MIMF

It's been a little while since I was inspired to build something, and I've been distracted by amps too lately.

I had a cool piece of heavier beetle kill pine hanging around and realized it was just big enough for a tele style build if I placed the cracks where the cutaways were. I also had a nice bookmatched maple top that needed to be used, so I decided to go with a blue theme to go along with the blue pine streaks. I've also wanted to do a burst like this for a while, the sort of "tranquility burst" thing that gibson did on some of it's LP's.

I also happened to have a nice piece of curly maple for a neck, and after 12 years finally did my first fender style non-angled headstock! I don't know why I waited so long to do this, it sure uses less wood, and is pretty easy.

It's not quite done, but I'm spraying clear coats on the body and working on the neck a bit.

This will also be my first time winding my own pickups, in this case from the kits you can get at Stewmac. I got a tele kit for the bridge, and a firebird kit for the neck, pretty excited about trying that!

I'll post more pics as it gets further along...

Right on! Great job on that burst.

Thanks! I'm a fan of the translucent Reranch colors, they work well on the rare occasion I actually spray lacquer.

The finish looks fantastic Dan!
I'm not a fan of pick guards, but your's looks great. It does not hide much of the wood and goes well with the body. Very nice!
Dan

Thanks Dan! It's funny, in the past I never liked pickguards, but for some reason in the last couple years I've been having fun with them. I can't take credit for the design of this one though, I just modified an off the shelf one to look kind of like one I saw on a vintage tele somewhere. I liked how it covered less wood, like you said.

Looking pretty nice Dan!
Good use for a piece of wood that you had just laying around!
I like the blue.

Thanks Gordon!

The pine is actually unusually dense for a piece of pine, and I did a little chambering to get it to my preferred weight. I'm pretty interested to see how it sounds unplugged.

Well here it is, mostly finished. It turned out to be a great sounding guitar. I'm definitely happy with my first time winding pickups, and I think I may do it again. The single coil pickup was really pretty easy, though the firebird style mini-bucker was a little delicate and scary to assemble.

I'm going to play it semi-polished out for a month or so, then take it apart and give it a good final buffing. This is the only way I can wait long enough for the finish to cure fully...

Oh wow, didn't realize the pic was gonna show up that big, sorry about that. The crazy white streaks in the large version are just reflections that I didn't notice as much in the smaller picture.

Lord how I love a blue guitar! Beautiful work!

Thanks Dan! There's alot of Dans here. No complaints here. I got a slightly better shot, and a decent one of the back, showing off the pine.....

Dan that is really nice!