my very old custom guitar - how far did we go?

[jost 7]

probably i never did show this to you all before. my beloved beauty which now is about 20 years old. back than i didn't know how to play it not to mention how to build one.

it is influenced by the logo as well as by vox guitars, as zillo featured a picture of wayne playing one. all the wholes were made by a normal screwing machine and a hammer. the guitar was based on a les paul copy, with quite strong dimarzio pick ups, but all in all it is more of an teenage experiment than a serious guitar. but i still love her as you can imagine.

have a look here: http://picasaweb.google.at/jostsieben/S ... directlink

with thx to the foto-wizards:

[markfiend]

Like that?

[jost 7]

Like that?

yes, like that, a little larger would be great.
thx

[Patti82]

Something like that?

[jost 7]

Something like that?

yes patti, exactly something like that
thx again

[Ahráyeph]

I can imagine the love you have for such a home made axe, so rock on! However, physics wise, I think you made a couple of serious errors which may affect the guitar's sound drastically. Cutting away the wood behind the bridge/tail section will result in loss of sustain as well as 'body' to its sound. Unless that's what you're actually aiming for. Eddy Van Halen once drilled out a whole triangle shaped section of the Ibanez Destroyer (a very fancy one made with korina wood, for the guitar afficionados among us), to make it look like a cross between a Flying V and an Explorer (the shape of guitar which was later made famous by Pantera's Dimebag Darrell RIP). Looked cool, but what Van Halen found out when it was way too late, was that the nice, rich sound and sustain had left along with the triangle section he drilled out. Nevertheless, I'm sure it doesn't diminish the love for your teenage experiment, so more power to ya.

[eotunun]

Jost, you probably will knock your head on the table when you hear that you probably ruined a quality guitar.
Hondos were made by Matsumoku, who already were the source of some of the early Sisters' gear as they made ARia guitars as well. (And still do, I think I read.) Or the guitars that made the name Ibanez grow, according to a stringjunkie forum.
I think that the rather poor execution of the job put asside the shape as such is a rather interesting idea. But as Raf said..
Maybe a guitar maker can get a nicely strong new body in the maching shape for you made?
I guess the guitar does have some trouble with balance, the neck lying in your hand rather heavily. Maybe the cutout in the front of the body could get filled out with a glass part or acrylic resin to bring back balance and some mass for the body to develope sustain?
By the way: The neck for the bass I got is from a Hondo precision bass copy a teenage boy wanted to reshape into something very evil and metal like.
When you are cheapo, you are doomed, eh?

[dinky daisy]

Men and guitars. There's something dirty about that.

[Ahráyeph]

Men and guitars. There's something dirty about that.

Oh yes. Very much so. And don't we like it. However, I once had an hour's worth of chat about nothing but Gibson Les Pauls with Magnapop's Ruthie Morris. Turned out we were both in love with them. Back in the 90's there was nothing better than to trade guitar stories with Ruthie Morris, other than, well, I'll leave that to your dirty imagination...

[markfiend]

There's that Terry Pratchett thing about guitars: (paraphrase)

"People say that guitars look like women. Only if they have six ears, very long necks, and no arms or legs."

[abridged]

Nothing so boring as a guitar solo that lasts more than 10 seconds....

[eotunun]

There's that Terry Pratchett thing about guitars: (paraphrase)

"People say that guitars look like women. Only if they have six ears, very long necks, and no arms or legs."

I guess you just found out why Flying Vs are so poppular..

@Abridged: Listen to Joe Satriani, his *are*interesting.
I mentioned that before: I read about a report from some person who heard Antonio Vivaldi play violin at a concert. It was something like "What he played was not exactly beautyfull music, just the speed and skill displayed in his play were stunning."
With Satriani playing entire Albums of rather well entertaining instrumental songs and his skill in the theoretical part, I'd think he's not too far away from being a modern Vivaldi-like music genius.

[James Blast]

Nothing so boring as a guitar solo that lasts more than 10 seconds....

try RevCo's Get Down, that's about 13mins of guitar abuse and is highly reommended

[jost 7]

thx for your comments. guitras definitely can transform to being sex-loaded monsters, at least sometimes

and luckily i did not ruin anything from the original hondo beside cutting the two pick-up cables including shielding. the natural coloured body is still in near new condition. the neck never had correctly placed frets, and the g-string always sounded flawy, so using it for such work was fine.

the new body made of a one piece sproce was originally set up for a strat-bridge, which was too wide for the small les pall neck (yes, i should have been aware of that before ...), so i had to use the original bridge which wasnt a clean solution after already having screwed the whole. i also never liked the really heavy neck, not to discuss sound issues, as the g-string remained flawy, sustain did hardly exist as sproce is too light and playing while sitting also never was easy. at least the cut-out for the neck did fit perfectly and the bowing also turned out nicely.

anyway, its a nice souvenir for me, as the design still makes me smile as i like it a lot. i will build a new guitar for shure sometimes, which will be a different expierience, and a nice guitar