one on the right shows where the body chambers will be.

 

The chambers have been cut at theis point:

The chambers have been sanded, and the body wings have been glued to the neck core:

Here you can see the truss rod in place in its routed channel:

I planned to use this bookmatched pair of bigleaf maple panels with quilt figure as the top for the guitar, but I found another set with better and deeper-looking figure and used that instead. This set will become the guitar's back.

The headstock with the ebony overlay:

Gluing the top to the body assembly:

This picture shows the body after the top has been glued on:

These pictures show the body after the edges have been rounded and the forearm, neck, and belly contours carved:

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Two shots of the body after therouting of the cavities for the pickups and the Stetsbar tremolo tailpiece:

Inlays on the headstock and fingerboard:


All Pictures and Text
(c) Copyright 2006 by Stephen Cyr
Last updated September 5, 2006		 Best experienced with

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