Long time, no write. Since my last post I’ve done a lot of stuff, as far as the guitar projects I mentioned last blog, I did finish one of those…A Blackguard Telecaster, built from Pine, with a Butterscotch Blonde finish. I actually ended up building it as an Esquire, ( no neck pickup), though if I run across a vintage Gibson humbucker, I may cut the pickguard and add it, ala Keith Richards Micawber guitar.William declared it the best playing guitar in the house. I’m loving it.
(have a 1970’s Fender Silverface Champ Amp supposed to be delivered today too, can’t wait to hear that)
The Cedar body is getting close, I’ve just been having so much fun playing this one, I’ve not taken the time to finish it.
My first guitar builds where I built the body from scratch. Building a old school Butterscotch Blonde Blackguard style Telecaster with pine and one from Cedar that will have a clear natural finish…
For the Blackguard I’m using Fender Blonde color, then amber/yellow tint on top of that..
Still have some sanding/cleanup on the cedar before I start clearing coating it.
It’s like this now, waiting for clear/tinted clear
But it started like this…
Here with Reranch Fender Blonde applied… This is NOT Butterscotch Blonde, it’s Blonde and actually is whiter than this pic looks.
Next comes various concoctions of color to get the neck tint and ‘aged’ Butterscotch to simulate 50 years of smokey bars, sun and yellowed lacquer…
It’s getting there, but I have to decide when enough is enough. This is pretty close to exactly what I want, I think I’m going to shoot some clear, then some LIGHTLY tinted clear. Same for the neck, I’m going to do clear, then decal, then tinted lacquer and clear till it’s right.
I have some sanding and prep before I shoot clear on the cedar, but when I wipe it down it really looks pretty. With a nice polished clear over it, it should come out nice.
William and I scored cool tickets in a Suite at the St. Pete Forum in Tampa Bay to see Metallica. What a great time, these guys played to a FULL stadium for close to 4 hours. They were awesome. William plays several of their songs on guitar and was loving every second of it.
AND, tomorrow I’m taking a day off work, and hopping on the FJR for a camping trip to North Carolina with a couple of buddies. What a great time that’s gonna be. Leave very early Friday, get back late Sunday.
What a cool birthday present I got from my family today. Tickets to see Joe Bonamassa at the Plaza Theater!!!
I’ve got a couple of his CD’s and really like them. He’s in his 30′s now, was a child prodigy guitar player, opening for BB King when he was 12 years old, etc. Electric blues guitar, but he puts a pretty heavy Rock slant to it. Really good stuff.
In any event, he’s coming to Orlando in November, and I get to go see him, Thanks Tam/Em/Will/Ash!!!!
I’ve currently only got two of his CD’s but that’s about all I’ve been listening to lately, ‘The Ballad of John Henry’ and “Blues Deluxe”
His DVD from a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London looks pretty cool, trailer below.
Here’s my latest project, which I’ve FINALLY finished. I bought a trashed, beat up Gibson Les Paul, and did a complete refinish in it and the hard shell case it came in. It was pretty dinged up and dented when I got it.
This is when I got it. It was filthy, dented, fretboard was dry as a bone, electrics in cavity did not work. Hard case was included but was broken and looked like it had been kept in the back of a pickup truck driven on dirt roads for a year or so.
Stripping the paint off front and back…
Stripped and sanded down to bare wood.
Blue Aniline Dye applied to top
Mockup to get an idea of what it will look like… Some clear laquer has been sprayed, but not all of it, and no polishing yet…
Les Pauls are made with a mahogany body, with a maple cap on top. that is the top 3/8 inch or so that is carved. What you see here, is the stained mahogany, the natural color of the edge of the maple top, and then the blue dyed top.
This weekend was the annual, neighborhood Tennessee/Florida party. Our neighbors, (and most of their friends) are Tennessee fans, their son, Terry, played for the Vols at one time. So a couple hundred people, a pig cooked in the ground all night long, and TONS of other food, about 8 big screen TV’s, music, karaoke, games, well, it was a party. As the night wore on, and the band was playing, they asked William if he wanted to play some guitar. I missed some of the first part, but got most of it, though it’s on my digital camera and the sound is aweful. It was all spur of the moment, so he didn’t have any written music or anything planned, he just played a few things he knew from memory.
Then Ashley and Emily got Mandy all duded up in Tennessee colors to give pony rides to the children. They had a great time, and got a lot of laughs with their ‘Gator Entrance’ billboard on Mandy’s butt. Don’t get me wrong, we’re Gator fans, but in honor of our friends, we let Mandy represent the Vols. (click the photo for fullsize)
What have I been up to lately? Building my own electric guitar. William and Ashley both have Fender Stratocasters, and I have bought, then sold a couple different Gibsons to try to find something I like, spent quite a bit of time at Guitar Center playing various axes. Eventually I realized the Strat just seems perfect.
Designed in the early 1950′s by Leo Fender, it is STILL the mainstay guitar of SO many successful musicians. The list of guys that consider(or considered) it their main guitar stretch from Buddy Holly, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pink Floyd, to John Mayer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. The Strat’s where it’s at.
Rather than buy another of what we have, I decided to build my own from parts I selected myself. It’s still the same guitar, just a ‘custom’ version done exactly like I want. I started with an unfinished body mostly shaped and routed, then started searching for the neck and other bits and pieces I needed. William helped me with soldering, polishing, installing the tuners, and in general, being another set of hands and eyes to help be sure everthing was set right.
Basically, it has become my obsession over the last couple months to get it finished. Of course, it took much longer than I thought, but I really couldn’t be happier with the result. I have a full picture gallery of the complete process here http://daveharperphotos.irun100s.com/GalleryList.aspx?gallery=95730 You can click each photo to read the description of what process I was working on, and also access full size photos.
I used a Swamp Ash unfinished body. A birdseye maple neck, with rosewood fretboard. I wanted to build a pretty much vintage correct Strat, with my own upgrades as I saw fit. The basic inspiration was from Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Number One Strat(pictured at bottom of page), thought I obviously did not try to ‘copy’ that guitar, with the enhanced grain, different coloring, different wood, etc. that I used But I used vintage style tuners, tremolo, saddles, string tree, and real bone nut just as would have been on a 1950′s or 1960′s Strat. I did the contouring on the body to be similar to that era. An amber tint to the neck gives that older, vintage, yellowed vibe rather than the bright white maple of a brand new Fender. The decals on the headstock are Fender inspired, but my own take on them. I even stuck a small quote from Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones on there. The finish is old school Nitro Lacquer, just as used back in the day. At one time used for automobile finishes, it’s too toxic for that use these days. I replaced the modern, cool abalone fret marker dots with cream colored clay dots, to also give a more vintage look. I think it came out pretty nice. It’s a joy to play, when I can wrestle it out of William’s hands.
This is the body that I actually started with.
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Above is a copy of the actual Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar that was the starting point for what I was wanting to do. Below is a Fender replica guitar of the same. I wanted to do something like this, but actually build a better guitar than I might buy off the shelf, with my own twist on it.
SRV was killed August 27, 1990 in a helicopter crash following a concert in East Troy, Wisconsin, headed to Chicago. Also on stage that night had been Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan. (though obviously none of them were onboard the helicopter)
We don’t know these ladies, but Will wanted his pic wit some hot chicks. 
