Red Special inspired build.

[crazydave911]

Kinda curious about your bridge and neck pickups, Brian's is three single coils. My only advice is make your own wiring harness. I usually love those from GFS but that one was garbage. Tiny switches and wires, supposedly directly off Brian's dad's design. If so no wonder he had two backup guitars and guitar techs

 

[matman14]

Kinda curious about your bridge and neck pickups, Brian's is three single coils. My only advice is make your own wiring harness. I usually love those from GFS but that one was garbage. Tiny switches and wires, supposedly directly off Brian's dad's design. If so no wonder he had two backup guitars and guitar techs

I'm going with TV Jones. Classics for the neck and bridge Starwood Tele neck in the middle. They have the right look for this build.

I'm planning on wiring them to 4 switches. Each of the Classics (humbuckers) to on/off/on switches set to normal phase, off, opposite phase. The Starwood (single coil) to an on/off switch, and all three then go to a bass cut on/off ahead of the volume/tone. This will give me a lot of pickup combination options.

Trisonics seem harder to source (and this is not meant to be a clone, just inspired by) and I want an excuse to try TV Jones and see how a bass cut circuit will sound.

 

[matman14]

Today I successfully cleaned up the pickup cutouts and drilled and beveled the holes for the pickguard screws.

Next job will be the cutouts for the 4 switches and the holes for the pot shafts.

 

[matman14]

Finished the pickguard today, except for buffing out the scratches from all of the handling and working.

I tested a few methods for the switch slot cutouts on scrap with the tools I had available and, unfortunately, the most reliable method was a Stanley knife. I kind of felt like The Counte of Monte Cristo tunneling out of Châteaux d'If, but at least cutting the slots only took 3 hours with hand tools vs 12 years for the Count

Drilling 3/8" holes in the scrap was interesting. The bit had a tendency to corkscrew through. A few tests showed me that going very slow, then reversing the direction of the drill for a few seconds, to smooth out the cut surface, and repeating until I was through gave me a clean cut.

 

[matman14]

While I was working on the pickguard, the DHL guy dropped these off:

 

[matman14]

Today was a busy evening/night of body work. Woodworking is so much easier, or at least I have better tools for it than for a thick, 3 ply piece of plastic for the pickguard.

I cut out a space for the switch system, drilled a new hole for the tone control, cut half an inch off of and reshaped the horn on the lower bout, and deepened the cutaway and made the swoop of the upper bout more pronounced.

Before and after, It's subtle, but I find it more aesthetically pleasing (and not at all the correct Red Special shape, but a bit closer to it).

 

[matman14]

.

 

[matman14]

Neck was waiting for me when I got home this evening:

Mahogany with ebony fretboard
24 frets, stainless steel, medium jumbo.

I'm going to round off the headstock before grain filling it and the body.

 

[matman14]

This evening I did some grain filling with a filler tinted with cherry red stain. Waiting for it to dry so I can sand it back and see I'd another round will be required.

The stained filler made a heck of a mess of my work table. Quite frankly it looked more like a butcher's table than a wood working space

The plan after that is the stain the body with a light wash of brown. That should help the top match better with the neck, which is a darker mahogany, and make the basswood back less white. So when I do the final red stain, the back doesn't come out pink.

 

[matman14]

Busy day today, so only a small amount of progress. Was able to measure and mark up the changes I will make to the headstock:

 

[matman14]

This afternoon I fired up the spindle sander and went to work on the headstock. It is slightly nerve racking to take a very nice Warmoth neck and potentially destroy it, but I got the results I wanted:

I also sanded back the grain fill on the body and did a quick test fit. I am very happy with the progress, although it does highlight the drastic difference in the mahogany on the top vs the neck. Some stain will help to address that:

Overall, good progress today.

 

[wingcommander]

Neck was waiting for me when I got home this evening:

Mahogany with ebony fretboard
24 frets, stainless steel, medium jumbo.

I'm going to round off the headstock before grain filling it and the body.

The red special has a zero fret.
Didn't want to give that a go?

 

[badscrew_projects]

Coming up nicely !

 

[matman14]

The red special has a zero fret.
Didn't want to give that a go?

I'm not currently set up with with the tools to be able to do a fretboard here, and a zero fret is not an option from Warmoth, plus I've never really seen the need to have one myself.

Add it to the list of inaccuracies in this build .

 

[matman14]

Did a few washes of water based stain on the back and sides this afternoon. I'll leave it to really dry out over night before doing the whole body to get the color I want.

The bass wood back was an almost stark white, now it sits better with the top, ready for final staining:

 

[matman14]

This afternoon I got the top staining done.

So I've gone from this:

To this:

Which is a better match to the neck

 

[Killing Floor]

That’s gonna be a rock’n’roll animal

 

[matman14]

Couple of baby steps tonight. I grain filled the neck and shielded the pickguard:

I did find that handling it while making it, the plastic in the pickguard could do double duty as a Van de Graaff generator. I want all that static to have a better way out than via the signal path.

 

[matman14]

After letting the body and neck sit for a couple of days, I added the red stain.

It's certainly looking red and pretty special, and the neck and body are now a good match, in color, after initially being very differently hued wood.

Next the clear coats.

 

[badscrew_projects]

It’ll darken nicely under the clear, will be looking great!