Well, that was a fun project. I had a couple of goals I wanted to meet with this project. First and foremost, I wanted a P-90 guitar. Second, I wanted to see just how inexpensively I could build one from parts laying around the shop. And third, I wanted something that didn't have a perfect finish, something I could take to outdoor gigs and shithole bars and not worry about.
I accomplished all three. The guitar plays and sounds good. Knee-jerk impressions of the GFS soapbars are good. They're crunchy and punchy, and will even drive the Twin Reverb model on my Vox to break up a little. They clean up ok, but not enough. I have some tweaking to do but not until the guitar has been together for a couple of weeks and takes a set.
Cost for this project totalled $55. It would've been $40, but I had to buy some clear decal paper. I thought I had some but I only had white. The only parts I bought were the top string ferrules, the knobs, the neck ferrules and screws. Everything else was bartered or laying around.
You can see in the neck heel photo that I didn't take a lot of time filling and smoothing. Like I said, I didn't want a perfect finish. Instead of using the traditional finish, I used Minwax Wiping Poly. This stuff works very well, but if you want perfect, make sure your project is exactly right first. I'd not use it for any other kind of project, If I want it exact, I'll go back to shooting a finish. Still, it did a very nice job based on what I gave it to work with, and has probably become my new preferred neck finish. The body color is simply MinWax Red Mahogany, with a touch of red pigment added.
Parts is parts, right? So, what is this thing comprised of? You'll notice there's no pickguard. The quilted maple is inlayed to the body and was meant to suggest a pickguard. It has the same finish as the rest of the body, as does the control plate and tailpiece inlay. The pickguard is a combination of Telecaster, SG, and whatever lines I had to add to make it all work. The base side and bridge end are taken from and SG then modified. I had to make sure I was covering all the screw holes. The treble and neck side are decidedly Tele.
Yes, Kap'n and Gravity Jim, I went with the top string ferrules! The ONLY thing that allowed me to do that was the short (24") scale neck. If the bridge were any closer to the string holes the strings would have a bad break over the back of the bridge.
So, we have a Telecaster body, a Jaguar neck, Fender vintage style tuners, modified neck pocket, an SG Switch, 500K pots with Strat knobs, an LP bridge, P-90's from GFS, and a pseudo pickguard.
BTW, the neck is 7 1/4" radius, and the bridge is 12" radius. Don't believe what people tell you about all that crap. A little filing on the outside saddle notches and it was good to go. We're talking a 64th here.
Enjoy!
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Originally Posted by sabby
