you guys have heard me talk about this thing already, so I'll just give the new details of the finished project.
I sprayed the body and the neck itself and it made the wood and the even the ply itself come up very nicely, especially the top lid, it looks beautiful. I had some trouble with the nut and eventually had to swap it for a rather fat bolt, it works, but I would of preferred an actual nut for this. once I had it together I had some trouble with the electrics, the ground and the hot kept shifting and touching so it all just grounded out, why it took so long to finish, had to go back to work, all fixed now.
The string I have settled on are a set of 12-52 D'addario Light Jazz Strings with a wound 24 for the G, I wanted the set to be heavy and to have a wound G and this was the most ideal set I could find (occurred to me later that I could of bought a set of 7 String Ernie Ball 9's, remove the 9 and 11 and add in a 12 for a cheaper result).
At the moment, I got the scale at its shortest length of 23.75, like a Gibson Byrdland and have it tuned Open D and it sounds great acoustically, the body is nicely resonant and my choice of sound hole cover and the presence of the pickup and neck in the body hasn't disrupted it. plugged in to my Fender Mustang amp, it sounds awesome, I have raised the P90 very high on the body and it sounds very fat, but mellow as a neck pickup, very Ry Cooder with some reverb. Oddly it sounds better through my little 3 inch battery powered mini amp, much more Elmore James, I need a pig nose amp or a Microcube to get the most out of this one I think.
that's about it, I got a couple guys over here in the UK who want to test this thing properly, so a video clip or a sound recording but come alone as well.
Replies
Hi Taff, thank you kindly. the nut is glued into place and sits in a lowered ridge on the neck, but I guess it can be removed to shorten the scale. I lengthen the scale by just moving the bridge back nearer the tailpiece, the bridge is held down firmly by the heavy strings, but I can just loosen them to move it, which will be necessary due to my string gauge choice, once it hits 25 or 25.5 inches in length, I drop the Open D down to C, which has a great low growl.
Hi JP, I did respond a few days ago but fell into the "don't use Visual Mode cos' its broke " trap, in my haste to reply, and like some others could not be bothered to come back.
But I'm here now and wide awake..... That is an interesting build. How do you change the scale length? You say it's at its shortest at the moment.
I can see an opportunity/design to make the nut movable, and not have to move the neck stick out of the box. Enjoy.
Taff