There have been a couple of sneak preview shots of this guitar over the past couple of weeks along with some helpful discussion from some of the experts here. Well....it's finally done. It's a solid body electric guitar made from mahogany, curly maple, and birdseye maple. The finish is Minwax spray polyurethane over a few coats of Waterlox. Special thanks to Vaughn and Alan for their technical help, and to my good friend Tom for the curly maple and the use of his MM16.
I bought the neck from locally from Stutzman's Guitar Center (what a great place for you Rochester folks or visitors). It uses two single Fender Strat pickups and a an OLP "John Petrucci" humbucker. I've got a couple of Ibanez Affinity humbuckers on order that we may play with later on. There are also a set of gold finish strap pegs coming to replace the silver ones.
I don't play but my 16 year old son does. When we started out I was just hoping it would work. Turns out we got lucky in a big way because it sounds and plays great according to him....it sounds alot more alive than his Behringer Strat clone even to me, and the switches reveal alot more diverse sounds....it hoots, howls, growls, twangs, and rips! His says it "hammers" way better and "sustains" more (new terms to me ...I guess that's good!) A challenging but very rewarding project....a Visa commercial definitely came to mind the first time I watched him play it.