Last Monday I finished a new version of Imperatrix, a model of my own that I finished summer 2011. The prototype turned nice otherwise, but the neck became a bit too thick and the headstock finish a little uneven. It's waiting for a fix-up in the "recall line" with some other thick-necks. The new one has a nice thin neck.
The body is thin too. Two years ago I found a pristine kitchen work bench slab of laminated beech that someone had dumped. I salvaged it and half of it became the body of the "Kitchen Bass" I finished last winter. The rest became what I'm presenting now. Compared to my usual body wood alder beech is dense and heavy, so I both chambered the body a bit and made it thinner than the prototype body. Combined with a set maple neck in a 5° angle this guitar both feels nice and pleases my eye.
The design is pretty much the same I started out with. I knew the guitar would be yellow and black with zebra pickups, cream binding and black tuners, bridge & hardware. Somewhere on the way I purchased zebrano for the fretboard and the only thing differing from the original plan is the tint of the yellow stain. I added the stain directly to the wood and after 7 coats of clear lacquer it turned out darker than I had planned. If I had sealed the wood first and primed it with clearcoat before spraying on a yellow colour, I would have had more control over the lightness of the tint, but I don't mind the finish turning tobacco burst instead of lemon burst. Now it looks less aggressive and it's a happy accident it turned out this way. With the black metal parts I really like it.
I wound the pickups myself. They have a ceramic magnets and I was a bit worried if that would produce harsh sounds, but my worries were in vain. The pickups are not overwound but rather moderate all-rounders. The neck pickup rates at 8.16 kΩ and the bridge pickup at 9.48 kΩ, which is pretty much what I prefer for a guitar planned to cover various music styles. The pickups can be split to single coils with a push-pull switch and the resulting sounds are quite usable. Of course through 500 kΩ pots they may sound shrill to some, but that's what tone pots are for. As humbuckers they deliver what I expected of them. The clean sounds are both clear and mellow, with a powerful low end, articulate mids and civilized trebles. Something I'd expect of AlNiCo5 driven pickups. When played through the overdrive channel of my 60W hybrid head and 4x8" cab the neck pickup gives a thick and creamy blues howl without any muddiness. Overdriven, the bridge pickup turns into a full-bloodied rockbucker with sounds varying from AC/DC to metal, depending how much distortion you feed in. I recorded some sound clips yesterday, I'll give links to the sounds in another post.
These are the specs:
Body beech, flamed birch top, colour tobacco burst, cream ABS plastic binding, clear acrylic lacquer finish
Set neck maple 24,75 "/ 629 mm scale, cream bound zebrawood fingerboard 22 medium jumbo frets, 6 mm MOP dot fret markers , bone nut, double-action truss rod, NYDE logo MOP headstock inlay, clear acrylic lacquer finish
Neck pickup NYDE zebra Tonebucker 8.16 kΩ, bridge pickup NYDE zebra Tonebucker 9.48 kΩ. The pickups can be split to single coils (neck inner, bridge outer) with a push-pull switch, black pickup mounting rings, black plastic electronics cavity cover and selector switch cover
Black 3-way pickup selector switch 2 volume pots 500 kΩ with treble bleed filters, 2 tone pots 500 kΩ with 22nF caps, 3-way switch, push-pull split swtch on neck pickup tone pot, black speed knobs
black Tune-o-matic bridge & stoptail string holder, sealed black tuners, black hardware, black screws
I've been home down with the flu most of the week, so I set up a makeshift studio and took the studio shots at home instead of taking the guitar to the studio at work. The backdrop (white cotton sheet) is a little wrinkled, but otherwise the temp studio with my portable strobes works just as well as the big studio at work. I didn't even have to adjust the colour in Photoshop. Here come the pics:
- The empress in a full frontal pose
- Her body from the front...
- ... and in a close-up
