Ben Loutrelle's Bluebird ES-295 Ripoff

[Ben Loutrelle]

I finished this about 3 months ago, and I thought I definitely owe it to luthiers somewhere to show it, seeing as I've learned quite a lot in these forums. I've been working on this guitar infrequently for 2 years, it's already been re-built once, but it really needed to be this so I re-rebuilt it. It all started with a circa 50's Kay-brand guitar with an un-set horrible poplar chalky neck with some other rosewood colored balsa for a fretboard. I attempted to help this in it's first iteration, but eventually it became unacceptable. In the new design I decided to on what I really always wanted, an ES-295/175. Most of the wood for new parts came from a 1907 upright grand piano that I salvaged. Here's the details.

The Neck - For the new neck I layed up new mahogany and old beech from the piano. I did this to try and settle a conflict between aesthetics and sound. I liked the look of maple landing on the maple body better than mahogany, but I didn't have maple so I used beech. Close edamnough! The fret board is Ipe a.k.a. Brazilian Walnut, a.k.a. Ironwood. It is that hard. It had to be sanded to shape because I couldn't plane it with out tearout. The headstock veneer is flamed maple but was covered by the finish pretty opaquely, and I'm okay with that oddly. Will probably inlay a logo in mother-of-petroleum, once I figure out a logo.

The Body - It was a normal acoustic body depth like 4.5 inches or so, and I wanted a thinner body, so I took off with the back and trimmed the sides down to 2.75 inches. It also did not have a cutaway, so I layed that out with an arc, I believe derived from a large yogurt lid. That wall of the cutaway is model airplane birch plywood. It turns out they didn't use an arc on the ES 295, it's like a parabola or free-hand curve. Anyways, in the guts of the guitar, I took out the existing bracing and neckblock material, more poplar, and rebuilt the braces from old piano mahogany. This accomodated my pickup layout, and also stiffens the top for loud music time. The back got all weird being off the sides for years, so I was excited that my improv performance woodworking aligned it all while the glue was drooling all over my arms and workbench.

The Finish - The finish is clear lacquer over metallic blue lacquer, over rit dye on bare wood. Probably not the best idea for a finish but whatevs. It came out pretty translucent, the grain of the top is visible in indirect light. The binding is white acrylic plastic. The tailpiece is from another Kay flattop, that tailpiece is sick, I feel like it is half of the sound. The bridge is Ipe, very slim and violin-ulent, bone saddle, bone nut. Original tuners, will get replaced. No truss rod cover following my quick & dirty aesthetic.

The Pickups - They're from a kit that I had to hack to suit my purposes. Since you can't find white P90 covers anywhere I ended up making my own white abs top of the bobbin and forgoing covers, so the wire's exposed. Pickups are humbucking setup; reverse wound, reverse polarity, in parallel for natural sound. I had to wind as much as I could fit on the bobbins and they're still extremely low impedance, like 750k because I used 36 gauge poly wire.

The Sound - The sound coming from this thing is pristinely beautiful. I had not imagined a guitar I built could sound so good. It's not super loud unplugged but that was mostly to the point, to shine when plugged in. It can go straight into a board with no DI or pre-amp or whatever and sounds very natural. When electrified, it's run through a boost pedal and into an amp and I can get really really loud clean sound to roaring drive with a flick of the wrist. I love it, it's my favorite guitar of all time. Of course I'll have to build a better version some day.

Oh and I did all this with hand tools and a drill.

[Ben Loutrelle]

Oh is that so you say, well harumph! Aaaaaaand more pictures!

[Ben Loutrelle]

And furthermore...

[Ben Loutrelle]

Progress

[Ben Loutrelle]

Progress

The proper use of architecture textbooks, gluing weights.

[Ben Loutrelle]

Progress.

Spool clamps? My ass! Free clamps. From Lowe's, for 30 days.

[Ben Loutrelle]

Progress.

Rit dye on the body and headstock.

[Greg Robinson]

Very nice Ben! I especially like the finish, unconventional, but came out with a subtle beauty.
Also, surely you mean 750R(ohms), not 750K! 750K would be extremely high impedance, approaching that of piezo elements!

[Steve Senseney]

Nice work. Quite a transformation.

[David Robinson]

Nice work Ben! Right amount of old to new parts. Love the use of architecture textbooks.

[Ben Loutrelle]

Also, surely you mean 750R(ohms), not 750K! 750K would be extremely high impedance, approaching that of piezo elements!

Oh! Greg you're right about that it's not 750 k. It's just 750!

And thanks everyone for your responses!