Monday 28 January 2013

Stop the press!

What press? Who prints a blog? That's not a blog its a newspaper!
Good news! Scatter-Brain has its first commission and by jove it's exciting! Guitarist in the awesome post-metal band Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster and good friend, Andy Vernon has approached me to build a custom left-handed 7 string! He is very specific in what he wants, Tele-style cool with big tones and a good range of switching options and my personal favorite, through body construction! Stay tuned folks.
Also in the news, I finished the re-fretting on SB2, which I am very happy with, however, I think I may redress them one more time, as I feel the fret leveling could be smoother. 
Oh, I also went to an open mic night at my old local, drank to much, played double speed, fumbled my way through the first verse of Where Did You Sleep Last Night then stormed off stage and hid in the garden with my beer until closing. Anyway, point is, it seems that I am already a better luthier than performer!

Monday 14 January 2013

New Years Projects


In the absence of usable spare time time at the moment (more than about two hours when I'm not already warn out), I have been working on my repairs, sketching and drinking whiskey, but I'll get to that in a minute. At the moment, my latest creation, SB3 is residing at my parents, stripped of all its parts and most of its finish. My intention is to re finish it and add the rest of the parts including fret top markers (down the side of the neck and fretboard joint) trussrod and a new electronics cavity cover as well as adding graphics and refinishing.
In the meantime, using the tools available to me, I have been doing repairs work to SB2, my first experiment with through body construction. I was pretty happy with body finish, however the neck/fretboard is a little uneven and I had to level the fifth fret down to a state that it was nearly worn out. So much so, that when I first tried to use my fret rounding file, when initially I thought I could get away with just redressing the frets, the file couldn't  actually fit over that fret! I recently purchased some jumbo fret wire, something about this guitar, medium fret wire has never felt right and I figure this would be good practice to re-fret a guitar.
After pulling out the frets (which was actually not as nerve racking as I had expected it to be), I have began to sand the fretboard using a ruler as a guide to check how flat and even the neck is. I will keep my progress posted.
...And finally, whilst sitting with my sketch book, mulling over possible finishes for my new run of SB2 models with a glass of lightly peated whisky when my wife told me off (not for the first time) for using the bed as a table for my glass and I thought to myself; "she is right, I have been meaning to make myself a little slim side table." The problem is, it doesn't excite me, at most, it will be a box like construction with a minuscule amount of storage which ultimately I will do what I do with every other bit of furniture I own that doesn't excite me, I will pile receipts on it. So I poured myself another glass and admired my collection of tasty, tasty booze, when I was struck by a particularly selfish thought; "I don't believe this! I'm nearly 27 and I still don't own my own alcohol cabinet! What's up with that!"
Naturally, my wife thought this was a terrible idea, but the more I thought about it the more I thought about my total and utter lack of occasional furniture (to any one not middle class enough to have heard this term it relates to any bit of cabinetry not really essential to every day life, luxury items such as console tables, coffee tables, drinks cabinets, that sort of bollocks) in my life, no coffee table, no drinks cabinet, "hell, I don't even have a proper guitar amp! Oh, now there's an idea, coffee table/drinks cabinet/guitar amp..."
So there we go, repairs, SB2 production line and Scatter-cab/coffee/amp. Stay tuned, and if anyone actually reads this and has any ideas on the above, email me on; stuartrobsondesign@yahoo.co.uk
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Monday 7 January 2013

Blog merge

Seeing as how I am rubbish at running two blogs, building and updating a website and simultaneously building, designing and developing my guitars (and doing a half arsed job of building the Scatter-Brain Facebook page) not to mention holding down my lovely dead end job...
I have decided to cut down my work load by combining my blogs in to one, so for the three people that read my other blogs, this is where you will find updates on SB2 and 3 as well as rants, rage's and revaluations.
Updates
SB3 is fundamentally finished! At the start of 2012 I had set myself a task to complete 4 new guitars, due to one setback or another, I completed two. I'm not sad about this I should say. SB2 (although it has a few aesthetic needs that need attending to) has been an outstanding success, it still needs a few little bits done, such as a proper plate on the back over the electronics, a trussrod cover and I plan on putting transfer logos on the neck, on the twelfth and, if I can, the 24th fret as well as dots down the side of the neck. At some point, I plan on re-wiring the guitar, as well as stripping it down and giving it a proper polish. Those parts aside (which sounds like  a lot more work than it actually is when written down) I've made a guitar that plays well, sounds good, is very comfortable to sit with and looks uniquely styled!
The one thing I have learnt from SB3 is that to produce it on a grander scale, I'm going to need a planner, thicknesser. The guitar, that aside, was surprisingly easy to build.
Going forward
My original plan was to develop SB3 and experiment with a three piece neck construction. I am still going to do this, but using my redesign of SB2, through body. This is mainly because I found a wood supplier who provides pre planed wood at the right thickness for SB2, further to this however, SB2 is of a simpler construction which should make production times much quicker. I also plan on taking the construction one stage further by running up blanks for 3 potential guitars, all the same shape but all slightly different.