Project finished! "The Surly Dog"

[zpfled]

At long last, my first build is finished. You can see the half-assed build thread here.

A few reflections I have after finishing:

A) I'm happy with the result, and it sounds great.

B) There are a hundred things wrong with it that I want to improve on next time. Looks like it's time to dust off my tools and start another build! This is such an addicting and expensive hobby. Damn.

C) Building guitars is hard! Those of you who do it so well have my utmost admiration! I wouldn't have finished my project if not for this forum, so thanks!

Ok, here's a clip of me playing it.

And a couple pictures, of course, so that emoney doesn't call the picture popo on me. Oh wait, he IS the picture popo.

So, the guitar is named after this guy, rest his doggie soul.



The design is my own, I developed it in college when I first got the hare-brained idea that I should build a guitar. I built something like a guitar then, but most of the real work was done by others because I didn't know how to do, well, anything. So this is my first build, but it's really a "rebuild" of my initial idea.




As you can see, there are a lot of similarities to a Les Paul. I wanted Les Paul sound, so I used maple and mahogany and Gibson classic 57 pickups. Or maybe classic 59. I forget. I bought them years ago.



The back turned out nicely. I used leather for the back plates.



I fell in love with the idea of using leather on the guitar (backplates, binding, headstock veneer, pup surrounds) and fell OUT of love with actually doing it. It works alright for binding if you like a rough, reliced looks (because it's so soft, it crackles the finish if you breathe on it hard). But it's hard to work with and I will be using plastic and wood for surrounds, backplates, and headstocks in the future. It is kind of cool, though.




Of course, while adjusting the intonation, I slipped and gouged the top with a screwdriver. So much for a nice new guitar.



I really need to be more careful.

You can see the leather binding up close in this one. Notice how it's ALREADY nicked, and it hasn't even been worked hard yet. Leather is too damn soft for binding, unless you don't care about a "beat-up" looking guitar. Which I don't, but I want to eventually make one with a high quality level of finish and craftsmanship that I could, in theory, sell and be confident that it's a top-notch instrument.

All in all, this guitar is a good one. Most importantly, it sounds good! And it looks pretty good, too. And most people aren't you, so they're impressed by anything They don't notice the multitude of differences between a pretty good custom guitar and a masterpiece.



And like I said, it's on to the next build. I'm going to take it easy on myself and build some Fender style stuff for a while.



Barnaby, I'm using some of my new hand tools on this bad boy, thanks you your inspiring threads!

[David Mccarroll]

Love your post, and I love your guitar! The leather looks great to me!

Dog's cute - nice to name your guitar in his memory.

Cheers,

david

[Barnaby]

The leather is a fun idea, I agree - but I'm glad I don't have to do it...have you seen Scatter Lee's gatorskin-covered tele?

Your axe looks and sounds great. Good playing, too. I also love the snakehead-style headstock.

[zpfled]

Thanks guys! The positive feedback here helps keep me going! On to my strat.

[emoney]

Great job man!

[H.E.L.Shane]

Nice!!!!