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Concept:
Cool guitar, no? This guitar is the 'Red Nucleus' and is being
made for Chris Ons of the band Red Nucleus (hence the guitar's
name). There will be nothing particularly red about this guitar
however - its just named after Chris's band.
What we have here is a cool and distinctive body shape. That shape
will be emphasised by a top of bookmatched, figured walnut that
is going to look great. The main part of the body will be mahogany.
The neck too will be a marriage of mahogany and walnut. A three
piece laminated, mahogany/walnut/mahogany neck with a glue-in
joint. Its going to have an unadorned ebony fingerboard with 24
frets and will have a slim, fast profile (similar to an Ibanez
JEM).
A Floyd Rose bridge with all of the usual paraphernalia will take
care of string anchoring. The bridge will be mounted in a recess
to allow for up-bends on the trem. A single master volume and
tone will control two Di Marzio humbuckers. The volume will have
a push/pull switch for selecting single coil voices. Pickup selection
is a Gibson-style 3-way toggle.
The jack socket will live in a recessed cavity at the back of
the guitar and will be a locking, Neutrik style socket.
Finish will be oil and wax which should bring out the beauty of
the walnut very nicely.
Overview:
• Solid body of mahogany back and figured walnut top.
• Laminated mahogany/walnut/mahogany set neck
• 24 fret, ebony fingerboard
• Floyd Rose bridge and locking nut
• Di Marzio Humbucker from Hell (neck)
• Di Marzio Tone Zone (bridge)
• 3-Way toggle and master volume and tone.
• Push/pull switch to split coils.
• Oil and wax finish
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Update 1
OK, so what do we have here? Basically its the building blocks of
the guitar shown above. To be honest, even I have trouble sometimes,
visualising the finished guitar from all of the component pieces
- it can be hard to believe that all these chunks of wood can come
together to make a guitar.
What we've got in the picture on the left is a mahogany body blank,
an ebony fingerboard, two mahogany outer neck laminations and one
walnut inner lamination (three ply neck, remember). Lastly, but
not least, are two pieces of bookmatched, figured walnut. Very nice
they are too. Its difficult to tell from this photo, but they have
a very nice grain figure and even a bit of a flame. They're going
to look great finished. |
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We're starting with the neck this time around. The picture opposite
is the three neck splices being glued together. I've actually
roughed the outline of the back of the neck in before gluing.
The reason is that as the headstock will not be faced or painted,
the neck blank is quite wide to prevent my having to glue 'ears'
to make up its width (this would detract from the finished look).
My bandsaw however would have had trouble coping with cutting
the full width of the blank after gluing - therefore I cut roughly
before and can easily tidy everything up later.
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Update 2
In the picture opposite, you can see the neck roughed out into the
basic shape. You can get an idea of the headstock shape and you
can clearly see the walnut inner splice of this three piece neck.
You can also see on the left of the picture, the larger bulk of
wood at the end that will become the heel of the neck and will be
cut to form the tenon that forms the joint with the guitar's body. |
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Update 3
Since the last update, I've begun working on the body of the guitar.
The walnut top was prepared and was then glued to the mahogany that
is to form the bulk of the body (as its bookmatched, this gives
a centre-split along the centreline of the body and gives a similar
figure on either side).
The body shape was then marked and the body was bandsawed to size.
Obviously some tidying up was necessary and there is more to do
but its possible to get a good idea of how the guitar will look
at this stage. |
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Update 4
Some more work done on the body for this update. On the left you
can see that things are starting to take shape somewhat.
What's happened up top here is that the cavities that will contain
the humbucker pickups have been routed in the body. Also, I have
routed a slot that will accept the tenon cut into the neck (see
below).
Although I know where the bridge will be from the plans that I've
drawn, I like to leave final marking of the bridge location until
after the neck has been joined to the body. In this way, I can allow
for any slight discrepancies that may creep in when hand tooling
an instrument and ensure that the final scale length and intonation
are spot-on. |
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In the picture on the right, is the back of the guitar's
body. To be honest, there's not a lot to see here at the moment.
The edges have been rounded over to take make them a little more
comfortable to play (the top will not be rounded to the same extent,
but will obviously have the edges taken off to a degree)
Also of note (and also for comfort), you can see that I have (roughly
for now) carved a ribcage contour into the back of the body. |
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Update 5
Moved back to the neck end for a while. What's happened for this
update is that firstly, the fingerboard has been slotted with the
24 fret slots for the scale length (25.5"). Also the neck tenon
has been cut to fit the slot in the guitar body (described above).
This tenon incorporates the angle necessary to accommodate the bridge's
height.
Lastly, the truss rod channel has been cut as has the rod access
recess in the headstock. You can see the dual action truss rod lying
on the neck. This is the same type of rod used in many Ibanez guitars
including the JEM series on which this neck is modelled. |
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Update 6
Right. As you can see, things are beginning to take shape here -
more specifically, you can now see a proper guitar shape.
The fingerboard was glued on and the neck was carved to shape. The
fingerboard was radiused and the frets installed (24 of them if
you're interested). Then the neck was double checked for fit, and
neck-angle and was carefully glued into the tenon slot on the body.
Once everything had set and cured, it was possible to confirm exactly
the bridge position and rout the cavity for the Floyd Rose trem
that will be fitted. |
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Here we have an image of the rear
of the guitar at the same time as the image immediately above. You
can see the control and trem cavities clearly. Also visible is the
'comfort contour' that has been cut into the rear.
Of particular interest, is the cavity at the far right (beneath
where the strap button will reside). This houses the jack socket
and provides a hidden location to plug in a lead and allows the
lead to feed up over the guitar strap very neatly indeed.
We're now going to finish it and fit the hardware. |
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Final Update
OK, and we're done. The Nucleus has winged its way to its owner
at last. I've added some pics to the Gallery
page and you can take a closer look there if you'd care to. I've
included an image of the completed instrument below too however.
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