Haze Guitars - Custom Guitars & Basses - Instrument Repair


		The Interceptor

The Interceptor is a neck-through-body guitar that was inspired by the classic Gibson SG Custom (that's the three pickup one). For those of you familiar with these guitars, they were a rich white-ivory colour with gold hardware and looked pretty damn cool.

This instrument was made for Peter Cheevers of The Burning Effigies- check them out on www.burningeffigies.com - their new album is great, by the way. He wanted something inspired by the SG Custom but with a distinctive sound and different enough to get noticed. What ensued was the following...

Overview:
• Double-cut, SG-style body. Through-body neck. Mahogany neck and body wings.
• 24 fret ebony fingerboard with block mother-of-pearl inlays. Three-ply fingerboard binding.
• Custom headstock shape, faced with ebony with lighter ash rising sun inlay. Three-ply headstock binding.
• Three custom-wound P90-style pickups and custom wiring configuration (three volume, two tone and toggle).
• Gibson-style tunomatic with vibrato enabled tailpiece.

This is a picture of The Interceptor in construction in the workshop. You can see pretty clearly the through-body neck detail. You can also see that the neck has been laminated its entire length from three seperate pieces of mahogony. This is done to strengthen the neck and help prevent any warping that may occur over time. The mahogony body wings are also clearly visible, glued to the side of the neck. The truss rod channel has been cut and the dual-action truss rod is temporarily installed.

		This is the rear of the guitar. The picture shown was taken at the same time as the one above. Again you can see the neck splices and the body wings. The neck can be see to be laminated from the botom of the body to the headstock. The control cavity has been routed out although you will notice that there are no pickup cavities in the picture above. This is because it is usually better to wait until the finger board is glued on before absolutely deciding on where the bridge should go and without knowing exactly where the bridge is, it might be dangerous to start routing pickup cavities.

You can see here what will become the heel of the guitar. A nice thing about through-body neck instruments is that you can often shape the heel to blend smoothly into the body. This obviously makes playing in the higher positions a bit more comfortable than if you had a big bulky heel to contend with. You might also be able to make out the headstock shape and a little lump of wood left to fashion a volute to strengthen the head-neck joint. This area is a notorious weak spot on any angled headstock.

		This is the guitar after the fingerboard has been glued on. You can see the fingerboard binding and mother-of-pearl block inlays. The bridge position can now be accurately ascertained (using the known scale length) and the pickup cavities can be marked between the bridge and the end of the fingerboard.

A view along the neck to the headstock. The fingerboard is ebony and is bound with three-ply binding (ivory-black-ivory). Fingerboard is radiused to a 16" radius and is not yet fretted. The headstock is faced with ebony. It is shown before it has been bound (it will be bound with the same binding as the fingerboard).

		The headstock a bit closer to completion. It has been bound with the same three-ply as the fingerboard. It has been drilled for the tuners and has the custom inlay in place. This inlay is made from a piece of ash. It has been stained amber and has a rising sun pattern burned into it.

Fully drilled and routed body. Three pickup cavities are completed. The bridge and tailpiece mounting holes are drilled and although you can't see it the neck has been shaped at the rear ('C' profile graduating to a 'D' higher up as per owner's specifications). The guitar is pretty much ready for fretting, finish sanding and spray preperation.

Obviously enough, the two pictures above show the sprayed (and now fretted) instrument. The instrument was sanded, grainfilled and sealed with two coats of lacquer sprayed relatively thickly. It then received three colour coats and six clear topcoats. The colour coats were white but (although you can't tell from the pictures) the top coats had a slight yellowing effect which resulted in that nice creamy-ivory colour we were after.

These were taken about a day after the final coat. The instrument must be left for a few weeks to allow the lacquer time to cure. It can then be sanded and buffed to a nice gloss.

Update:
Well, the Interceptor has been pretty much completed. The guitar was finish sanded and buffed into a gloss and it was installed with its hardware. Hardware is all gold and the instrument looks pretty cool - especially with the vibrato tailpiece and its arm. One slight problem however is that the pickups which are being custom wound are delayed. The guitar is with its owner at the moment (as he wanted to get his hands on it) and it's currently being played acoustically. It plays quite well but will obviously be a little more effective when the pickups are completed and installed. When thats done, we'll publish some pictures of the complete article.

Final Update:
All finished and complete. Sounds great. Looks great (if I do say so myself). The custom-wound pickups are fantastic - super tone and really dynamic. They respond beautifully to playing style and you can dial in clean/dirty from the guitar's volume controls in a nicely controlled way.

You can check out some more images in the gallery section