Guitar Build Progress 2021 – The Plan

Myrtle Top and Body Layers

New build time! 

This one is for my friend John, who is also one of the guitarists in the band I’m in. We’ve been playing music together for about 12 years now. Once this is done, we’ll have 2 LAB instruments on our recordings / on stage. 

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A little rundown of the build we’re planning:

This is going to be a six string guitar. It’s actually been a little while since I’ve made a standard six string, so I’m excited about going back to six!

It’s going to have this beautiful Oregon Myrtle top wood that I’ve been hanging on to for this build in particular. 

Myrtle Top and Body Layers

We’re going with an extra light color theme with this guitar, so the myrtle is going on top of a white limba body, which will be semi-hollow.

White Limba Body Blank

The neck is going to be a 5-piece maple neck, with four pinstripes of a dark brown veneer (I think the veneer will be fumed Ipe). It’s going to be a set neck with a scarf joint. I’ll also be using the dark brown veneer in between the top and body and probably in the scarf joint too.

We’re going to be using a Ziricote fretboard, which I don’t have on hand yet, but it will look really nice next to the myrtle top.

A little more detail:

The guitar will have a 25.5” scale, with 3 single coil pickups, and a 5-way switch. He currently plays a Strat, so we want some of those qualities in this build.

Unlike his Strat, we’re going for 24 frets, which will be Gold EVO fretwire, all gold hardware (including a Hipshot Baby Grand bridge), and a custom 12th fret inlay. I’ll get into the inlay more in a future post. 

Gold Hipshot Baby Grand Bridge

I have another surprise lined up as well, but I don’t want to go into that yet.

Keep watching for build progress.

Next update: Prepping the top wood

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