MIMF

I've finished making 2 basses and 2 guitars for some friends I jam with.

Tops are maple, bodies alder, necks 5 piece alder and walnut. Maple zero-fret fretboards except one guitar with Honduran rosewood and no zero-fret. Bodies are chambered.

Generic (from China to keep costs down) hardware, including double action truss rods, Schaller type strap locks, tuners, bridges, knobs, neck bolts/plates, pickups, stacked pots, 3 way switches, jack plates. Any of these can be easily upgraded should the owners desire.

Finish is sprayed lacquer.

All are 24 fret. Guitar scale length 25.5", bass 34".

Bass #1 - dilute Kodak Ektacolor violet dye wiped on, then garnet shellac over that. The amber color of the shellac turns the violet a warm brown.

Bass #2 - She wanted amethyst color, which is about twice as much magenta as cyan. I mixed some printer ink refills I had, but it seemed a little grainy when I applied it to wood, so I matched it as best I could with the Ektacolor dyes, which seemed to apply a little smoother. The maple for the fret board was quite a bit whiter than the top, and it came out more blue. Oh well...

Guitar #1 - Just the garnet shellac wiped on.

Guitar#2 - The maple is partially spalted, and took the dye quite differently. The dye is from watercolor tubes, pthalo blue and some black. I initially tried it in alcohol but it was incompatible, so I had to raise the grain and sand back, then apply it mixed in water.

Those really came out well.
I really like the blue.

The garnet shellac one gets my vote. How did you die the fret position markers? Is the whole fingerboard treated with shellac, or just those frets?

These are really unique. I like the headstock and truss rod cover designs, really artsy!

It's nice to see more Alder necks. I've been making necks out of Alder for a while now, and I really like them. I think it just takes more people doing it to get the general public to embrace it as a standard neck wood.

Randolph Rhett wrote:The garnet shellac one gets my vote. How did you die the fret position markers? Is the whole fingerboard treated with shellac, or just those frets?

I gave the fret position markers the same treatment as the tops and headstocks, after the neck was completed and the frets leveled, dressed and polished. I wiped stuff (dye, shellac, or dye and shellac) on with some kind of small pads that my wife uses to wipe stuff on her face (a small folded piece of cotton cloth would do as well.) I wrung them out pretty well to keep them fairly dry so it wouldn't slop over onto the edges of the board, and was careful to get it up to the fret edges but not over. Then I sprayed the whole neck and fret board in the usual manner with clear coats of lacquer. The un-dyed areas between the markers have only the lacquer finish.

I keep coming back to admire these Peter.
Really nice

Great colors Peter!
Man, I dropped a small fortune on Transtint dyes.
I found out that mixing two dyes do not give and expected color.
I'll try some water color. Thanks for the tip!
Dan

Wow you have been busy! Those look great. I love the way the blue dye came out on the spalted top, that is wild. So that is just the same dye wiped uniformly on that top and it came out that way? I wanna try that with some spalt.

Do you happen to have a picture of what that spalted top looked like before the dye?

Sort of a reverse sunburst effect with figure thrown in for good measure. I like it.

Thanks folks for the kind words. Glad you like them - the owners do too.

Yes, Dan, the dye (in this case regular watercolor paint from a tube, mixed with water) was just wiped on with a cloth. Same color everywhere, the spalted wood just took it differently, and somehow the black component was muted or lost.

I like those guitars Peter.
The flame is nice on the two basses, and that spalted top with the blue is spectacular.
The fret board staining is a really nice touch.

I see what you meant when you said you were working on a couple of guitars near the same shape as one I posted a while ago.
Those are different, of course, because they're yours!

Paul Rhoney wrote:It's nice to see more Alder necks. I've been making necks out of Alder for a while now, and I really like them. I think it just takes more people doing it to get the general public to embrace it as a standard neck wood.

I have to admit the reason I make many necks (and bodies) from alder is because I have a ton of it in the form of cutoffs from a cabinet shop I used to drive by on the way to and from work, and I'd go through their pile and tie the pieces (1x2 to 3x4, 10 to 16 feet long) on top of the car to take home.

I've made several acoustic necks (guitar, bass guitar and Irish bouzouki) from single pieces of alder, with the usual scarf joint and stacked heel, and have had no problem with them in the 5 or 6 years they've been strung up. It's stiff, light, non-porous, easy to work, and seems to hold up fine.

Peter Wilcox wrote:

Paul Rhoney wrote:It's nice to see more Alder necks. I've been making necks out of Alder for a while now, and I really like them. I think it just takes more people doing it to get the general public to embrace it as a standard neck wood.

I have to admit the reason I make many necks (and bodies) from alder is because I have a ton of it in the form of cutoffs from a cabinet shop I used to drive by on the way to and from work, and I'd go through their pile and tie the pieces (1x2 to 3x4, 10 to 16 feet long) on top of the car to take home.

I've made several acoustic necks (guitar, bass guitar and Irish bouzouki) from single pieces of alder, with the usual scarf joint and stacked heel, and have had no problem with them in the 5 or 6 years they've been strung up. It's stiff, light, non-porous, easy to work, and seems to hold up fine.

These are great, Peter! I really like your top treatments. That simple bevel can look surprisingly fancy. I did that on one guitar and got a lot of comments on it at a show.

So, does alder have a noticeably different sound than maple? Maybe somewhere between maple and mahogany?

Thanks, Gordon. I've got a couple more of the same design ready to spray. A guitar with a one piece walnut top and cocobolo fret board, and a bass with a curly redwood top and osage orange fret board. I'm hoping the redwood and osage orange colors don't clash too much - I may treat the redwood with garnet shellac to see if it helps. As always, test on scrap.

Thanks, Jason - I'm afraid I'm pretty much deaf to the nuances of wood and tone. That's one reason I make mostly electrics (the other being they're so much easier to make), because to me the pickups, amp and player are much more important to how the instrument sounds.