Blog

May 12th 2016 Won't be properly starting this one until the V is finished, but the body and neck from GSPBASSES arrived yesterday The plan is to make a 79' Style 'Super Strat' guitar, target burst with a "closet classic" type finish, so some checking and hopefully slightly darker lacquer. Guitar kit is a European flame ash body routed for SSH and a large headstock neck with rosewood 'board. First purchases will be neck plate and screws, black SSH guard and trem May 14th 2016 First job done today, rolled fretboard Big fan of how they feel, so set to work with a large and small screwdriver. Before (lovely crisp edges as you'd expect from GSP) After June 1st 2016 Decal arrived today June 18th 2016 Bit more progress...

April 30th 2015 Following on from the success of the Explorer project and having a spare Chloe inlay, I felt I had no choice ? Same kind of specs as the explorer: 7 ply binding on the body White binding on the neck Ebony board with block inlays Ebony overlay on the headstock with 5 ply binding TOM bridge and Stop tail piece setup It’s again going to be Alpine White with gold hardware, pickups etc.. yet to be decided, I think Ash (Oil City Pickups) might be hearing from me again though I’ll not bother ordering up tuners etc.. before the kit turns up, which I suspect is 6 weeks+ away, the project will be a slow burner too, I’m saving any spare money (Ha!) for a house deposit. Anyway, this is the current mockup, I really don’t like the official Gibson Custom V look, so having a go at wh...

August 7th 2014 Always fancied a Pink Paisley, I started searching for them again after seeing the one for sale on here and found out that Allparts make a licensed PP body More searching later, the UK price was £600+, I ordered via eBay one of the USA sellers, after paying VAT on it today, it came to just under £400, which is still a lot, but the quality is amazing! Here it is as it arrived, next to a very special neck (it's like a piece of art!) I got from GSPBASSES as part of a Tele thin line partscaster Not letting my lack of skill or knowledge get in my way, I started measuring out, ready to drill the holes for the pick guard I'd sourced, bridge and control plate. After measuring / checking the pick guard and bridge layout about 10 times, I was ready for drilling (held ...

September 19th 2015 Following on from a thread I made on TheFretboard forums (Monterey Pop Waterslide graphics), I had a bit of a ‘bee in my bonnet’ about how I could get a decent Monterey Pop inspired Strat. The initial plan was to source a Strat body, get it painted (by the very talented Ceri Rendall) up to the pre clear layer, get it posted back, I’d get a local arty friend to paint it by hand, then ship it back to Rich to get it clear coated. With a price for the spraying agreed, I sourced a Strat body from here, very rough round the edges, but a decent price with the bridge etc.. I got this shipped over to Rich and then started looking out for a neck, before even trying to see what was around, I pinged a message to GSPBASSES as luck would have it, he had two Strat necks a...

July 23rd 2014 After hankering for a Gibson Explorer again last year, (I’d had a Gibson Government Explorer on order, sadly Gibson treats the UK like the poor relation at times and we never got any (or anywhere else in Europe as far as I can tell)). I noticed this weekend that Precision Guitars have finally started to offer an Explorer guitar kit, I emailed Phil (at Precision) straight away to see if they could accommodate my Custom Explorer idea. I’d been wanting a Gibson Explorer in the style / spec of my Alpine White Les Paul Custom since the moment I saw Lzzy Hales Signature guitar (sadly, not in production), her one is almost right, but has a bit too much gold for my tastes (inspiration as per the image at the top of this blog entry). Phil quickly confirmed it was possible, a build...