Tuesday 8th April '08

back to work on the Baritone.. the tuner hole for the bass string needs enlarging.. be careful doing this, I've snapped off a few drill bits in my time..

These wonderful custom humbuckers from Wizard are especially wound for this guitar..

and here she is with strings attached.. all that I need to do now is make a set of custom pickup surounds

but here are this weeks two new-borns..

the controls are removed from the PAF and the cavity shielded

and then everything is re-installed

and a long and hard wiring process is undertaken..

after playing around with a superswitch for a while I gave up and ended up calling Andy at Wizard pickups for advice.. needless to say in 5 minutes he'd sorted me out!!  (for the first three or four years of my carreer I had someone else to do my wiring for me!!.. I'm an artist give me something I can see and touch I'll be cool, tell me to descibe how electricity runs through a guitar and I might struggle a bit!!!)

anyway, back to wood... the backplate and pickup surrounds will be made out of a multi-laminate ...um.. laminate..  Each layer has grain running in opposite directions to add strength to the final piece..

here they are all clamped together between a bookmatched piece of maple with foam on either side to ease out any air bubbles in the laminates..

while waiting for glue to dry the PAF is set-up.. intonation, string and pickup height etc etc..

even the height of the strings at the nut is of prime importance..

it's a long job and the boys got bored.. so I took them for a run in the park!

the excess glue is sanded off each plane of the now dry and solid multi-lam section

the backplate is cut out

and, after sanding and profiling, is stained and fitted to the guitar.. she is now a complete custom guitar and raring to go..

first off I take several hundred photo's for the site.. the sun being out helps a lot..

and of course the boys were intrigued.. they know not to touch though..

All my best,

Ben

Crimson Bespoke Guitars HQ