Father-Son project

[dusteater]

This is our first attempt at building an electric guitar. It's been a long time in the making, but it's now complete and set up. We will be painting it once we can develop a suitable color scheme.
We bought the neck from Warmoth; 24 3/4" scale, 22 frets, 1/4 sawn maple with compund radius ebony fretboard, corian nut and stainless steel frets.
The rear routed, string through body was hand made by us from 5/8" alder over 1 1/8" mahogany, in the shape of a Fender Jaguar with a deeper left hand cutaway, sealed with catalyzed urethane. The bridge is a recessed-mounted Tone Pros Gotoh Tune-o-matic.
The pickups are Seymour Duncan P-Rails, switchable for rail coil, P90 coil, humbuckers in parallel or humbuckers in series via two mini toggles opposite the bridge. A standard 3 way pickup selector switch is at the top of the body. We're pleased with the way it plays.

[newey]

dusteater-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

Very nice, we've had interest in the P-rails, and lots of discussion, but yours is the first actual build we've had here with those pups.

I'm not clear on how the P-rail switching works. You have 2 mini-toggles; how do you manage to get rail/series HB/parallel HB/P-90, for each pickup, out of only two switches?

[dusteater]

Whatever position the mini toggles are set in, both pickups will be in that mode. They are not individually switchable except to turn them on or off through the 3 way switch. Switching them individually could have yielded some interesting combinations but we wanted to keep the switching as simple as possible. We went with these pickups after we rejected the HB-SC-HB configuration my son originally wanted because we were going to need more complicated switching.
With this setup it's easy to understand. If the toggles are opposite each other you're in single coil mode, rail coil on one setting, P90 with switches set the opposite way. When the toggles are beside each other you're in HB mode, in parallel with the toggles towards the strings, in series with the toggles away from the srtings.

[reTrEaD]

I'm curious about the patched area on the back of the guitar. What's that all about?

[dusteater]

Before we routed the control cavities the body was pretty heavy, so we included a weight reduction chamber in that area. It was routed down to the alder and fitted with a 1/4" mahogany cover, so the chamber is about 7/8" deep. I don't know if it affects the sound but the heft of the body is acceptable now. It also seems to have helped balance it.

[asmith]

It's absolutely beautiful. If I were your son I'd be over the moon with the project. Congratulations.

[dusteater]

Thanks. Next up is developing a paint scheme for it. I envisioned Fender Blue Ice with silver-blue ghost flames, but my son wants a white base with pearl effects to be determined. It may be the most enjoyable phase of the project. We'll probably also be making a custom hard case for it.

[cynical1]

Sorry to chime in so late on this one. That's a very nice looking guitar you have there.

Pearl over white can be very striking. There's a million tutorials out there, the best ones being from the auto painting sites, so I won't hash up what's already out there.

One thought, and it's just that...but since you have a "chamber" in the guitar, which seems to accommodate a standard size cavity route, that would be a great place to put a Ghost piezo saddle controller board, hexpander board or a sustainer board...

Again...I'm just sayin'...

Please post back once you get the finish on and buffed out. I would like to see how this one wraps up.

Thanks for posting.

Happy Trails

Cynical One