My neck-through replica

[Dr. Vintage]

Hi - A long time ago, when this site first went up, I promised to post some pics of this... so here we go...









I put this guitar together in 1981 when I lived in Phoenix with the help of a local luthier named Ron Ciaverelli (I think that's how it was spelled). I built it to test out the device that's in the trem cavity.

Back in the pre-Van Halen days, everyone was trying to make a strat sustain and everyone thought that massive amounts of brass was how to do it... brass trem plates, inertia blocks, etc. I decided to take the sustain thing to it's logical extreme. Since I'm not a "trem guy" I came up with the idea to build The Mother Of All Sustain Blocks. This would be a solid block of brass that COMPLETELY filled the trem cavity - length-wise and then vertically up to the surface of the body. Then a brass trem plate bolts directly to that. I wanted the body to contribute, so neck-through was also a must. It also makes this guitar the absolute easiest guitar to reach the upper frets I've ever played.

Ron helped me track down a body - I think it was a Warmoth... 22 frets, rosewood board, neck through. He then arranged for a machine shop to make the sustain block.

I originally had a small low-gain preamp/buffer built in (it's long gone), I needed to have a cover plate in the back to access the battery... and to allow me to tinker with the electronics on the fly. The rest of the holes you see around the back are where I had a piece of naughahyde (sp???) on there to 'protect' the finish.

Ron painted it this snow white without a clear coat on top - I didn't want to clear coat to yellow with age. Then I took over.

The electronics have gone through several evolutions. Here's the current line-up:

Pickups:
All Duncan (now there's a surprise...)
Classic stacks in the middle and neck, and a JB Trembucker in the bridge.

Wiring:
Anyone who knows me from the LPF knows that none of Rick's guitars have standard wiring. The controls on this one are, from top to bottom:

Neck/Middle pickup volume control;
Master Volume;
Master Tone.

There's a mini-toggel between the master volume and master tone that is used to put the JB in single-coil mode.

The selector switch is an off-the-shelf 5-position switch.

I use the Neck/Middle volume control only in position 2 - Just like on my LPs, I like to fiddle with the interaction between the bridge pickup and whatever is next in line. In position 2, I get the standard strat "position 2" cluck, but I can also roll the volume of the middle pickup back a bit to reduce the effect and get a fatter sound (just like the Peter Green effect on a LP). So, really, this is more of a 'tone' control for me, and the knob is labeled that way.

This is THE heaviest guitar I own - over 10.5 pounds.

Given that I can't replace the guitar, it's a closet mouse. I've used it live exactly once just to say I did.

Figured it was time to make an appearance over here!

Cheers!

[Dr. Vintage]

Hey, Spose!!!!! Just to tickle everyone's curiosity... the Korina S-type you put together is BEAUTIFUL!!!! Nice work!