The "Beatnik Mojocaster" is born

[j48johnson]

After building my first guitar which is a Stratocaster clone, I wanted to venture out and make a body style that had never been done.

With that being said, it was very hard to come up with a style of my own that would look right to me, but one that hasn't been mass produced.

In the end, some people like the design, some people don't because it is a radical departure from the norm.

I came up with the design by drawing different body shapes until I had a few that held merit. From the three that I thought might work, I narrowed it down to the one I ended up building.

It is a single cut hollow body explorer/firebird kind of shape but all my own design. I didn't even know what a firebird was until after the body shape of mine was complete.


Here's a full frontal shot of the Beatnik Mojocaster:




Next up is a picture of just the body showing the matching pickguard and control knobs:




Full rear shot:




Rear of body only showing reflection of me sitting on a small hill in the yard.




Since I wanted to leave the hollowbody as thick as I could, I had to move the neck plate towards the fretboard by about 3/8". I had to cut a recess into the back of the body to do this. The picture shows lemon oil on the plate and some cotton towel fuzz... I thought I had it all cleaned off, but the picture shows I didn't.




Neck down shot showing the bone nut on the neck, and the thick (hollow) body.




This one shows off the gold hardware and the reflection of the concrete driveway.




Showing the thickness of the body.

[wolf]

Wow - you designed and built that?
Incredible !!
What kind of neck is on there and what kind of wiring?

[DarKnight]

That's just so C-O-O-L! ;D Nice work! Looking very balanced and I like the way soundholes are placed. How it sounds unplugged?

Dark

[j48johnson]

The neck is bacote with a ovangkol fretboard. The wiring is pretty much straight up. I used a Gibson three way toggle switch, and Gibson pots. with a Hoveland musicap, and just your basic wiring of neck/neck-bridge/bridge for the pick up selection.

As far as the sound unplugged, it sounds like a solid body. It may have a tad more volume than a solidbody, but not much if any. I wanted to make it a hollowbody, well just because! lighter weight, more resonance, and maybe a different sound than a solid maple on mahogany body.

If you look at the pictures, you'll see that the pickups are WAY apart from each other. I placed the neck pickup, (S.D. JBjbjr.), all the way to the end of the neck, and the bridge pickup, (S.D. Hotrails), as close to the bridge as I could. Some people said; "That bridge pickup is going to sound thin, tinny, and weak being that close to the bridge". It doesn't at all, in fact it sounds great. The Hotrails is a hot pickup and delivers a great lead sound. Also, with this pickup placement, while playing, you can move your picking spot on the strings to anywhere in between the pickups and it gives it a different sound. Unlike the Flamecaster, (my first build),



which has three pickups, you're kind of limited to pick placement while playing without hitting the face of a pickup with your pick.

The reason I didn't leave the mahogany a natural color is because I had to use six boards, three glued to each other side by side by side to get the size needed for a guitar body. Once I had two of these glued up, and planed down so they were flat, I face glued those two boards, (each being three boards glued together), together to get the thickness needed for the body.

Here's a picture of the back before painting. You have to look close but there are two glue lines in there somewhere! lol



Here, you can see the endgrain and the glue lines which are easier to see what I'm talking about...

[ccso8462]

Fantastic job, j48! Body shape is different without being outlandish. Beautiful finish. Excellent innovation. That axe is really something to be proud of. Congrats and thanks for sharing the pics and info.

Carl